After a night studying their cookbooks, the contestants were given $100 and 15 minutes in Coles to shop for their ingredients. They were going to have one hour to prepare five serves of a dish of their choosing for Matt and his guests to taste. Each dish would be scored by them and the two cooks who scored the lowest would be facing an elimination challenge.

The guest judges arrived with Matt and met the contestants. There was chef Cheong Liew of The Grange in Adelaide; Jacques Reymond, chef and owner of Melbourne’s Jacques Reymond restaurant; Armando Percuoco, chef and owner of Buon Ricordo in Sydney and Margaret Fulton, who has produced more than 20 cookbooks in her lifetime and sold more than five million worldwide.

With half an hour to go before they served their dishes to these luminaries of the food world, the flustered contestants were flat out. Justine dropped brussels sprouts form her dish because she was running out of time. Chris forgot his steaks were in the oven, overcooking them and said he had a disaster on his hands. Julie took her cake out of the oven with seconds to go.

Matt and his guests tasted Andre’s dish of Roman gnocchi with caponata first. Jacques thought it looked fantastic but was disappointed when he tasted it. Cheong said the vinaigrette of the caponata and the saltiness of the Roman gnocchi clashed. Armando commented on the lack of seasonality with the vegetables in the caponata.

Poh served chicken floss curry with coconut lace pancakes. Margaret asked Poh how she should eat it and after picking up some of the curry with the pancake and tasting it, she declared Poh's dish “absolutely delicious.”

Chris’ dish was pan seared rib eye with roasted bone marrow. A disapproving Jacques picked up the foil under the bone marrow on his plate and asked Chris if it was edible. Matt said the salad was underdressed, the dish lacked acidity, he had hardly any marrow in the bone on his plate and the meat was pasty. Armando said there was no imagination in Chris’ dish and Jacques commented it was the worst dish they had been served so far.

Justine presented her duck breast with eschallot tarte tatin. Jacque said the ingredients were perfectly suited to the season of winter. Margaret said Justine’s dish had a lovely mixture of flavours which complemented each other and laughed that she’d like the recipe.

After trying Julie’s spiced orange layered cake with a chocolate and yoghurt ganache, Margaret said she had thought it didn’t look marvellous but after tasting it, decided it was “absolutely divine.”

Matt, George and Gary met the contestants to give them the results of the challenge. Matt and his guests had all given each dish a score out of 10. Justine’s dish scored 47 out of 50, the highest score of the challenge. Julie scored 45 out of 50. Poh came third on 42 points.

Andre scored 37 out of 50, while Chris’ dish rated 33 out of 50. They will face an elimination challenge while Justine, Julie and Poh celebrate being through to the finals week of MasterChef with lunch at Quay restaurant.

Stay tuned as Andre and Chris fight for a spot in the finals.