John Torode spiced things up in the kitchen for the cooks in the third quarter-finals of MasterChef when he challenged them in the palate skills test.

The Australian chef cooked a spiced potato cake with ginger and chilli chickpeas vegetarian dish consisting of 12 spices that the cooks must identify.

The ingredients for his dish includes: mustard seeds, tomatoes, chilli powder, ginger, chick peas, garam masala made from toasted ( cumin seeds, cinnamon stick, blacker corn , cloves, cardamom pods, grated nutmeg), chilli and coriander.

Ping, James, Rani and Jack are this week’s quarter-finalist and without seeing how John prepared his dish, they are given just a few minutes to taste the food before being asked to write down exactly what is in it, using their palate and sense of smell. They are then asked to recreate the Indian spiced dish without a recipe in just one hour and fifteen minutes, selecting from ingredients that may or may not belong in the dish.

For their second challenge, the four must go head-to-head to cook their own show-stopping dish for John and Gregg, as well as a surprise judge. This week the guest judge is the respected food critic Tracey MacLeod.

Tracey Mcleod is a MasterChef regular and not only is she a food critic for The Independent, but she is also a journalist, broadcaster and has presented a range of BBC arts and music programs.

At the end of tasks, it was Ping and Jack that the judges declared the winners of the third MasterChef quarter-final 2014. The two cooks have taken another step closer to the MasterChef champion 2014 crown as they head to the semi-finals.

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