MasterChef recap: Will Eric's lucky pants help him stride through the pressure test?

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Just as invention test rewards the cooks who make the most inventive dishes, a pressure test rewards the cooks who make the most pressurised dishes. At least I think that's how it works?

Anyway today's pressure test is set by Clinton McIver, from Melbourne restaurant Amaru, where he has two hats, in case one gets dirty. Clinton is a stern man who smiles only at the sense of others' misfortune. If Sabina could ever cook like him, she says she'd be happy, and it's sad to think she's not happy already, with her whole life in front of her and so forth.

It's "Scott's" first pressure test, the latest in the line of new experiences he's had since becoming a real boy. In contrast, Eric has been in several, and so is wearing his "lucky pants" – or in other words, he's still in his pyjamas.

The test is to cook a dish of Clinton's without ever seeing it, a revelation that causes Eric to involuntarily do a Macaulay Culkin impression. The dish is aged lamb with flowering legumes and native spiced butter. "It's stunning," says Aaron, who dreams of one day putting aged lamb in a shop window.

The amateurs, fighting to avoid elimination, don blindfolds to taste and smell the dish, from which they must recreate it as best they can. Sadly they do not have to keep the blindfolds on while cooking, which would have made for an infinitely more entertaining hour. Also, they have recipes, so really not seeing the dish isn't a big deal at all. I mean they literally have instructions for cooking it written down in front of them. Easiest thing in the world.

The dish is aged lamb, so the first thing the amateurs must do is grapple with the concept of paradox. How can a lamb be aged, they think, rubbing their temples in agitation. Surely an aged lamb is a sheep? This is why cooking is hard.

Depinder is concerned that Brent has too many onions in his pan, so concerned that she begins waving her hands around in a sort of interpretive dance on the subject of caramelised onions. Meanwhile the judges ask Clinton how he would go about making the dish if he hadn't been able to see it. The obvious answer is "it's my dish, so I'd do it the way I always do". Surprisingly, though, Clinton answers that he'd "work in reverse": he'd start with a finished dish and then slowly take it apart. None of the amateurs seem to have thought of this.

Eric reads the recipe. He looks at the lamb. He reads the recipe again. He looks at the lamb. He reads the recipe. He cuts the skin off the lamb. He realises that is not what he was supposed to do. He considers going back to medical school. Jock tells him that he has two choices: fall apart or keep going. Both are tempting.

Meanwhile Sabina remembers the velvety sauce that she tastes, and begins boiling her velvet. She also puts some bones in the oven, to serve as a warning to others. Brent has suddenly realised he has too many onions. His onions are not caramelised enough. Jock looks at his onions and turns away in disgust. Brent must redo his onions.

"I really love following recipes," says "Scott", and you can tell that he means it. He claims to have "about" 346 cookbooks at home, and who are we to call this a pathology? Melissa asks him how hard it was to be blindfolded. "Scott" admits that it was very hard, because he uses his eyes almost every day.

The time has come for everyone to place some bones in a plastic bag, a ritual as old as time itself. Nobody knows why they do this, yet they know they must. Then they must cook the lamb, which many chefs believe is a relatively important part of making a lamb dish. Eric, who cut the fat off his lamb, is pretty much screwed already, but he has a cunning plan to cook the severed skin separately and put it together at the end, like a sort of Lambenstein.

Meanwhile Brent is stoked.

Eric is about to put his lamb in the oven, when he discovers that his lamb is already over 52 degrees, which it shouldn't be because of some weird cooking thing. He decides not to put the lamb in the oven, which is smart because not putting a thing in an oven is one of the best ways to make sure it doesn't get too hot. "It's not over till the fat lady sings," Eric says, but looking up at the balcony there doesn't seem to be one. In Eric's favour is the fact that "Scott" has overcooked his onion gel, which is not even a euphemism.

Time to plate up. "This is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle," says Sabina, but the editor cuts off the end of her sentence. What was she going to say? Like putting together a jigsaw puzzle made of meat? Like putting together a jigsaw puzzle ie incredibly easy? Like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, so I make sure to find all the straight edges first? We'll never know, because of that reckless editor.

Time is up. Who will meet their downfall: Sabina's ruthless efficiency? Brent's hurried plating? "Scott's" grainy gel? Eric's complete and utter nightmare?

Sabina's lamb looks a bit like Clinton's and is very good. Brent's lamb looks hardly anything like Clinton's and is quite good. "Scott's" lamb looks quite a lot like Clinton's and is pretty much edible. Eric's lamb looks vaguely like it might have been created in the same universe as Clinton's and is just terrible. Eric tells the judges that he gave up his third year of medical school to be here, but there is no medical-school clause in the MasterChef rules and so he must go. And so, once and for all, the utility of lucky pants is disproven.

Tune in tomorrow, when with any luck someone will explain what a "flowering legume" is.

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