MasterChef is back for its tenth year with the most inspirational series yet. Out of the hundreds that auditioned, sixty amateur cooks got through to battle it out over five weeks of heats, producing some of the most exceptional as well as some of the most disastrous food ever seen on the series.

All of them have just one goal – to lift the coveted MasterChef Champion title.

Our own Theo Michaels, a 37-year-old UK Cypriot IT company director is currently a quarter-finalist on the show.

In the fourth quarter-final episode, contestants had to copy a palate test created by John Torode (crispy-skinned chicken, herbed gnocchi and mushroom sauce) – a dish with three different types of mushrooms to identify and which required a high level of technical skill. Without seeing John prepare it, the amateurs were given just a few minutes to taste this dish being asked to write down exactly what is in it, using their sense of smell, and palate. Then they had to recreate john’s dish without a recipe in just one hour and fifteen minutes, selecting from ingredients that may or may not belong in the dish.

After this was the ‘show stopper’ dish; the dish of dishes, the dish to blow the judges away and secure your place in MasterChef history as a quarter-finalist and head into the next round. And as if that wasn’t enough pressure, throw in a seasoned food critic as well in the form of Jay Rayner.

Theo cooked oxtail ravioli and secured his place as a MasterChef quarter-finalist.