'MasterChef' Recap: Krissi And Jessie Eliminated; Luca And Natasha To Compete In Finals

MasterChef went from Top 4 to Top 2, Luca Manfe and Natasha Crnjac, Wednesday night in back-to-back episodes that eliminated Krissi Blasiello and Jessie Lysiak.

In the first hour, Luca and Natasha teamed up against Jessie and Krissi to cook an appetizer, entrée and dessert from mystery box ingredients.

Jessie and Krissi had problems from the start, neither one making any effort to hide their mutual distain. Krissi got so angry with Jessie that she walked out of the kitchen, leaving Jessie to finish their dishes of lobster salad, rack of lamb and apple tart with roasted macadamia nuts. Luca and Natasha won the challenge with their dishes of butter-poached lobster, trout, fried oyster, a rack of lamb and a strawberry tart desert.

Jessie and Krissi faced off in the pressure test elimination challenge in which they had an hour and fifteen minutes to make one chocolate mousse, one chocolate soufflé, and one chocolate lava cake. After a tough deliberation – Krissi’s chocolate mousse is declared superior, but Jessie’s soufflé is also a winner – Krissi is sent home.

The Top 3 chefs are immediately launched into another mystery box challenge. The chefs were instructed to improve upon the dishes they served in their auditions using new ingredients from a personalized mystery box and everything they have learned in the competition thus far. In the end, Jessie took the win and Luca got a slap on the wrist for being over-enthusiastic with his Parmesan cheese sauce.

As the winner of the challenge, Jessie gets to have first pick of her ingredient for the elimination round and gives Natasha the second pick. Jessie picks the Kobe beef, Natasha grabs the Alaskan king crab and Luca gets the grana padano cheese by default. Unfortunately for Jessie, her pick sent her home when she decided to serve the Kobe beef with vegetables and noodles instead of a light papaya salad that she left on the bench – Gordon Ramsay was less than pleased.

MasterChef will crown a winner next week when Natasha and Luca go head to head Wednesday at 8 p.m. on Fox.

– Olivia Truffaut-Wong