Cameron Petley: Time for fry up at Josh's

Cameron Petley. Photo / Supplied

As Jax, Nadia, Tracey Lee and Stu head to Melbourne they face not one but two difficult challenges to decide who goes through to the semifinal decider.

The first challenge is one I would have relished: recreating dishes using Australian indigenous ingredients like wallaby, kangaroo, Murray River cod and Moreton Bay bugs.

They have only three hours to recreate their dish, which may seem like a lot of time.

But, I can tell you,when you're under that pressure dealing with ingredients you've never used before, it's not a picnic.

And there's more: they've been thrown a curve ball and have to source their own ingredients from the famous Victoria Markets. That gets them all flustered.

The second challenge is at the famous Maze restaurant, which until this month was run by judge Josh Emmett.

It is one of the many restaurants owned by Gordon Ramsay, my idol. At any restaurant affiliated with these two chefs, I can only imagine the standard is through the roof.

This challenge is to fillet and cook fish - one of my favourite pastimes. It's a skill I've been shown how to do from an early age and I would have loved to have been in their position.

But I've never dealt with this size of fish - a huge, expensive Red Emperor.