Vegetarians were in foodie heaven as MasterChef served up a veg special episode for the BBC One show’s second quarter final of the series.

The four heat winners from the week Simon, Pete, Sarah and Charlotte were given the ultimate green challenge by guest judge and restaurant critic Tracey MacLeod.

“I want the vegetables to be the star. I want to see real invention,” said Tracey as veggies across the UK rubbed their hands in glee in the hope of learning a few more flavour combos.

As Tracey helped hosts/judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace whittle the foursome down to a trio – eventually giving Charlotte the boot – people had one thought…

But while we obviously cared about who had done enough to get through to the knock-out stages, veggies were more keen than usual to see the actual main course menus, although they weren’t without questions.

Simon served up wild mushroom duxelle ravioli with sage butter sauce and pangrattato – bread crumbs with chilli and garlic. Nom.

He was criticised for it not being mushroomy enough by John, Gregg and Tracey, but Twitter had a different problem with his creation for a “vegetable special”.

Sarah made an amazing-looking egg yolk and potato raviolo with salsa verde, Parmesan cream and zucchini fritti (courgette chips) hoping for the herbs of her salsa verde to be the star.

She won over the judges and in the process proved John wrong. In tasting, he’d revealed that he hadn’t thought it would work.

But like Simon’s dish, it again prompted questions.

(Yes. Yes it is.)

Pete, an early favourite who loves the food of Japan, dished up a beauty – a huge serving of vegetable ramen with choy sum, noodles, pickled ginger, bamboo shoots and a marinated soft boiled egg plus ganmodoki tofu cakes and a pon soy dipping sauce.

Charlotte missed out on going through.

While her main course meal looked good it wasn’t quite as good as the others. Charlotte served up beetroot three ways, purple roasted, golden steamed and pickled candy-striped beetroot with deep fried goat’s cheese, chive pesto, black olive puree and a thyme and orange sauce.

They made desserts too but y’know…