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41. Don’t do anything that you find uncomfortable unless you are scared of it. It is uncomfortable to find yourself on the same TV show as the PM or Julia Gillard, because you obviously know you aren’t worthy – and feel a bit embarrassed that you are lowering the tone.
42. When undertaking a mystery box challenge – or as I like to call it back at home, a spot of ‘fridge shaking’ – remember that you don’t have to use everything on offer in the box or the fridge. Just pick three or four ingredients that you know will work together. Like a marriage, the fewer people in it, the easier it is for everyone to get along.
43. If you twirl your wedding ring while the cameras are rolling your wife will know you love her.
44. Food writers have the best job in the world. Being a chef is far tougher.
45. If you want to employ someone to ‘whoop’ with genuine exhilaration when you pull something out the oven – employ a Queenslander. Queenslanders give the best whoop, followed by Sydneysiders, but Queenslanders are willing to do it while wearing fancy-dress.
46. ‘MCK’ is how the cast and crew referred to MasterChef Kitchen – the Sydney warehouse fitted out to be out home for the four months of filming.
47. Tired people are more likely to cry.
48. Don’t cut anything while holding the knife around the base of the blade with your fingers curled under the cutting edge. If you slip you will slice off your fingertips.
49. Never, ever, eat off your knife or hunch over your food.
50. Make-up artists touch up people all through the day and never get in trouble for it.
31. According to the make-up artist who does us both, Kyle Sandilands is more professional than me. Should this concern me?
32. It is impossible to go to Hong Kong for a week without putting on three kilos.
33. There is a small group of people who watch TV with a magnifying glass. For the record, at no time during the show was I a) a freemason; b) sacked; c) dead; d) having marriage difficulties; e) wearing a hearing aid; f ) a walrus or g) snide. If I put my hand in my jacket it was because I was pretending to be Napoleon during the French challenge. If I wasn’t on the show it was because I was working at the Melbourne or Noosa Food & Wine Festivals. If I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring it’s because I’d taken it off to do the gardening and then forgotten to put it back on. Okay, maybe I was occasionally walrussy or snide. And that wire coming out of my ear was for an earpiece so that a very clever woman called Caroline Spencer could tell me what was for lunch and that yes, there was a dynasty of French kings called the Merovingians.
34. Melbourne people are cool – and a bit aloof.
35. Always try to dress like you are either a serve of several colourful scoops of gelati (perhaps vanilla, watermelon and chocolate), or the most lurid eighties cocktail at Studio 54. This will entertain you in quieter moments.
36. If you are a good cook you don’t have to follow a recipe word for word. Be brave, stop and think about what you’ve got and how confident you are you can improve it.
37. If an FM breakfast radio presenter asks you to taste something – don’t. It is unlikely to be nice.
38. Always be nice to the director, but it is the first assistant director who you really need to suck up to.
39. Never ego-search the web. Some people can be quite hurtful and cruel. And that’s just George Calombaris.
40. Never touch a pan taken from the oven with your lip to see if it’s hot.
21. Apparently butter makes everything better. That’s why I’ve sent a case of Western Star to Beirut.
22. Cooking for one is no fun.
23. People love beetroot because you can beat an egg but you can’t beat a root.
24. Six am isn’t early; 4.35 am is early.
25. In the end I lost eight kilos while making MasterChef. I am not sure why. Perhaps standing around burns calories. I predict big things for my book outlining the ‘Dawdle Diet’.
26. Even great chefs can crumble in the kitchen under pressure. So when cooking for friends, reduce the stress as much as possible by using familiar recipes and familiar ingredients. Oh, and always practice anything new on your family first.
27. Good TV revolves around jeopardy. Great TV revolves about people you care about placed in that jeopardy. Oh, and lots of expensive cameras – ideally mounted on helicopters or on a Chapman, which is like a very, very expensive billy-cart with padded suede seats.
28. Always expect the unexpected.
29. It is possible to stand still for long periods of time if you run through all the cheesy male catalogue model poses you can think of, from the cuff pop to the thumbs in pocket. Although after twelve hours of that, you’ll understand why polar bears go mad in the zoos and swing from side to side.
30. Smart brunettes are hot. MasterChef judges are not – unless they are in Hong Kong and its 33 degrees.
11. A great dish comprises balanced layers of flavour and texture. Acidity and crispiness are the most important factors in a great dish.
12. You can drink a soy chai tea without wearing a kaftan … although it helps.
13. Cook from your heart.
14. Food and feeding people is a beautiful thing.
15. Gary likes beer and puddings. George hates chilli but loves a story. I love weird stuff I haven’t seen before and anything foreign.
16. My most used word was ‘unctuous’; George’s was ‘yummy’; Gary’s were ‘nice’ and ‘yielding’.
17. The judges argued about three things in the course of the competition: about the nature of great mashed potato; about whether Australia’s first MasterChef needs to go on to do an apprenticeship; and about whether five or seven dishes was the right number for a sneaky lunch in the middle of filming. Gary and I’d say seven; George would say five – and then insist on ordering double desserts.
18. The last five cooks in this series were the best five cooks we saw in the competition, thus vindicating the judges’ (and producers’) decision to pick winners based first and foremost on the best dishes cooked.
19. Learn from your elders in the family – don’t loose those cherished family recipes.
20. Cook with your children or grandchildren – but realise that it will get messy, very messy. Cooking teaches them about maths, planning, science and where they come from. This makes cooking the sort of curricular stream that should be central to all education.
This week MasterChef judge, food critic, and author of Cravat-A-Licious, Matt Preston tells us about some important things he learnt doing MasterChef series 1.
1. Garnish is the devil. The rule is that if you can’t eat it then it doesn’t belong on the plate. If it’s not an integral part of the dish, then nix it.
2. More effort in prep makes it easier and more enjoyable to cook.
3. Somewhat surprisingly, fetta tastes rather nice topped with sour cherries in syrup and a few pine nuts. This became my impromptu green room (ours is called green because it resembles a swamp, complete with mouldy carpet) canapé for Bill Granger, Donna Hay and Luke Mangan when they came to visit. I think they were a) impressed; b) threatened; c) polite.
4. Simple home food can be plated up far more stylishly if you leave the carbs off the plate. Add the carbs and it looks home-style or peasant. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
5. If you make a pie, make sure the crust is cooked, otherwise you’ll look very silly.
6. The more innocuous the title of a dish featured in a challenge, the more devilish it will be. Witness the friendly-sounding ‘Chocolate Mousse Cake’ challenge, which would have tried the patience of Job.
7. If you have a good palate and oodles of patience, you can achieve amazing dishes with the right recipe. You must, however, follow the recipe.
8. Cooking is now cool with pre-teens. This is very good news.
9. When tasting food, gaze wistfully into the middle distance. This makes people believe you are thinking deeply rather than just trying to recall where you left the car keys.
10. Having people watch you eat – and then commenting on it – is very weird. Stop staring, you peeping toms!
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