Get to know our judge and resident food critic, Matt Preston, a little better.
Matt Preston: Q + A
Date: 23/04/2009
What have you enjoyed most about MasterChef so far?
Other than larking about with Gary and George, it’s been the joy that comes from the contestants delivering us a delicious dish that’s a pleasure to eat.
What qualities do the contestants need to be successful?
A good palate, strong food knowledge, cracking kitchen technique, a drive to learn how to cook better dishes and some substance and direction to their culinary dream.
What makes a dish truly great?
How long is a piece of string?
• A balanced complexity in terms of textures and flavours.
• An exemplary execution of a classic whether it’s a peasant dish like Osso Buco or a toffy meal like Beef Wellington.
• The fact that others want to cook the dish and add it to their culinary repertoire.
• But the really great dishes I have tasted get you to look at ingredients in a new way, are original and inspire a deep emotional reaction when you eat them. This means that a truly great dish is a personal thing.
What’s unique about how people cook in Australia?
Australia has set a global brasserie style that is built around cooking food quickly – often over an open flame. Our food is amazingly fresh and clean tasting and this reflects our pristine environment, our multi-cultural influences, and how little fat modern Australian cuisine uses.
Combine that all with our embracing of zippy flavours (especially acidity), crunchy fresh salads and fine produce – whether it's local seafood, grass fed beef or wonderful vegies which need little adornment to enhance their beauty – and you have an emerging national cuisine that is increasingly embraced in the home and championed by Australian cooks like Donna Hay and Skye Gyngell, and by magazines like delicious or Vogue Entertaining.
What characteristics or qualities does a great chef have?
The great chefs (and they are few and far between) that I have had the pleasure to spend time with exhibit the same five traits: a mentor’s desire to share and teach; a genius’ ability to explore the new; an ego that is under control; a generosity in wanting to give their customers a pleasurable experience; and a certain obsessive desire for always perfecting their vision.
If you could choose your last meal on earth, what would it be?
Sashimi from Tokyo’s fish market. Pan seared fresh foie gras with quince and a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem. Aussie lamb chops with a bottle of 1929 Chateau Margaux. French fries and mayonnaise. Salad of raw porcini, fresh white truffles, parmesan and lemon. Coco Pops with whipped cream. A cheese trolley. A bowl of fresh figs and lychees. And finally a Snickers bar or two.
What’s your favourite place to travel?
Travelling constantly doing stories for delicious and Vogue Entertaining + Travel my favourite places always tended to be the next place on the itinerary – so I’d have to say Andalusia and Catalonia in Spain, Southern France, Vietnam and Qualia on Hamilton Island.
The most fun I’ve had away from home recently has been in Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris, New York, Les Diablerets in Switzerland and Adelaide. I also love the NE of Victoria, the Kimberley and Arthur and Radical Bay on Magnetic Island.
What dish would be the way to your heart?
Perfect, pillow soft gnocchi with sage butter followed by fresh figs.
If you were having any three people, alive or dead, over for dinner, who would they be and what would you cook for them?
If I was working it would be:
Catherine de Medici, Jesus and my great (x8) grandmother whose hand-penned 1765 recipe book is one of my most treasured possessions. Together they could solve so many of the “big questions” that I have when it comes to food.
Oliver Reed to drink with, Nico from the Velvet Underground to sing with and Sophia Loren to make pasta with. We‘d eat the pasta.
Catherine de Medici, Jesus and my great (x8) grandmother whose hand-penned 1765 recipe book is one of my most treasured possessions. Together they could solve so many of the “big questions” that I have when it comes to food.
I’d cook them Balinese style roast suckling pig (obviously there’d be some Peking Duck, steamed barramundi or Sichuan style roast lamb belly for Jesus in case he felt more Jewish than Christian), Thai salads and stir fried Chinese noodles because it would be unlike anything they had tried before although great (x8) does have a recipe for oyster sauce and uses a lot of ginger and coriander seed.
If it was about having fun it would have to be:
Oliver Reed to drink with, Nico from the Velvet Underground to sing with and Sophia Loren to make pasta with. We‘d eat the pasta.
Sweet or Savoury:
Savoury – but I’m also partial to the two together…i.e. roast lamb with mint jelly, salty caramel, fetta and watermelon salad
How do you like your eggs:
Soft boiled with soldiers, slow scrambled so they go all creamy without any dairy (cooked the way my Grandfather taught me), or turned into pavlova...
