Q&A WITH TV CELEBRITY MATT PRESTON

TV CELEBRITY Matt Preston was in town for the 2018 Noosa Food & Wine Festival and talked all things Masterchef, cooking and, of course, the festival…

Behind the scenes of MasterChef – what are you, Gary and George eating for lunch?

Rice paper rolls from Footscray, which is just on the other side of the racetrack from where we shoot. Or we get together and make a salad – usually brown rice, tuna, pickles, capers, anchovies, cucumber etc, or wraps with a roast chook, avocado, iceberg, pickled long chilli, Japanese mayo and my patent XO and almond crunch.

What is your favourite ingredient to work with at the moment?

Cheese or corn chips.

What is the best cooking advice you’ve ever received?

Use less ingredients.

You have kids – how important is it to get the kids involved in cooking?

Very. Then as they get more independent they start to cook for themselves – and maybe for you too if you are lucky. Just start early.

What are your top three must-have kitchen utensils (excluding good knives)?

Microplane for grating parmesan, garlic, zesting citrus. Silicon spatula (wide) for stirring, folding and scraping out bowls. Good Y-shaped peelers – a potato straight edge peeler for making carrot ribbons, shaving cheese and peeling stuff; a julienne-bladed peeler for making slaw and thread pickles.

What is your drink of choice at a barbecue, while you are cooking and after dinner?

Barbecue: Big jug of Pimms mixed with 70/30 dry ginger/ soda. Garnished with cucumber skin, fresh mint and lemon slices. Just a lot less sweet that way.

While cooking: Tanq and tonic. Slice of grapefruit. After dinner: Fill a glass with ice cubes made from espresso coffee. Pour over Baileys.

Noosa’s dining scene continues to evolve. Was there anything in particular you were looking forward to experiencing this visit?

Catching up with Matty at Sum Yung Guys – I’ve not been there yet; then seeing what my old mates up here are doing now.

A private dinner party in Noosa overlooking Noosa Main Beach – who would you invite and who would cook?

I’d cook soy tossed local tuna, wasabi’d avocado, pickled ginger poke bowl; salads and slow-roasted five-spice pork shoulder. I’d invite the usual delicious mag gang – we’ve been coming to Noosa together almost since the mag began so Noosa is a special fun place for us – and there’s a decade of scurrilous stories to reminisce over. Most too scurrilous to repeat.