Speaker 1: All right, welcome back to the Mason Coalk Show. We've
Speaker 1: got someone I'm actually kind of nervous. I'm a bit
Speaker 1: nervous to actually interview because I love Mark cooking. I
Speaker 1: love everything about this man and what he stands for.
Speaker 1: We have a bit of a background for introduce him.
Speaker 1: He's an actor in the comedy series Low Down. He's
Speaker 1: a Bachelor of Arts and Politics and Government from the
Speaker 1: University of Kent. Was a DJ and a punk rock musician.
Speaker 1: This is probably not what people know you for, but
Speaker 1: also it was on ABC Radio on Saturdays. Food writer
Speaker 1: for Delicious and Taste magazine. Now we're getting their world's
Speaker 1: best food journalist in two thousand and eight credit director
Speaker 1: of the Melbourne Food and One Festival two and five,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, an international sensation, a master chef
Speaker 1: in over one hundred and seventy countries around the world.
Speaker 1: And now I might have to update this one. But
Speaker 1: has at least four best selling cookbooks. Matthew Preston, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the pod, Mason.
Speaker 2: What a fantastic honor to be Yeah, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for having me. I'm loving what you've done with
Speaker 2: the man.
Speaker 1: It's a fantastic yeah, great, little unique kind of way
Speaker 1: of doing podcasts.
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Four best selling cookbooks eight eight? Wow? Double that and
Speaker 1: we'll get yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, you know, look that's why
Speaker 2: I think I've probably reached that point. Now I'm sitting
Speaker 2: there and going maybe not for a couple more years,
Speaker 2: you know, you get yeah, I'm the good No, no,
Speaker 2: look look they've gone really well. People love them. It's great.
Speaker 2: There's nothing better than meeting people actually now have one
Speaker 2: of your recipes as in their repertoire, like that's your
Speaker 2: bolognasers out of their bolognaise or a dishy you've come
Speaker 2: up with that they cook regularly. That that's the that's
Speaker 2: the ultimate accload for a recipe writer, because that's what
Speaker 2: you want to try and do you want to you
Speaker 2: want to. The book has to be living, It has
Speaker 2: to get dirty, it has to live in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: But but there's also that point where you know, I
Speaker 2: did a I did a vegan and vegetarian book two
Speaker 2: years ago, to kind of history of food book the
Speaker 2: last last year. So now I'll take a take a
Speaker 2: I'll take a After that last time, I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do anymore. And then last night
Speaker 2: I woke up and I went, oh, that recipe, and
Speaker 2: there's it because I think, yeah, I think, I think
Speaker 2: you can. You can only do it when you've got
Speaker 2: stuff to say. Yeah, there's no point putting another homeless recipe.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're not teaching how to make their
Speaker 2: own tato tots, or or teaching people how to make
Speaker 2: a vegan mayonnaise using chickpea water, then you're not doing
Speaker 2: a job. Just hacking out the same beer can chicken
Speaker 2: or or the same recipes have been lots and lots
Speaker 2: of other cookbooks, and let's face it, there'll be seven
Speaker 2: or eighty cookooks released every year, and I reckon eighty
Speaker 2: percent of the recipes will be sorry no, well no,
Speaker 2: they won't be garbage, but they'll be they'll be the same.
Speaker 2: You know, do you need another Do you need another?
Speaker 2: You need another recipe for meat life?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know, we need the best recipe for meat life.
Speaker 2: If you find.
Speaker 1: Book, well, no, give them. Let his book a shout
Speaker 1: out here.
Speaker 2: So I know what the last tie was? Was that
Speaker 2: kind of and think lots of people did it. That
Speaker 2: was the lockdown labor of love and not was a
Speaker 2: quite quick to write. But this World of Flavor took
Speaker 2: me nine ten months because I went and tried to
Speaker 2: find out the true history of the one hundred best
Speaker 2: dishes in the world out there, and I looked for
Speaker 2: what really was the truth behind the Pavlova. Was it
Speaker 2: really originally Australian, was it New Zealand or was there
Speaker 2: someone else there? And the answer is the answer is
Speaker 2: is very clearly, it's very clearly Australia's claim is is
Speaker 2: far far better than New Zealand's. There. You know that
Speaker 2: the recipe every one sites in New Zealand as being
Speaker 2: the original Pavloa recipe actually was written by an Australian
Speaker 2: who'd also put it has also put that recipe in
Speaker 2: her own Australian cookbook two years earlier. So but then
Speaker 2: the weird one, that one with Pavlova, which I mentioned,
Speaker 2: is that the there's a there's a thing called the
Speaker 2: shram talk which comes out of Prussia, Germany and the earlier.
Speaker 2: And so I'm looking at chasing those recipes down. And
Speaker 2: the earlier for respee I could find for shram talk
Speaker 2: came out of a German language newspaper in Texas. For US,
Speaker 2: so so, and I think they also also find it
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin as well. So it's a weird idea that actually,
Speaker 2: if Australians are going to argue about who's has the
Speaker 2: rights to Pavlova, it's probably it's probably it's probably German
Speaker 2: heritage settlers in the US versus Australians, and New Zealand
Speaker 2: is not going to look in so so stuff like
Speaker 2: that's great fun.
Speaker 1: To do since maybe one of three different areas it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a mix of everything somebody.
Speaker 2: But I think so that's the thing you always you know,
Speaker 2: what tends to happen now with the Internet is that
Speaker 2: one someone makes a claim and it gets repeated and
Speaker 2: repeated it but it comes true. And it's actually nice
Speaker 2: to kind of myth bust time of that and pick
Speaker 2: some of that. So I did that, but it's incredibly
Speaker 2: labor intensive. You end up you end up reading reading
Speaker 2: documents in Korean or trying to translate stuff from High
Speaker 2: German using your minimal high German skills. But it was
Speaker 2: that was really satisfying in terms of finding things like
Speaker 2: the first the first spaetty bolon As recipe that I
Speaker 2: could find anywhere in the world, everyone thinks it's an
Speaker 2: English rescpee is actually four years earlier in Adelaide. So
Speaker 2: stuff like that's kind of surprising and good. And then
Speaker 2: the other thing about doing that kind of research is
Speaker 2: finding out that the you know, Massimine curry, that great
Speaker 2: Tai curry which has a has kind of Arabic or
Speaker 2: Indian anti students because it was originally made by by
Speaker 2: Iranian traders, by rich Ranian traders in the old Thai capital.
Speaker 2: But when you look at the old recipes, from the
Speaker 2: earliest recipes written recipes are probably the eighteen hundreds. They
Speaker 2: all use. They all use a bit of squeeze of
Speaker 2: bitter orange juice in there to brighten up the richness
Speaker 2: of the coconuta curry. And so when you do that
Speaker 2: and that so that that gives you a new take
Speaker 2: on the recipe. So sometimes a new take comes from
Speaker 2: up here, and sometimes it comes from re searching and
Speaker 2: finding and finding a great idea that they used to
Speaker 2: do two hundred years ago that we don't do anymore.
Speaker 2: And you when you do it, you go, oh, that
Speaker 2: totally changes this ditch, brightens it up. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Just in those three minutes, I can tell already how
Speaker 1: much you actually love food. Man, Like some people, you know,
Speaker 1: they do the job and it's their job. And there's
Speaker 1: some people that do the job and is their passion
Speaker 1: and that is you want to want to find out.
Speaker 2: But I think that's I think that that's that it's
Speaker 2: the old cliche about never working day in your life.
Speaker 2: My old man was a naval journalist. It was his hobby,
Speaker 2: his obsession. My my sister was a tennis journalist. Now
Speaker 2: where's in tennis? That's obsession. If you can find a
Speaker 2: way of making of making your job the job you love,
Speaker 2: it's fantastic. It's one of the things, right, I get
Speaker 2: quite upset when I've met a few over the journey,
Speaker 2: But when you meet footballers who hate playing the game
Speaker 2: and you've got they've they've achieved what when they were
Speaker 2: probably eight or nine was the dream, and then they
Speaker 2: get there and they don't like it and they don't
Speaker 2: love it, and it's like, that's so hard. That's so
Speaker 2: hard to do something you thought you'd love and then
Speaker 2: discover that that that you actually you're not you're not
Speaker 2: getting off on it. So I think if you can
Speaker 2: find those things and I'm very lucky. I'm very lucky
Speaker 2: to have I have. For my thirty or so years
Speaker 2: in Australia, I've never done a job that I didn't
Speaker 2: wake over the morning and go get excited about going
Speaker 2: to well. I mean, I think I've had one morning
Speaker 2: when I didn't want to go into work. That's that's insane,
Speaker 2: and that's something I'm incredibly thankful for. I've been very
Speaker 2: lucky for.
Speaker 1: That is amazing. Man. Well, I'm going to start this off.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you two questions now. These two
Speaker 1: questions I'm gonna ask you now, but you're gonna answer
Speaker 1: them at the very end, so a little bit of
Speaker 1: time to think about them. Two questions. First one, what's
Speaker 1: your easy go to dish to? Yes that anyone can do?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure.
Speaker 1: Second one, what is your weirdest thing you have in
Speaker 1: your kitchen at the moment? Oh yeah, okay, we'll have
Speaker 1: those a little bit about that, but we'll start back originally,
Speaker 1: I've got a really kind of weird crazy So this
Speaker 1: is the beginning. You're a punk rock musician at one
Speaker 1: point in your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know when I when when I started out,
Speaker 2: music was the thing I love the most and it
Speaker 2: still is. I mean I am obsessed with music. We
Speaker 2: go and see bands the whole time. You know, back
Speaker 2: in the back in the day, the podcast was a fanzine.
Speaker 2: We me and my best mate Jeremy used to do
Speaker 2: fanzines together, design and write them, go to gigs, sell them.
Speaker 2: I then I end up working in a then we
Speaker 2: ended up working for a Watson magazine in London called
Speaker 2: City Limits, and and getting to put on shows and
Speaker 2: getting to put on bands, which is fantastic. So we
Speaker 2: did things like you know, the first time the Vanna came,
Speaker 2: they came with Tad and mud Honey. We were and
Speaker 2: we were involved in putting that on. So I love
Speaker 2: that stuff. I still play guitar. I'm terrible at it, really,
Speaker 2: I've got I got the front the front room. My
Speaker 2: house is set up with guitars three three, So that's okay,
Speaker 2: that's that's not true.
Speaker 1: Good, you know for you guys. A food critic.
Speaker 2: I remember I remember to Kirk Pandelli who obviously played
Speaker 2: in Next Lesson, and he has he has he has
Speaker 2: a little flat I think in Pott's Point where he
Speaker 2: keeps his fifty eight garuse a little little like sad
Speaker 2: Proof that we can go over there. Everyone's seen it
Speaker 2: that they're they're living on their und so yeah, so
Speaker 2: so I really enjoyed that. I played through university in bands.
Speaker 2: We were always we were always terrible. We had no
Speaker 2: chance of getting a deal.
Speaker 1: But reunions.
Speaker 2: When he's right now, no unions coming. But but I
Speaker 2: loved it. I think there's there's some What it is
Speaker 2: food is a very individual experience, Like maybe you can
Speaker 2: go with a group of people and I've done it.
Speaker 2: You go when you have something that you all have
Speaker 2: a devastation, all have one dish and it's so beautiful.
Speaker 2: You look around and people are in tears, and that's
Speaker 2: that's the ultimate moment in dialing out. But it's so rare,
Speaker 2: whereasf you go to something like Glastrombury and you stand
Speaker 2: there with seventy thousand people singing along to Paul McCartney
Speaker 2: or seeing you along to Radiohead or seeing you along
Speaker 2: to Oasis, that that's some magnificent experience with you know,
Speaker 2: so many more people. There's true shared experience. The hidenes it.
Speaker 2: Football's a the same you know.
Speaker 1: You about the crowd. It is totally different.
Speaker 2: We saw that, we saw that during during lockdown without
Speaker 2: the crowd and playing, but just going to see it.
Speaker 2: You know, you want, you want the roar of the crowd,
Speaker 2: you want, you want the singing. And obviously growing up
Speaker 2: in the UK and growing up you know five minutes
Speaker 2: walk from Stamford Bridge, one of the great football stadiums
Speaker 2: of the UK where Chelsea play, and having been going
Speaker 2: to that stadium since I was probably seven eight, you
Speaker 2: know that that communal singing, that that communal experience of
Speaker 2: communal pleasure. It's absolutely central to who I am. So
Speaker 2: food is a bit it's a bit rare like that
Speaker 2: because it's not really a commonal thing. Although we talk
Speaker 2: about going out in groups, it's a different sort of thing.
Speaker 1: It is something you talk about. Doing a bit of
Speaker 1: research on you. You talked about you going out and
Speaker 1: food is not the main thing. It's actually the people
Speaker 1: you're with. Yeah, of course, now I find that I
Speaker 1: find that awesome. As a food critic, you would think, oh,
Speaker 1: he's just about food, taste, flavor of palette, everything else, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'll find it amazing that you take that
Speaker 1: and you go, no, that's just the conduit to the
Speaker 1: actual night of entertainment and that people are the most
Speaker 1: important thing that makes a meal.
Speaker 2: Absolutely and you know, I think, I think if you
Speaker 2: I always you know, that realization came from me asked
Speaker 2: right at lest of my favor favorite meals, my five
Speaker 2: favorite meals in a year, and they all started with,
Speaker 2: you know, with my England mates going to Copenhagen to
Speaker 2: eat it the name, but it was started with, you know,
Speaker 2: with my with my partner, with the woman I love
Speaker 2: with the It started with the person first and then
Speaker 2: the experience. And I think that's one of the things
Speaker 2: when you when you when you're looking at where to go,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing, people, is where's the best
Speaker 2: restaurant you go? Who do you want to go with?
Speaker 2: You know, the place you're going to want to go
Speaker 2: with with with the woman you're romancing with, your best mates,
Speaker 2: with your girlfriends. They're all different. They're all different and
Speaker 2: and often the most important thing, the most important thing
Speaker 2: is that is to not this is my service is
Speaker 2: so important to not let negatives derail the night, like
Speaker 2: you know, amir with that's that's tasty and fine and
Speaker 2: services grows. Okay, is good. You're going to enjoy your friends.
Speaker 2: That's not going to derail it. So so to agree
Speaker 2: that's more important to have an absence of negatives rather
Speaker 2: than have amazing food terrible service, or terrible food amazing service.
Speaker 2: You know, a negative with with derail the night will
Speaker 2: stop you having having pleasure having said that, you know,
Speaker 2: a great night out. I went out the other night
Speaker 2: with four friends. We had we laughed pretty much for
Speaker 2: for three and a half hours, but there were some
Speaker 2: really good land ribs, you know, with really good like
Speaker 2: you know that when the fact it's all, oh, I've
Speaker 2: broken down, crispy, and and that that was the moment
Speaker 2: when everyone got you know, you're all laughing and talking
Speaker 2: then suddenly and this is a great moment when you're
Speaker 2: in out and the table that silent, Yes, I and
Speaker 2: you just get a little bit of the evoluti.
Speaker 1: Your senses for the moment.
Speaker 2: So I think, so, I think that's I think that's
Speaker 2: I think that's kind of a that's sort of the benchmark.
Speaker 2: But but again it's you know that, and that's the
Speaker 2: same when people come around your house, you know, always
Speaker 2: people are talking about cooking, dinner parties or and I
Speaker 2: think that's why dinner parties the concept is kind of
Speaker 2: something that sort of disappeared. We have people around. But
Speaker 2: the whole idea about about cooking for other people is
Speaker 2: it's an absolt negative. Just don't don't don't stress it,
Speaker 2: don't do three courses, don't do stuff that's going to
Speaker 2: stress you out. You know, put tasty on the table
Speaker 2: and everyone's happy. You don't need to do you don't
Speaker 2: need to do. You know, it's the old Italian idea
Speaker 2: that some beautiful you know, some beautiful fresh tomatoes, a
Speaker 2: little bit of mozzarellas and fresh herbs, bread, I mean.
Speaker 1: Simple things.
Speaker 2: It's it's so we're kind of we're kind of nailed.
Speaker 2: So I think sometimes we get we let the kind
Speaker 2: of the pomposity of and the showing off nature, because
Speaker 2: obviously there's a big element of eating out that's about
Speaker 2: showing off and about conspicuous consumption. But I think that's
Speaker 2: probably the least interesting or attractive part of eating out
Speaker 2: or having people around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's a cliche of it is very
Speaker 1: much like someone I think of some of the most
Speaker 1: amazing meals I've had, it's with my friends or my family,
Speaker 1: And it's the situation of life, of where you're at,
Speaker 1: and maybe a conversation you have that's life changing, that
Speaker 1: goes to pitch on a totally different directive.
Speaker 2: And I think that, Look, I think that in terms
Speaker 2: of those key moments stuff, there can be a pizza
Speaker 2: on the table. You know, it's probably more like to
Speaker 2: be a pizza on the table than a than a
Speaker 2: nine course degastation. Bizarrely, because you know, the moment you
Speaker 2: go into a gastro temple, it's all quiet and it's
Speaker 2: all about the food. You you know, I'm not knowing
Speaker 2: that that's a bad experience. It's a bit like going
Speaker 2: to church, and I don't think that's necessarily not necessarily fun.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of fan questions at the end.
Speaker 1: But you did mention pizza. Someone asked one of these
Speaker 1: fan questions earlier. Pineapple on pizza, Yes or no? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you've heard it here first.
Speaker 2: No, No, I tell you why. I tell you why
Speaker 2: Pineapple and pizza. Pineapple pizza because when you because when
Speaker 2: you when you're out at a really bad pizza joint,
Speaker 2: the Pineapples is a reliable ed, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's why it's like ketschup but very similar. That's a
Speaker 2: very smart thing to say. Rayson. It is like ketchup
Speaker 2: Hamm and Pineapple. The hammer Pinapple is always the one.
Speaker 2: If you go to a bad pizza, like a really
Speaker 2: bad pizza restaurant, the ham and Pinea will will hide
Speaker 2: all the sins of all the time, so that that
Speaker 2: pamma pine of we might go to in a bad
Speaker 2: pizza restaurant. If I'm in a great pizza place, it
Speaker 2: probably went Pineapple won't be number one. And if I
Speaker 2: make pizza myself, pineapple doesn't doesn't figure. But I think
Speaker 2: it has its role and I like the idea, so
Speaker 2: you know, I like again that's another one of you know,
Speaker 2: everyone Hawaiian. The Hawaiian pizza didn't start Hawaii. He supposed
Speaker 2: to started by made first by Greek guy in in Canada.
Speaker 2: Actually Portland, Oregon. Someone someone dug up a menu from Portland,
Speaker 2: Oregon in the late fifties and there was a Hawaiian
Speaker 2: pizza from there. From so Portland, Oregon. Inventors of the
Speaker 2: Hawaiian pizza.
Speaker 1: Wo Wlody thought he was absolutely crazy.
Speaker 2: I'm sure, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean he had
Speaker 2: capskum as well, which I think, well, you know caps
Speaker 2: ca THAT'SDD like like ham and pineapple I get because
Speaker 2: you know that's gammon stakes in England. But the moment
Speaker 2: the captain gets in there question somewhere, it's like it's
Speaker 2: like the moment you put you put you put an
Speaker 2: egg on your game and the state with your pineapple
Speaker 2: egg and pineapple really really just thought about a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll go back to I guess what brought you
Speaker 1: to Australia. Now obviously from England and you actually came
Speaker 1: over here for something and that's actually just wrapped up sad. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about the whole thing? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's been a long running TV show for for ages,
Speaker 1: I feel like in Australia and something's very iconic to
Speaker 1: this town of Melbourne and of Australia in general. What's
Speaker 1: your thoughts on everything? Kind of finishing up? This is
Speaker 1: one of the things that kind of got you to
Speaker 1: this country.
Speaker 2: You know, it was I came here to write about
Speaker 2: names and home and away. But that was my that
Speaker 2: was my job when I when I arrived here, and
Speaker 2: I did it for for five years, and I watched
Speaker 2: every single episode for five years. Look, I think in terms,
Speaker 2: I think in terms, there's a whole lot of things
Speaker 2: we're gonna we're going to lose. We're going to lose
Speaker 2: an amazing training ground for Australian actorsure and certainly when
Speaker 2: when you go to Los Angeles and you talk to
Speaker 2: people there in casting about why they love Australian actors
Speaker 2: because they've they've done an episode a day, like they
Speaker 2: they they they have learned on the job. They're quick,
Speaker 2: they're efficient, they're they're they're loved in they hollowod casting
Speaker 2: directors purely for that reason. We're going to lose that.
Speaker 2: We're going to lose that expression of Australia that that
Speaker 2: we put out, that we put out through the world,
Speaker 2: through all those different places that that had that had
Speaker 2: the show. You know that there's that lovely idea that
Speaker 2: in in Milton Keynes, which was a new town in England,
Speaker 2: they spoke in the Australian accent because the only really
Speaker 2: the only unifying infants they had on accent was Australian soaps.
Speaker 2: All kids watched Australian Sight, so they started to speak
Speaker 2: with the Australian twang. So so that that that's kind
Speaker 2: of good and I think it's a great way of
Speaker 2: us selling that, you know, and selling this image of
Speaker 2: a of an of an inclusive, of an inclusive Australia.
Speaker 2: It's not you know, other reasons to to to to
Speaker 2: be sad about it. I think it's a very much
Speaker 2: an expression of Melbourne. I love that idea that people
Speaker 2: would come and want to go to Pincoot Court to
Speaker 2: see it. I was lucky enough to get invited to
Speaker 2: do an episode and the thirtieth anniversary and get to
Speaker 2: spend screen time with the great, the great doctor Carl
Speaker 2: Kennedy and Alan Fletcher, which was fantastic that they were.
Speaker 2: They were masters of what they do, so it was
Speaker 2: But I mean, like like all these things, we all
Speaker 2: have our we all have our use by dates or
Speaker 2: whether you're talent on the show or whether you're as
Speaker 2: a show. But I think it's just a you know,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a pinion that nothing's replaced it. I
Speaker 2: think that's I think it'd be fine if there was
Speaker 2: another show that was coming up where yeah or yeah
Speaker 2: or just someone where where you know, there aren't many
Speaker 2: there aren't many great outlets for young Australian actors to
Speaker 2: go and work on. You think of the amount of
Speaker 2: drama there's out there there's really not a lot here
Speaker 2: and and that provided both that Home and Away provided
Speaker 2: so many great gigs for for so many young Australians
Speaker 2: to kind of to cut their teeth, whether whether it
Speaker 2: was a as a as a principal role or just
Speaker 2: doing you know, just coming and doing four episodes and
Speaker 2: get any bit of experience or something for you, something
Speaker 2: for your showroom.
Speaker 1: You just feel I feel like every actor, actors sits
Speaker 1: out there that's in mainstream kind of movies. Now you
Speaker 1: about Robbie, I think was on one of them, Robbie
Speaker 1: Chrismsworth Chris, Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a long part of the
Speaker 1: chapter of life.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's the thing. It's a bit
Speaker 2: like losing it's a bit like losing your apprenticeships at hotels,
Speaker 2: you know. There you you unpick a level of training
Speaker 2: that actually enriches the skills of the people that we
Speaker 2: want to be surround by. We want we want great actors.
Speaker 2: We want to see the best actors. We want we
Speaker 2: want our actors to be amongst the best in the world.
Speaker 2: We want our cooks to be amongks the best in
Speaker 2: the world. You know that's that's sort of the dream,
Speaker 2: you know, as supposedly gives us you know, the best
Speaker 2: the best sports people in their chosen field as well.
Speaker 2: But I think it's you know, that's one of the
Speaker 2: one of the ways we express ourselves as the country
Speaker 2: and we're you know, we're a pimple on the on
Speaker 2: the back end of the world. But you know that
Speaker 2: culturally it's really you know, and that that that's that
Speaker 2: thing that we never understood. I think we were there,
Speaker 2: we were making a TV show, making Master Chif in
Speaker 2: a shed in on the showgrounds at Adam Flemington and
Speaker 2: then you go to India and it was massive, that's crazy,
Speaker 2: six million people watching. But also you know, they they
Speaker 2: saw they saw a cast of people that were incredibly diverse.
Speaker 2: I mean they saw they saw a show where people respected,
Speaker 2: they saw a show where people got on. You know,
Speaker 2: they're all the all the things that we'd like to
Speaker 2: I think if we ideally were saying what's the Australia
Speaker 2: want to live in? You know that they're all there
Speaker 2: and it's good to be able to it's good to
Speaker 2: be able to project that at a time when you know,
Speaker 2: you know, at one point when there were all those
Speaker 2: racist tax going on against taxi drivers, and there was
Speaker 2: a perception of Australia being a really racist country and
Speaker 2: we've not been a great record in that area. So
Speaker 2: so anything that we can do to to show that,
Speaker 2: you know, to show that it's not the case in
Speaker 2: terms of culture, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: It's pretty crazy and you probably wouldn't realize this, or
Speaker 1: I'm sure you do, I guess to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: but how much Master Chef probably shows Australia to other people,
Speaker 1: Like I read something that people are learning English in India.
Speaker 2: That's emerging middle class to do it. But it's also
Speaker 2: in Portugal, and it's also in Brazil. And you know,
Speaker 2: I was in an elephant sanctuary in Sri Lanka and
Speaker 2: these Bulgarians came up to his own no English, came
Speaker 2: up and said your mastership. So I think that that idea,
Speaker 2: that idea of essentially, I think, because the show also
Speaker 2: was very was very supportive that I think, and that
Speaker 2: I think is very much an Australian trait. I think that
Speaker 2: that that that's really nice that people picked up and
Speaker 2: identified that in all those markets, and it's a weird thing,
Speaker 2: you know, We're standing in the in Portugal airport, and
Speaker 2: this woman came up to my, my wife and said,
Speaker 2: here's my number. If you have any trouble that translating,
Speaker 2: you just want to put me on the phone, and
Speaker 2: I'm happy to help you with the love Master Chef
Speaker 2: everywhere running on Portugal. People are doing this really nice
Speaker 2: thanks to learn any Portuguese. But also from my perspective,
Speaker 2: I mean that's the other thing, you know, to be
Speaker 2: able to have a little level of recognition or notoriety,
Speaker 2: it's fantastic because it means that I can talk about food.
Speaker 2: Wherever I go. People wanted to sit and talk about food,
Speaker 2: and they'll tell me what their grandmother cooked. And so
Speaker 2: in terms of finding recipes, or getting inspiration or or
Speaker 2: just having a good you know, talking about food, it's
Speaker 2: a great way to get to know people.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I was actually a difference place in Sweden.
Speaker 1: I was a friend of mine from high school and
Speaker 1: I probably five or six years and I was staying
Speaker 1: at his place and started talking about different TV shows
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and they, oh, yeah, we were watch an
Speaker 1: Australian show. You know, it's a Master Chef. And I said, ah,
Speaker 1: I know a guy from They're like, oh, I was
Speaker 1: like my presence just like the Cravat. It's good by
Speaker 1: like just like lost her mind that do you.
Speaker 2: But I think that's also really funny as well, because
Speaker 2: it's because it's Melbourne and everyone basically does know everyone.
Speaker 2: There's that there's that lovely thing that you know it is.
Speaker 2: It does anchor this idea that the people talk about
Speaker 2: that they bump into, you know, whether they're doing business
Speaker 2: in India or they're doing business in Venezuela, and it
Speaker 2: comes up and do you know and they go, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course I'm from I'm from Melbourne. Like you know,
Speaker 2: if you're in Melbourne, you would have seen you would
Speaker 2: have seen someone, You would have seen Andy, you would
Speaker 2: have seen you, You would have you see these guys
Speaker 2: around the traps. So you're you're kind of like you're connected.
Speaker 2: You order this time And that's what I think. We're
Speaker 2: traveling always looking for connection, aren't we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they talk about travel connection. One of my all
Speaker 1: time icons, I feel like in the food industry in
Speaker 1: Rust in Peace, Anthony Bourdain. Yeah, sure you have done
Speaker 1: a few different things. Yeah yeah, man, you played an
Speaker 1: interesting game then, true, go I'm not sure if this
Speaker 1: is still played today, because still you.
Speaker 2: Can go up to Brunswick. I are two places playing
Speaker 2: true go, which is weird. It's sort of like a
Speaker 2: it's sort of like a cross winning croquet and bowls.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's a It's a really interesting game. It
Speaker 2: was originally it was again it was thought up by
Speaker 2: by a load of a load of track layers, railway
Speaker 2: trail layers, as a way of passing time using the
Speaker 2: mallets of the sledgehammers they had on the and the
Speaker 2: I think they were, and these little rubber kind of
Speaker 2: these rubber washers they rub washing on. So we went
Speaker 2: out to film. Tony was here filming one of his
Speaker 2: TV series, So we went out to we went out
Speaker 2: to play trigger and Tony was an absolute natural trigger.
Speaker 2: It was really annoying, like he was he was he was,
Speaker 2: but also he was like he was like he was
Speaker 2: like he could have he could have formed the American
Speaker 2: the American team and been the captain. He was that
Speaker 2: level of good he was. Really it was his hidden skill.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's like the only American ever plays like
Speaker 1: the American every single year.
Speaker 2: That's right exactly. But but in this case he was
Speaker 2: really really good like he was. He was, he was
Speaker 2: right up there.
Speaker 1: He was like the Dusty Martin. Did he talk trash
Speaker 1: the whole time too? Was typical New Yorker kind of
Speaker 1: like there was there.
Speaker 2: Was a bit of there was a bit of trash talking,
Speaker 2: obviously because he was so good, and I think, and
Speaker 2: I think because he was like, but isn't this is
Speaker 2: really easy? What's the problem?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: That kind of annoying when people got a natural talent,
Speaker 2: So that that was fun, but look, it was grey.
Speaker 2: I was lucky enough to film a couple of series
Speaker 2: with him, and a couple of episodes from series with him,
Speaker 2: and also meeting a few times for dinner catch up
Speaker 2: with him. He was a he was a great character
Speaker 2: and he and I think he brought a real, a
Speaker 2: real looseness to to making that sort of TV. Was
Speaker 2: often very po faced and very much about and very
Speaker 2: much about, you know, the fancy restaurant and the white
Speaker 2: tie and the guy with the French accent and the
Speaker 2: waste of the white clubs. And he was all about
Speaker 2: the street and finding great food in holes in the
Speaker 2: walls and and and they kind of a lightly place which,
Speaker 2: as we know, the best food I find when I'm
Speaker 2: traveling is normally in homes or or you know, in
Speaker 2: small street restaurants. So that that that that that that
Speaker 2: was great. But yeah, he was He's a he's a
Speaker 2: big loss because I don't think anyone's come along who
Speaker 2: can who can actually has that kind of easy way
Speaker 2: with the camera, and the way they shot it was
Speaker 2: really loose, you know, it was really well. They'd have
Speaker 2: this thing where they the editor would the editor, the
Speaker 2: would have three editors working on the show. So the
Speaker 2: editor editor would work the wide camera and be there
Speaker 2: for the whole of the filming. The d P and
Speaker 2: the director would each have a camera to be a
Speaker 2: sound guy. And then at the end of filming, saying Melbourne,
Speaker 2: the editor that that one editor would take all of
Speaker 2: the tape back and go and edit that that that episode.
Speaker 2: So having seen everything, having been there, having shot the
Speaker 2: general vision, we shot the wide stuff, he would then
Speaker 2: go back and edit it and another editor would come in.
Speaker 2: So it's really so it's really it was a crew
Speaker 2: of maybe five people, but that's why it was so
Speaker 2: that's why the stories were so good, because after what
Speaker 2: happens is you send footage back to an editor back
Speaker 2: home and they then we talked about they described and
Speaker 2: filming becomes like making paint, and the editors paint with
Speaker 2: that they extract a story from the paint that they've got,
Speaker 2: Whereas in that case the story was he'd been there
Speaker 2: for the story, so he told the story as it happened.
Speaker 2: And that's a great thing with Tony. Things could go
Speaker 2: off on an angle, or they could they could kind
Speaker 2: of reach a dead end. But that was finally just
Speaker 2: moved on. It was it was felt very felt, very real,
Speaker 2: felt very real life.
Speaker 1: What was his favorite part of Melvin maybe I said,
Speaker 1: what was his favorite cuisine while he was here?
Speaker 2: I think I think he really loved he really loved
Speaker 2: the kind of the Middle Eastern middles It wasn't an
Speaker 2: there he knew a lot about so I remember, I
Speaker 2: remember we took him to butchery, Turkish butchery we had
Speaker 2: and he was like, I've never had this before, and
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, and he loved it. But I think,
Speaker 2: but I think, I mean, but I think that's the thing.
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing with with the favorite cuisines.
Speaker 2: I think when you're someone like Tonya, when for most
Speaker 2: food lovers, you know, it's like it's all great. You know,
Speaker 2: there aren't many you know, there are some things you
Speaker 2: don't want to wait, there's some things specific you don't
Speaker 2: want to eat that some cuisines have more of those
Speaker 2: than others. But basically, you know, he could be in
Speaker 2: he could be eating around the fish restaurants, around the
Speaker 2: fish market in Tokyo, or he could be he could
Speaker 2: be you know, he could be eating in he could
Speaker 2: be eating in the in the cinnamon the cinnamon bunshops
Speaker 2: in Sweden, or you know, and he would and he
Speaker 2: would find great joy and excitement because it's because it's
Speaker 2: an expression of place an expression of people as well.
Speaker 2: I think that's what he founds was so good. He
Speaker 2: used food as a way of reaching an expression of
Speaker 2: place and expression of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a phenomenal person and he's someone I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've seen the movie Roadrunner on his kind
Speaker 1: of whole life. It's really well put together and talks
Speaker 1: about kind of from starting being and it goes into
Speaker 1: a bit of the background of how he kind of
Speaker 1: shot in the original first kind of Days and coming
Speaker 1: through with Kitchen Confidential and everything else. It's really interesting,
Speaker 1: just kind of different like perspective, and for a guy
Speaker 1: who was very well known to kind of get a
Speaker 1: bit of a backstory kind of what was going on
Speaker 1: in his life.
Speaker 2: I think what was interesting is that he wanted to
Speaker 2: go to places that were difficult as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, and he wanted to try things that most people
Speaker 1: would not try.
Speaker 2: But without it being without it being I'm not going
Speaker 2: to I'm going to hate running shark. You know, it's
Speaker 2: kind of without it being a performance sport.
Speaker 1: But remember one time he went and did this scene
Speaker 1: where it was like, you know little suction cut things
Speaker 1: that athletes do, Yeah, he did that, but they were
Speaker 1: like pricking you and then pulling like blood from you
Speaker 1: and it was like this whole thing is all over
Speaker 1: the floor. It was insane. I was like, this has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with food. Was like, you gotta try
Speaker 1: this and I look at.
Speaker 2: That that there There were definitely, but that's also that
Speaker 2: that was great. I think great TV has a bit
Speaker 2: of madness to it. I think that's what helped me
Speaker 2: Tony Boy and got a little bit of madness as
Speaker 2: well as well as great stories, and that that helps
Speaker 2: you not quite know what's going to happen next, and
Speaker 2: that's what you want. You know, we were the predictability
Speaker 2: of so much electronic media. You know, buy me girl,
Speaker 2: this girl, same story. So it's exactly going to again.
Speaker 2: It's like the same homus restaurant recipe Traye Endusty. It's
Speaker 2: great when you get something new and fresh. And we
Speaker 2: are you know, I believe, just like you know, just
Speaker 2: like we have we have that I think all restless
Speaker 2: legs and we have restless paletts and and we're always
Speaker 2: in there. Now nowadays we're looking for a new and
Speaker 2: what's the new?
Speaker 1: So much access to everything?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also we're what are we gonna do with
Speaker 2: the kick cat? Now? What flavoring with sabi white chocolate matcha?
Speaker 2: You know that now? I mean having said that ninety
Speaker 2: nin percent of the time, whenever there's that kind of
Speaker 2: brand extension or experimentation, the original is always the best.
Speaker 1: But shapes, but barbecue shapes, I've learned everyone says barbecue
Speaker 1: shapes original the best.
Speaker 2: That's right, that that that's right, the whole the whole shape. Well,
Speaker 2: and and again, what is the most popular chip flavor?
Speaker 2: You know in Australia, it's one of the old traditional ones. Yeah,
Speaker 2: always comes up with it and you go, well, what
Speaker 2: about all the fancy, the truffle and the and the
Speaker 2: you know, Pruvian chicken or whatever it is, any.
Speaker 1: Bizarre flavors, and it's like, no, no, no, it doesn't last.
Speaker 2: You know, it's great for a moment. It's that moment different,
Speaker 2: something different, move on, trying something different, move on. But
Speaker 2: which is always so well well served in Australia, there's
Speaker 2: always somewhere new and exciting to try, often in terms
Speaker 2: of cheap and being an expression of maybe a regional cuisine,
Speaker 2: which is fantastic very much.
Speaker 1: I like go into a Calls and you see the
Speaker 1: big Cadbury blocks and you've got like a whole section
Speaker 1: just for the chocolate of Cadbura, and I'm like, every
Speaker 1: time I wrack up, I'm like, dude, there's six more flavors.
Speaker 2: And you know that you're never gonna You're never going
Speaker 2: to buy the pineapple block. Na.
Speaker 1: I mean, who, what's your favorite?
Speaker 2: What's give caramel or fruiting up?
Speaker 1: That's good?
Speaker 2: They I reckon that solid. I reckon that. I recooni.
Speaker 2: They're solid. You know. I don't mind a dark I
Speaker 2: don't mind a dark mint. I do love a white.
Speaker 2: You see, you're not allowed to talk as a food person.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: People, well there was an argument it wasn't chocolate. But
Speaker 2: I think both the US, the US Food and Dragon
Speaker 2: Mason administration, and also you have said that white chocolate
Speaker 2: is it chocolate? It's got coka buttering it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 2: common chocolate, you know, Okay, it's a kind of it's
Speaker 2: a it's a stonewashed jeans of chocolate.
Speaker 1: How that's this you've I looked up something the other
Speaker 1: day and it was what was the most embarrassing meal
Speaker 1: you've ever cooked? And I think there was one about
Speaker 1: you putting food coloring in potato.
Speaker 2: I was, I was all excited. I was at university.
Speaker 2: It was a time in my life when green eggs
Speaker 2: and ham typestyle. I wasn't makes and I wasn't making
Speaker 2: good I would have been I've been eighteen nineteen years old.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was young, I was naive, I was stupid, and
Speaker 2: I thought it'd be really interesting just to we didn't
Speaker 2: need to like dye all the food. So we died.
Speaker 2: We died. The baked beans bright red and we love
Speaker 2: to cutch it, and we dyed the mashed potato blue and.
Speaker 1: And it was almost fair amount of food color. I
Speaker 1: feel like there was air.
Speaker 2: There was a fair amount of food coulting. But the
Speaker 2: bizarre thing was psychologically eating blue food felt really wrong,
Speaker 2: you know it was I mean, I was eve that
Speaker 2: the same taste. It's the same taste, yeah, but the
Speaker 2: but mentally it just like you know, you're when it
Speaker 2: comes you week with your eyes you kind of your
Speaker 2: eyes are going, well, this is weird. Don't have it?
Speaker 2: You know that that that that wasn't. That wasn't. That
Speaker 2: wasn't one of my finest moments. But you know, but
Speaker 2: that's all. Yeah. I mean, I've got three kids. When
Speaker 2: i'm when i'm when i'm testing recipes for a new cookbook,
Speaker 2: there will invariably be those moments where you get there
Speaker 2: they're flicking bits of the side of the plagues. It's
Speaker 2: so horrible.
Speaker 1: So you done that. That would be your hardest critics.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely the hardest critics. I mean, with with with
Speaker 2: with with You know, this probably worse when they were kids,
Speaker 2: but you know, just the mere sin of cutting the
Speaker 2: zucchini and batons not in rounds.
Speaker 1: They're that fussy, you.
Speaker 2: Don't understand what kids are like kids kids will And
Speaker 2: then then the week later on my Zucchinian batan is
Speaker 2: not in rounds. So it's oh yeah, changed in all
Speaker 2: three of them, you know. It was I remember sitting
Speaker 2: that and going gee, you know, and it's like cooking
Speaker 2: for a food credit when you're a top chef is
Speaker 2: compared to be easy, compared to cooking with your own
Speaker 2: own family, own kids who have all these different all
Speaker 2: these different kind of obsessions at different times. So so yeah,
Speaker 2: so that that that was I think I made. I
Speaker 2: think the worst one was the sinner putting putting capsicum
Speaker 2: in something, and my daughter went through and picked out
Speaker 2: every piece of capsicum and put it around the edge
Speaker 2: of the plate. So when this was finished, there was
Speaker 2: a little kind of clock face of capscum. It's like,
Speaker 2: don't do that. Or the worst one is let's not
Speaker 2: let's not have them again.
Speaker 1: Do they they actually tell you something?
Speaker 2: You know? Oh no, I mean no, my kids are
Speaker 2: my kids are brutal. But you want it, you want it,
Speaker 2: because then it doesn't go in the book. You don't
Speaker 2: you don't want to put stuff like that and that
Speaker 2: in the book. You want everything. You know it's going
Speaker 2: to be all through the no filler. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: the whole idea. You want it to be delicious because
Speaker 2: you know you've got a responsibility when you're on a
Speaker 2: recipe that that was if someone makes it at home, One,
Speaker 2: it's going to work to it's gonna look vague like
Speaker 2: it is in the picture. And three it's going to
Speaker 2: be tasty because they're spending not just the money to
Speaker 2: buy the ingredients, but also the time, but also you know,
Speaker 2: it's the it's dinner for the kids that night. You
Speaker 2: know it's about it's about you want to give people
Speaker 2: a win. So the kids go, that was great. That's
Speaker 2: how that.
Speaker 1: I can't do it again.
Speaker 2: That's staple, the ultimate, the ultimate accolade.
Speaker 1: That is funny. You are the gatekeepers at home, making
Speaker 1: sure all the recipes in the book.
Speaker 2: Very important, all approved by the present, very very important,
Speaker 2: very important.
Speaker 1: I was talking about something a bit off off this
Speaker 1: kind of topic. Now, you've recently been in a car accident.
Speaker 1: Oh no, sorry, you have a long, long time ago,
Speaker 1: and that did that change your life perspective kind of?
Speaker 1: I know, like I feel like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different things in your life that have happened. You've done
Speaker 1: everything under the sign, like researching your mate, You've been
Speaker 1: on radio, TV. You know, you do the food critics.
Speaker 1: Stuff you do very old.
Speaker 2: It makes them very old. When you get to my age,
Speaker 2: you have done a lot as well.
Speaker 1: You know, you fit a lot in fit a lot.
Speaker 2: I have a big attitude that if you're offered something,
Speaker 2: no matter how weird it is, you have a go
Speaker 2: at it that why not? Because why not? Why if
Speaker 2: it scares you, you do it, if it if it
Speaker 2: concerns you, do it just you know, and then you
Speaker 2: don't have to do it again. But you do it
Speaker 2: once just to just because it's and then try and
Speaker 2: then who knows? And then next thing you know, you're
Speaker 2: you find yourself acting in Bold of the Beautiful and
Speaker 2: you go.
Speaker 1: Wow, how good is that hole for another resume?
Speaker 2: But just be really annoying when you when you when
Speaker 2: you're with it, when you're with a top actor, and
Speaker 2: you go things like you because I don't I've done
Speaker 2: not Hollywood, what what happens? And then then they then
Speaker 2: they then they call it up on YouTube and go
Speaker 2: it's terrible.
Speaker 1: But I think, like back to the chore as I
Speaker 1: want to say. It's like, because there's were you defining moment?
Speaker 2: Why don't I don't know whether that's it? Yeah, is
Speaker 2: that a defining Is that? Is that that moment?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's another one. Maybe it's something else that change.
Speaker 2: Look, it's interesting and I was. I went up at university.
Speaker 2: I was convinced I was going to die before twenty
Speaker 2: eight in the white car crash, and then I would
Speaker 2: have and that this car crash would have happened when
Speaker 2: I was about twenty eight actually, and and it with
Speaker 2: the car was white. We went off into trees and
Speaker 2: it was kind of like the premonition I had but
Speaker 2: didn't die. So so there's so there's an angle there
Speaker 2: that says there's an angle there that did I then
Speaker 2: go okay, my my, my made my deeply held fear
Speaker 2: that I was going to that time was limited, that
Speaker 2: was was removed, and that and that therefore you had
Speaker 2: to you had to you had to kind of live
Speaker 2: as if you're going to live till seventy I don't
Speaker 2: think so I didn't have an effect on me. It
Speaker 2: was before I before I moved to Australia didn't have
Speaker 2: an effect to me. Moving to Australia. Possibly when I
Speaker 2: moved to Australia nineteen ninety three, so in three or
Speaker 2: four years before then, I don't I don't think so,
Speaker 2: I don't think. Probably in the same way as I
Speaker 2: came to Australia. For I came to Australia because I'd
Speaker 2: always lived in London. It seemed like a good idea
Speaker 2: to try something that was a that was more of
Speaker 2: a that was more of a you know, when you've
Speaker 2: grown up in a city like London, you've really only
Speaker 2: ever been there. This idea of living somewhere else seems
Speaker 2: so weird. London's in American was the best city in
Speaker 2: the world. And then I moved to Australia and I
Speaker 2: fell in love with it pretty much almost immediately, and really,
Speaker 2: you know, within five years there was no no way
Speaker 2: I was going to go back to the UK. So
Speaker 2: I think that that was probably that was probably a
Speaker 2: bigger transitional moment. Obviously meeting my wife, which happened, you
Speaker 2: know when I was here, that was a bigger transitional moment.
Speaker 2: Having kids is a bigger transitional moment. I think there
Speaker 2: are I think there are those moments. I think that
Speaker 2: I think often those transitional moments rather than coming through.
Speaker 2: For me, matters the trauma. It's when it's when you
Speaker 2: when you've yearned for something and you achieve it, and
Speaker 2: then you go, what's next, rather than going or you know,
Speaker 2: rather than going and let's stay here. This is really good,
Speaker 2: Let's go on and do something else. So I think
Speaker 2: that's a I think that's a I think that's a
Speaker 2: that that maybe is in terms of my my kind
Speaker 2: of mental mode. But having said that, I did Master
Speaker 2: Year for eleven years, so and we kind of you know,
Speaker 2: Year two was probably the you know, they were the
Speaker 2: best narratings we were ever going to get. So I
Speaker 2: could have at that point if I maybe for thought that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love doing that job so so, but
Speaker 2: again I'm very lucky. You know, I get paid to
Speaker 2: eat cake. I've written I've written for Delicious for twenty years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, that's an crazy long time to be with
Speaker 2: one place, you know. And my wife, My wife calls
Speaker 2: and caused the team up there. My family. I literally
Speaker 2: caused them a family because they are like a family.
Speaker 2: I've known them all for so long. So I think
Speaker 2: I think those things. I think that's where for me
Speaker 2: that you know, although I say I like moving on,
Speaker 2: and there's also a large element of when I get
Speaker 2: when I find something really love, you know, let's actually
Speaker 2: celebrate and embrace it and love it and go How
Speaker 2: lucky am I to get paid to come up with
Speaker 2: recipes or to travel to Argentina to do a story
Speaker 2: on the food of Buene's areas, And that's a job.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a that's a that's a dream for
Speaker 2: my those people and for me that that that's a job.
Speaker 2: And then also travel with the photographery is a close
Speaker 2: personal friend and who We're gonna have a really good
Speaker 2: time with them. We're gonna enjoy the We're gonna actually
Speaker 2: enjoy the experience with So yeah, no that so I
Speaker 2: don't think that. I mean, all I remember with the
Speaker 2: car crash was this whole thing of you know, coming
Speaker 2: coming to and having the car had gone into trees
Speaker 2: and the bonnet, the roof had been collapsed down to
Speaker 2: the door gam level. But I was able to kick
Speaker 2: the door open, and I was wearing a really heavy
Speaker 2: wax got in like a barber jacket, white wax jacket,
Speaker 2: and it was covered in glass just embedded all over it.
Speaker 2: So like so like, so I was that was you know,
Speaker 2: I've got one scar on the back of my hand,
Speaker 2: but that would have been the whole of my body
Speaker 2: would have been ripped up with all the glass it
Speaker 2: was driven. But luckily it was all driven into into
Speaker 2: my tors and into the jackets. I took the jacket
Speaker 2: off and that was run away and I could use
Speaker 2: the jacket to hold the to hold the when the
Speaker 2: car had crashed and obviously flowing up into the air,
Speaker 2: I'd hit the handle above the door on my arm
Speaker 2: up here and I'd smash the bone clean through. So
Speaker 2: that was just hanging loose. So but I was able
Speaker 2: to pick up the jacket like that, and we'll come in.
Speaker 2: You ask that when you have on the football field
Speaker 2: and you have a big injury, you know, you just
Speaker 2: adrenal gone. You just deal with it, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's okay. What's not okay is when you end up
Speaker 2: in the when you end up at the hospital and
Speaker 2: the gang we might have to operate, So we're not
Speaker 2: going to give you any pain medications. So but but
Speaker 2: we're gonna have what we're gonna have to do is
Speaker 2: we're gonna have to just separate. You've got You've got
Speaker 2: a jiggy zaggy fracture here and the two the muscles
Speaker 2: have knitted the bone back together incorrectly. We're gonna have
Speaker 2: to pull those bones apart and then we're gonna have
Speaker 2: to pop it back in so they knit, and then
Speaker 2: they'll heal, and then we'll probably put a pinion. This
Speaker 2: is the eerie. So I'm lying on I'm lying on
Speaker 2: the bed, nod, I've got no mads. I'm lying on
Speaker 2: the bed. I've got three nurses on this arm, pulling
Speaker 2: this arm down as the doctors pinning my chest back,
Speaker 2: and they pull the broken arm apart and then pop
Speaker 2: it back together again. So that was and but it
Speaker 2: still wasn't child burst, Mason. It was bad, but it
Speaker 2: still wasn't. So so I think that, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think but that. But so those things are kind of
Speaker 2: they teach you a bit about yourself. But I don't.
Speaker 2: I didn't suddenly go I'll never let anyone else drive,
Speaker 2: or you know, or I'm nervous when my kids drive, obviously,
Speaker 2: I mean any more than so any other parent would be.
Speaker 2: But yeah, look at so so I'm not a not
Speaker 2: a not a pivotal moment in my not a pivotal
Speaker 2: moment in my life. I found them normally, the pivotal
Speaker 2: moments in your life are little things, you know. That's
Speaker 2: certainly the getting the phone call from a friend them
Speaker 2: from with master chef. I've got a phone call from
Speaker 2: this woman. She sounded very young, like a like a
Speaker 2: like a her work experienced kid working for a casting agency,
Speaker 2: wanting advice on chefs because they were making mass chef.
Speaker 2: And so I gave her some advice and that that
Speaker 2: phone call led to me being auditioned and then cast.
Speaker 2: So but that and that was totally that's the totally
Speaker 2: random thing. And I think that that that idea that
Speaker 2: opportunity knocks quietly is you know, and that's one of
Speaker 2: the things we all have to learn is rather than
Speaker 2: shouting the whole time, is just to keep quiet and
Speaker 2: listen for an opportunity knocks is really really crucial, really
Speaker 2: crucial advice, because so many opportunities pass you by if
Speaker 2: you're not you're not engaged and seeing what's going on,
Speaker 2: yeah around and the opportunity's being you know, fun opportunities
Speaker 2: or you know, I'm in the radio is a great
Speaker 2: example of that. Radio is a terrifying prospect, you know,
Speaker 2: someone for someone who for someone who's who's worked in TV.
Speaker 2: You know, not not not not the journalist Matt preston
Speaker 2: pre TV, but someone's worked in TV where if you
Speaker 2: say something wrong, you can edit it, you can cut it,
Speaker 2: you can do it again.
Speaker 1: To be live well can be a bit stressful. And
Speaker 1: also in Surdayday.
Speaker 2: Saturday eight thirty eight thirty twelve, last hour of sport
Speaker 2: first two and a half hours is magazine stuff, so
Speaker 2: gardening but available on the web. But that moment when
Speaker 2: the when the red light goes on and the MIC's
Speaker 2: there and you're by yourself and there's nothing else that
Speaker 2: you've got, no host to bounce off, you go just
Speaker 2: got to start talking. That's it. That's it, that's it.
Speaker 2: I can see you.
Speaker 1: It's not easy. People think, oh, you just talk for
Speaker 1: a living, and it's like now you have to have
Speaker 1: things everything properly structured, working your way into one thing
Speaker 1: to and next, to make sure you cover all the
Speaker 1: different things that are going to be in the show.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot that actually goes to it. And
Speaker 1: before we got on, we were talking about the research
Speaker 1: you do beforehand, and it's it makes actually going live
Speaker 1: on air that much cleaner and you have an idea
Speaker 1: of kind of what you're going to go into and
Speaker 1: maybe some factual information behind it.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic. And also you you also know when someone's
Speaker 2: bullshitting another place. But I think it's I think it's that.
Speaker 2: But I think that that whole thing of that whole
Speaker 2: thing of no safety net is really interesting because we
Speaker 2: normally we normally as we get older, we get better
Speaker 2: at finding safety nets and protecting ourselves.
Speaker 1: And it's good.
Speaker 2: And I mean, you try that. You know, football is
Speaker 2: all about no safety net, taking yourself to a place
Speaker 2: where where you're just you know, where you're running backward
Speaker 2: the flight of the ball, not knowing who's coming to world.
Speaker 2: That's right, But you do it, and I think that's
Speaker 2: a I think it's a fascinating I think it's a
Speaker 2: fascinating to overcome your overcome your natural fears to do
Speaker 2: something is really really interesting.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask you another things. We're going
Speaker 1: to wrap this up here in but now you're massive
Speaker 1: massive on Cole's second bite, which is an initiative you
Speaker 1: kind of become a part of. Can you give us
Speaker 1: a bit of a background of what they did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look I started. The Second Bite is a charity
Speaker 2: that started as Ian Cast and Simone Cast and a
Speaker 2: couple of Melbourne is going to Prayer Market and collecting
Speaker 2: produce that was kind of that it wasn't going to
Speaker 2: last until the next market day and then dropping it
Speaker 2: off to charities. Really simple idea that's now growing. That's
Speaker 2: now growing into the biggest food food recommation charity in Australia.
Speaker 2: From when we do we work with farmers, we work
Speaker 2: with all sorts of stores. Obviously coals it is a
Speaker 2: big one, but an idea last different coals alone, we
Speaker 2: picked up twenty two million, twenty two million kilos of
Speaker 2: food from coals that would have gone into landfill.
Speaker 1: So forty four million I want to say to meals
Speaker 1: to be made from it.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. So so that that ability when you've
Speaker 2: got when you've got charity struggling, if you can provide
Speaker 2: them with the free food for their for their their
Speaker 2: lunch program or it's food to give out to their clients,
Speaker 2: it's fantastically it's fantastically important. So I've done that for
Speaker 2: ten years. The charities has gone from strength to thanks
Speaker 2: thanks to really really good people within the organization and
Speaker 2: and it's a and it's something I'm very proud of
Speaker 2: it that that whole idea we need to do stuff
Speaker 2: to We have a massive issue with food and security
Speaker 2: in this country, and we have a massive, massive issue
Speaker 2: in terms of waste. And just I love it. I
Speaker 2: love I love an idea where you've got two problems.
Speaker 2: You've got food going to landfill that people could be eating,
Speaker 2: and you've got who were not enough food And if
Speaker 2: you just put the two together, you solve those two problems.
Speaker 2: It's like, how clever is that? Fantastic, simple efficient? Such
Speaker 2: a simple idea. So that's so second Bite's a second bit.
Speaker 2: It has been a bit a pleasure to be a
Speaker 2: part of. And and again you know, it goes from
Speaker 2: strength and strength, and I think people are getting a
Speaker 2: sense of how important is I think we all identify
Speaker 2: now as food prices are going up, so that you know,
Speaker 2: and the amazing thing we did a during the pandemic
Speaker 2: when everyone was obviously you know, when it was supposed
Speaker 2: to be self absorbed, the amount of donations we got
Speaker 2: went up during the real because people identified that that
Speaker 2: there were people more people were struggling out there and
Speaker 2: there was the need for help. So I think it's
Speaker 2: fantastic that the Oussie Punters are kind of supporting Second
Speaker 2: Bite in order to do that job, because again, you know,
Speaker 2: again it's that simple idea that for every one dollar donted,
Speaker 2: Second Bit can redistribute enough food for five meals. So
Speaker 2: it's a you know, it's just it's it's a it's
Speaker 2: a small step to make, but it's a huge impact
Speaker 2: for so many strains. And and when you hear the
Speaker 2: micro stories, when you when you see the you know,
Speaker 2: you went to a distribution center recently. It was a
Speaker 2: charity that worked with women's refuge and they'd basically they'd
Speaker 2: basically learned up all these plastic bags. We're going to
Speaker 2: women and families, you know, in women's refuges, And there
Speaker 2: was like a whole long line, like maybe maybe sixty
Speaker 2: meters of bags, and you go, that's having the problem
Speaker 2: is and that's one of that's one of fourteen hundred charities.
Speaker 2: So when you see that sort of stuff, you go,
Speaker 2: it kind of redoubles your efforts to do more because
Speaker 2: you know, it means so much. I mean, that whole idea,
Speaker 2: not just the not just the financial and being able to,
Speaker 2: but just that kind of idea that that there are
Speaker 2: people out there who care and who want to and
Speaker 2: who you know, food is a food is an essential
Speaker 2: part to our well being. You know, if we're well fed,
Speaker 2: we're happy, and so you know, getting people fresh, nutritious
Speaker 2: produced to eat should be you know, if we can
Speaker 2: find a way to help, let's try and find a
Speaker 2: way to help.
Speaker 1: I must say thank you because I actually went to
Speaker 1: a place called the mat Pintass in the city all right, yeah, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: Collingwoodsworth and they talked about second by one of the
Speaker 1: things that helps them with their food. So I've seen
Speaker 1: firsthand how impactful it can be to some of those
Speaker 1: people that are in the homeless community and get those
Speaker 1: free meals from a place like that, And it is
Speaker 1: so amazing to see there's even like a miniature community
Speaker 1: within that now because of the options and the availability
Speaker 1: of things like this.
Speaker 2: And I think that the main proane Ness is a
Speaker 2: great example. Sacred Heart Mission is a great example. That
Speaker 2: Paramount Mission is another example that you know, if you
Speaker 2: can provide people with a meal and that kind of support,
Speaker 2: they'll come in. But if you these are marketized people,
Speaker 2: you don't don't see community. We don't see them in
Speaker 2: the community, but you can if they come in, you
Speaker 2: can help them with secial services, support with dental, with medical,
Speaker 2: with mental health, so you can actually you can actually
Speaker 2: help them become part of the community. You can. You
Speaker 2: can also help them in terms of providing other other
Speaker 2: services they need, because otherwise they're really hard to meet.
Speaker 2: So it's a you know, it's a it's a it
Speaker 2: all starts. It all starts with it all starts the
Speaker 2: bottle of pumpkin soup. Very simple, alright, slice of carrot cake,
Speaker 2: sliced caro cake. I haven't actually said this yet on
Speaker 2: the pipe, but I've got a sliced carrot cake for you.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited.
Speaker 1: Hold back here.
Speaker 2: Who doesn't love carrot cake?
Speaker 1: I think it's a healthy cake. It's not what I
Speaker 1: made it.
Speaker 2: When you buy anychus putting a bit of oil on
Speaker 2: there body.
Speaker 1: There is there is a bit oil? How much old
Speaker 1: enough to make it moist?
Speaker 2: The fair amount? And would that be cream? Cheese icing
Speaker 2: on the top?
Speaker 1: There is, yeah, made of vanilla. But a lemon, very
Speaker 1: nice lemon.
Speaker 2: I've got you know, you know, you know the history
Speaker 2: of carrot cake. Do you know? Do you know where
Speaker 2: carrot cake the first ever recipe? There are lots of
Speaker 2: carrot puddings that exist in medieval medieval history, but the
Speaker 2: first recipe of carrot cake being served. It was served
Speaker 2: at the Francis Tavern in New York when Washington and
Speaker 2: General George Washington said goodbye to his troops after the
Speaker 2: British had sailed away out of New York. He had
Speaker 2: this big dinner for all his generals and carrot cake
Speaker 2: was on the menu. And that was the first sign
Speaker 2: and that that's the first time anyone can find a
Speaker 2: reference to carrot cake be on the menu. So that
Speaker 2: was it was George Washington. And it's very tearful farewell
Speaker 2: that he said he was off. He was he was
Speaker 2: then heading off to the content of Congress. Was it anyway?
Speaker 2: He said, He said thank you to all his to
Speaker 2: all his all his his commanders in this. And you
Speaker 2: can go to the room. You can go where this happened.
Speaker 2: You can go to the room. You can see the notebook.
Speaker 2: It was a French guy worked in intelligence for in
Speaker 2: Washington's content, a army that that recorded the meal and
Speaker 2: recorded the carrot cake.
Speaker 1: You're not only a food critic, you're a food historian.
Speaker 2: But I think that whole thing. I mean, how good
Speaker 2: is it to know that? And also, but also it
Speaker 2: changes the significance of you giving me carrot cake because
Speaker 2: it's good, because it's got an American aunt Stevens and
Speaker 2: you can go And that's kind.
Speaker 1: Of you know, it's like drinking wine. You want to
Speaker 1: know where the wines come from. You want to know
Speaker 1: the bit of the story of how it's made and
Speaker 1: everything else. Like there's it's not just the taste of it,
Speaker 1: it's actually the whole story that comes from right and
Speaker 1: it and.
Speaker 2: It connects you through It connects you straight through to
Speaker 2: to history and gives you a sense of how ancient
Speaker 2: some of these some of these recipes are. You know,
Speaker 2: it's fantastic, It's fantastic. I'm very excited.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna do at the very end, but before that,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do fan questions. Yeah. Great, we're gonna smash
Speaker 1: through these. But actually we need to answer the first
Speaker 1: two questions I asked you. I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: a reminder. One first question, what's your easygo to dish
Speaker 1: that impresses anyone that anyone can make. Well.
Speaker 2: Look, look, assuming they're not vegetarians, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, there are there are things that
Speaker 2: we can do for them. But I think the simplest
Speaker 2: thing to do lamb shoulder. Grind up some coriander seeds,
Speaker 2: some cuman seed, rub it over the lamb shoulder two
Speaker 2: hundred wee other for other and for half an hour,
Speaker 2: and then put the temperature right down one and slow
Speaker 2: cook it. So slow cook lamb shoulder, it'll fall apart
Speaker 2: off the bone. And then with that some salads, so
Speaker 2: maybe you know, maybe a kind of like a couscous
Speaker 2: salad or a quinoa salad or a freaker salad, but
Speaker 2: loaded with pomegranates and pistachios and current soaked in muscul
Speaker 2: or tea and maybe a bit of fetter, so lots
Speaker 2: of lots of kind of texture and the flavor with
Speaker 2: the lamb shoulder, and then some flat bread and you
Speaker 2: can either eat it like a salad with with some
Speaker 2: meat on the side, or you can put the put
Speaker 2: everything into the flat bread and roll it up and
Speaker 2: the way you go.
Speaker 1: I'm getting nervous now about this cake. The second question,
Speaker 1: what is the weirdest thing you have in your kitchen
Speaker 1: at the month, I'll give you.
Speaker 2: I'll give you a bit to try. It's an it's
Speaker 2: an afghan. It's a hard afghan cheese. And it looks
Speaker 2: like it looks like it looks a bit like rabbit droppings,
Speaker 2: large rabbit drops. But they're white and it smells slightly
Speaker 2: of smells slightly of feet but but they're designed. There's
Speaker 2: this cheese, is you know that whole the whole brilliant
Speaker 2: of humanity to be able to preserve things for a
Speaker 2: long time. This cheese can be preserved a long time.
Speaker 2: That's probably that. I've also got some parmesan crusts infusing
Speaker 2: anywhere like tool you used to cook? Oh no, no,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty for me. The things you need is a
Speaker 2: potato peeler, a microplane, and a silicon spatchlor I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't iron a mandolin maybe for slicing things thinly,
Speaker 2: I don't. I'm not a big fan of the kind
Speaker 2: of like I'm now going to get my melon ball
Speaker 2: or out my prison scoop. I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: out my my PRAWNI valor my my zucchi cora.
Speaker 1: So now I've got I've probably got all those things,
Speaker 1: but the kids get fussy.
Speaker 2: Well, no, we we had to put a we we
Speaker 2: had we we we redd the kitchen about six years ago,
Speaker 2: mainly so we could have something for me to put
Speaker 2: my poppy sea grinder and my my my strange Sarginian
Speaker 2: Yachi machines which never get used. But yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: There are pieces of living and living and live in
Speaker 2: a cupboard. But no, most most of the stuff, most
Speaker 2: of the stuff I call it most recues I write.
Speaker 2: And they're designed. They're designed to be you know, you
Speaker 2: standard standard rental kitchen, you know, because you don't want
Speaker 2: to tell Pody's an ice cream machine, because ninety percent
Speaker 2: of pill don't have them. You don't turn to tell
Speaker 2: them to use a to use a kind of some weird,
Speaker 2: weird sort of Bavarian horse castrating knife, because no one's
Speaker 2: got you know. I mean, they make it so that
Speaker 2: everything should be about making it. And then the same
Speaker 2: thing with ingredients, the same thing with ingredients. I've got
Speaker 2: no recipe for that weird Afghan geese in any of
Speaker 2: my books, because I want people to be able to go,
Speaker 2: and I've probably got them in the fridge and if
Speaker 2: I don't, I can go to my local supermarket and
Speaker 2: I can probably pick out how good.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll get back to the fan questions. First one,
Speaker 1: you have over four hundred cravats. I haven't actually talked
Speaker 1: about these, and yes, how many? What's the count now?
Speaker 1: And how many suits do you are because we know
Speaker 1: you love your fashion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cravats. That's probably gone down to about two, about
Speaker 2: about one hundred now there's been a mass cull because
Speaker 2: I just don't have space and no, no, but but
Speaker 2: people do come around, as they did on Saturday covering game.
Speaker 2: I'm going to a cravat party and do you have
Speaker 2: a cravat? And yes, you're very lucky. I do have one.
Speaker 2: So so they get lent out sent out suits. I
Speaker 2: do have about fifty different suits. I love my suits
Speaker 2: almost more than cravats. Those cravats, right, they're just material,
Speaker 2: often from the remainder bin of the shop. Right. So
Speaker 2: we've found a couple of young Australian indigenous designers and
Speaker 2: we've got some cravats from from them for or scarves
Speaker 2: from them, which which I'm wearing an MKR, which is
Speaker 2: lovely to do. But often they're just it's literally just
Speaker 2: an edge bit of material. So it's not the same
Speaker 2: a good suit as you know, you're a man of style,
Speaker 2: a beautifully cut suit, you know. And I mean that
Speaker 2: I'm very I do love the fact that I do
Speaker 2: love the fact that everything I wear, from the you know,
Speaker 2: the R and Williams boots, to the shirts and gans
Speaker 2: and the suits made in by Peanut Prinsy and Brunswick
Speaker 2: here in Melbourne, it's all Australia made. And I think
Speaker 2: that's that I've been very proud over the last twenty
Speaker 2: years to do that and to support those guys. And
Speaker 2: it's great because they're just beautifully made things, you know,
Speaker 2: just that.
Speaker 1: Makes you feel good.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I've got I've got a couple of
Speaker 2: new suits we had made from car that just I'll put.
Speaker 1: Them on and just stand up to.
Speaker 2: The shelves.
Speaker 1: Are good.
Speaker 2: It drops twenty keys of you. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's you look good. It's that the fabrics are interesting.
Speaker 2: And I think the great thing we live in an
Speaker 2: age now in Australia where people are men are so
Speaker 2: much more adventurous about what they'll wear. You know, in
Speaker 2: the old days, it was a maybe a comedy tie
Speaker 2: on Fridays, and it was maybe a comedy Hawaiian shirt
Speaker 2: for the barbecue. But now you'll see men in checks,
Speaker 2: in multiple colored shirts, in you know, socks, socks, and
Speaker 2: the way of the Australian male dress is now compared
Speaker 2: to say, when I first arrived in Australia thirty years ago,
Speaker 2: it has changed beyond recognition, beyond recognition.
Speaker 1: Now. Actually was going to wear a cravat to this,
Speaker 1: but I've come to the oralization. Cravats are not easy
Speaker 1: to find. No that I was, no that I called
Speaker 1: probably fifteen to twenty places. Now that you told me that,
Speaker 1: I was like, I wish I want to call them,
Speaker 1: and they're.
Speaker 2: Really expensively, maybe one hundred bucks for Convan.
Speaker 1: It's like, No, the one place I found, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go, where's the resolution.
Speaker 2: You can go down, you can go down to the
Speaker 2: op shop and you go, that's nice, you know, and
Speaker 2: that that's one of the fun with the fashion has
Speaker 2: been exactly doing that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Of the of the stuff that I've worn over the
Speaker 2: last fifteen years, you know, they a lot of the
Speaker 2: originally the original pants I was wearing these crazy harlequin
Speaker 2: type our girl check pants. They all came out of
Speaker 2: John Day's golf pants.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they.
Speaker 2: Were and they were and they were John Day and
Speaker 2: they were like ninety bucks a pair. They were, so
Speaker 2: they were cheap and they and they came all these
Speaker 2: crazy colors and pans. So we looked there and then
Speaker 2: and then we bought some. Then there were a few
Speaker 2: chanting pairs we bought from a like an army disposal
Speaker 2: store for like fifty bucks from Scotland. And then and
Speaker 2: then then the last batch all these I bought. I
Speaker 2: went through this phase wearing and I still love these
Speaker 2: broad stripe pants. So I've got a beautiful Collingwood pants
Speaker 2: black and white strip about right. I've got the Collingwood ones.
Speaker 2: I got pink and white ones, I got blue and white.
Speaker 2: I got so North Melbourne.
Speaker 1: Style yellow yellow.
Speaker 2: You know, I can go. But that's all that's all
Speaker 2: made with. They're all made with Ikia curtain February. Really
Speaker 2: I was doing that is a hot take. I did
Speaker 2: not know that I was going to Ikea. I was
Speaker 2: wandering through and we wondered they went that curtain fabric
Speaker 2: is pretty good? How much that I was like seven
Speaker 2: bucks of meters?
Speaker 1: Oh, I've got the idea here that's.
Speaker 2: And they and they hang very well. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: there's a lot of it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: On one side, there's the kind of the lardie properly
Speaker 2: made suit and that of the property made shirt. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, it's like, let's save the money in
Speaker 2: other ways and find cheap fabrics rather than the stuff
Speaker 2: that's come out of a little cross somewhere in Scotland.
Speaker 1: You've never walked into someone's house and didn't been matching
Speaker 1: something of the furniture.
Speaker 2: Would be, could be, could be very easy.
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 2: I have walked into places and found that the clothes,
Speaker 2: the suit I'm wearing perfectly matches the background. I kind
Speaker 2: of blur into the background, like the coat if there's
Speaker 2: one of those feature walls in duck egg blue and
Speaker 2: the suit and easy just drifts straight in. It is
Speaker 2: it is, you know, it is. It is a it's been,
Speaker 2: it's been. One of the great joys has been. It
Speaker 2: has been to not take it too seriously and to
Speaker 2: and to wear wear stuff. And I love that, and
Speaker 2: I love the social media interaction of you know, Matt
Speaker 2: Preston dress today like the man from Delmonte, Matt Matt
Speaker 2: Preston desk today. Like a climbian drug lorday, like a
Speaker 2: care bear. You know, there's a there's a great well,
Speaker 2: it's just I just like that. I do people having
Speaker 2: fun with what you do, you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: you know what it's like that there's the social media
Speaker 2: is a two edged sword. It can be really bitchy.
Speaker 2: They can also be really funny. And you would have
Speaker 2: had that with some with with whether when you started
Speaker 2: wearing the goggles. Now we all know the really serious
Speaker 2: reason why you're wearing the goggles, but some of those
Speaker 2: comments were really funny. Some of them were horrible and
Speaker 2: bitchy and disgusting, but the funny ones. Actually, you can't
Speaker 2: break something and go great, good onion, nice work.
Speaker 1: I like that, true or smashing some of these is
Speaker 1: great for you here. So we'll make this quick work.
Speaker 1: But what's your cheap meal and what's your fast food
Speaker 1: meal that you would go out and have.
Speaker 2: I'd probably go for I probably go for pizza. And
Speaker 2: if I'm looking for for fast fast, it will be
Speaker 2: ideally small, family run, you know, yeah, yeah, probably yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I think pizza is the ultimate food. You know,
Speaker 2: it's you needed one hand it's got all the all
Speaker 2: the all the food, all the food groups and one
Speaker 2: in one place, in one slice for the great idea.
Speaker 2: And I don't mind my a burger, A burger for
Speaker 2: someone like Andrews very nice.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite dish you've ever had, a master chef,
Speaker 1: because I watched a video of you and I thought
Speaker 1: it was the best outro into a commercial I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in my life. And it was you and you
Speaker 1: had a plate in front of you and you looked
Speaker 1: at it and you go, this is disgusting, and you
Speaker 1: threw it on the floor at the moment and then
Speaker 1: it was a break and I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm about to lose my mind. I was just sitting
Speaker 1: one of my seat and then you come back and
Speaker 1: what do you say?
Speaker 2: I see, Yeah, then I that's disgusting, disgustingly good, classic, classic,
Speaker 2: classic TV mist experience. I'm not a fan of a
Speaker 2: mis threat, I gotta say anymore. But but that that
Speaker 2: that seems I think now maybe because because the kids
Speaker 2: who are watching that were seven, eight, nine, ten, it's
Speaker 2: kind of had this weird second life now and I
Speaker 2: get I get pictures regularly from friends who were at
Speaker 2: events like Golden Planes or beyond the Valley and they'll
Speaker 2: be a there'll be a matt press and holding a
Speaker 2: plate distin wandering around the crowd. My poor son is
Speaker 2: my more older side is twenty one, said he was
Speaker 2: out one of that's three in the morning and there's
Speaker 2: his dad crown really dad, and I quite I think
Speaker 2: there's a suitability given that Duff is food backwards. I
Speaker 2: think that kind of makes sense. But yeah, that that
Speaker 2: that that that was, I don't know. Look, there's so there,
Speaker 2: there are so many in terms of in terms of
Speaker 2: the kind of the they were invariably, they were invariably.
Speaker 2: You know, there was one guy that put a little
Speaker 2: bit of liquorice in a licorice in a in a
Speaker 2: red wine sauce for a steak that was a really
Speaker 2: clever idea. Another guy smoked smoked butter and used that
Speaker 2: for another sauce that was really delicious. Then there were
Speaker 2: you know, there were there were certainly slow cook ribs,
Speaker 2: and there was a aven Kui has been on the
Speaker 2: recent series did a great, uh great dish called Drunken
Speaker 2: Bruise that was really really delicious, kind of like age,
Speaker 2: I think. But but you know that there have been
Speaker 2: other years. Over the years, there have been there have
Speaker 2: been so many spectacular stuff, a lot of the stuff
Speaker 2: that Billy cooked back that that that we when we
Speaker 2: did an event we went to Japan and we filmed
Speaker 2: under Mount Fuji. One of the amazing things we did.
Speaker 2: I've got Mount Fuji like here in the background, and
Speaker 2: and Sarah Thong brought this kind of version of bac
Speaker 2: out that was kind of like it's a traditional Chinese
Speaker 2: Hong Kong, Chinese Singapore and Chinese dish. It's a kind
Speaker 2: of it's a it's a soup. And it was like unbelievable.
Speaker 2: I mean that that was really that was very memorable.
Speaker 2: But it's hard when you know we've got that kind
Speaker 2: of you've got the memory of the dish and you
Speaker 2: also got the memory.
Speaker 1: Like everything else. You can give a shot out here
Speaker 1: best restaurant in Melbourne. Oh this is under the pump here,
Speaker 1: but you can give give one of probably your list
Speaker 1: of Okay, who's paying, who's paying, You're paying, Vitamont paying.
Speaker 2: Vitamonder Arattica. Okay. If if friends are coming from me
Speaker 2: to state at the moment, probably Gimblet because it's super
Speaker 2: cool playing. I mean, I love I love Embler, I
Speaker 2: love Marion my my other two places. I've intero recently.
Speaker 2: I really like Sarai, which is kind of crazy Portuguese
Speaker 2: kind of barbecue. Hopefully, hopefully radio is really good and
Speaker 2: enjoy that because I've got a great vibe, great seating outside.
Speaker 2: Tulham's fantastic. I mean, you know, it's a bit like
Speaker 2: it's a bit like asking It's a bit like asking
Speaker 2: Catherine Murphy I do the sports side of the radio
Speaker 2: show for her favorite rugby union player, because she's going
Speaker 2: to go on, She's going to go on for three
Speaker 2: or four days, just listening another Ohen Farrell and you know,
Speaker 2: and and and and so yeah, we're very lucky, very lucky.
Speaker 2: But then you know, then in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, we've
Speaker 2: got we're very lucky to have some spectacular places to
Speaker 2: eat and a really high stand. I've just come back
Speaker 2: from London and I had four well known places, and
Speaker 2: I reckon I could pick a number of places in
Speaker 2: any of those cities that are better those well known places.
Speaker 2: You know, cool places to go.
Speaker 1: It's Melbourne's multicultural capital.
Speaker 2: Melbourne's amazing, but there's also amazing food in Adelaide. There's
Speaker 2: amazing food in Brisbane. There's great food in Perth, you know,
Speaker 2: so we're we're lucky. There's great also great food in Ballarat,
Speaker 2: and there's great food in you know, New so I
Speaker 2: think kind of an or in Barron, or in Newibar.
Speaker 2: So we're you know, we're lucky. There's fantastic food all
Speaker 2: over this country where we're in a kind of a
Speaker 2: sweet spot at the moment.
Speaker 1: If you were to dress up for a dress up party,
Speaker 1: who do you dress up as? Yeah? Oh, what do
Speaker 1: you think on that? I'll go to the next one.
Speaker 2: I think, I think, man, it would be fun because
Speaker 2: I've just I'd just be under the French accent and
Speaker 2: I'd be able to carry some sauce with me, a
Speaker 2: little ja, this is my sauce. I think that that
Speaker 2: would be funny. That'd be funny.
Speaker 1: I love that. First So I'd say someone's going on
Speaker 1: a first date, what should they cook first date?
Speaker 2: Something they've cooked before, love that, something something that isn't heavy,
Speaker 2: something that's light, so you know whether it's whether it's
Speaker 2: like something that the other person likes. Don't don't bring them,
Speaker 2: don't bring them a smoked salmon and and avocado salad.
Speaker 2: If they don't like smoked salmon, so I think that.
Speaker 2: But but they're the three things light something they like.
Speaker 2: But and again, don't stress about it. Don't stress about it,
Speaker 2: and not too much, you know. So So I mean,
Speaker 2: I think, I think, you know, start with a salad.
Speaker 2: Start with a salad. Easy, it's good. Good of his
Speaker 2: stuff with with with things asparagus, asparagus, poach, egg shaved, shaved,
Speaker 2: shaved parmesan. Simple.
Speaker 1: Worse cooking mistake because I've made one. I'm embarrassed to
Speaker 1: say this, but worth kale in the oven too long.
Speaker 2: Burn, that would be that, that would be that would
Speaker 2: be bad. I'm dadley doing making biscuits and mixing the
Speaker 2: salt and the sugar up because I was rushing.
Speaker 1: That's books.
Speaker 2: Those cookies, those cookies were. Those cookies were terrible.
Speaker 1: Best way to cook chicken and steak. I know someone
Speaker 1: else recently asked you this and you said, use a thermometer.
Speaker 1: Now would you say chicken poached, grilled? What's the best
Speaker 1: way you reckon to actually taste chicken?
Speaker 2: Look, I mean, I mean, I think if you're doing
Speaker 2: meta date me, I think poach chicken is really good,
Speaker 2: but I think it's I think you're a white poach it.
Speaker 2: So bring your bring your water with your your or
Speaker 2: your stock with your aromatics to the boil. Then put
Speaker 2: your breast in and then lid off. Leave it forty
Speaker 2: five minutes and you should get this lovely silky set breast,
Speaker 2: which is fantastic. That's a great way cooking poast chicken
Speaker 2: for me. I mean I think that, you know, because
Speaker 2: again I'm I've got kids. I think one of the
Speaker 2: great you know, the go tos, I've got three of
Speaker 2: them into a two made let's good, let's to the
Speaker 2: two major ones. Chicken thigh. Yeah, cut into each side
Speaker 2: under six pieces, tossed it, tossed it in melted butter,
Speaker 2: and then toss it in panco bread crumbs with grated
Speaker 2: parmesan and thyme, and you'll get these little nuggets. Bake
Speaker 2: them the oven. Bake the oven for about ten minutes
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty and then those nuggets can be
Speaker 2: eaten like nuggets in a comb with mayo and sarracha.
Speaker 2: They can be put into wraps. They're really simple and
Speaker 2: the same exactly the same idea mix up a cup
Speaker 2: of peanut butter like half a cup of hosts in
Speaker 2: sauce some mirror together, mix it up and then again
Speaker 2: same thing. Marinate your chicken thighs in that and then
Speaker 2: then then spread them out on a line baking sheet
Speaker 2: into a hot oven. Four the same thing fifteen ten
Speaker 2: to fifteen minutes, and then knowing what we both those,
Speaker 2: turn the grill up and put them and get the
Speaker 2: edges nice and charry and sticky, and that to you,
Speaker 2: you get that lovely almost like sarte flavor. And that's like,
Speaker 2: you know, that's five minutes of preyer and the ovens
Speaker 2: doing most of the work. You can you can you
Speaker 2: can chop up your your your lettuce or your or
Speaker 2: your nice slore if your lettuce is too expensive, with
Speaker 2: with drumhead cabbage while the while, the while the chickens cooking.
Speaker 2: So that's really good steak. I don't I really don't
Speaker 2: need a lot of I really don't eat a lot
Speaker 2: of steak. But I got two ways, uh porter house,
Speaker 2: and there's a there's a great there's there's a great
Speaker 2: Malaysian thick soy called ketchup manus toss choss the steak
Speaker 2: and ketchen manus on the barbecue grill. And what you'll
Speaker 2: do is the ketchen manus is sweet and it'll form
Speaker 2: a bark and you can cut you and get like
Speaker 2: a crusty bark on the outside of steak. But kids
Speaker 2: still keep the steak really like rare and blue in
Speaker 2: the middle, which I love, which is great over your
Speaker 2: two minute noodles. The the other the other way, the
Speaker 2: other way. I'm a rather than steak. I'd rather go
Speaker 2: pork neck. So get porkneck, which is cheap. Slice it
Speaker 2: really like freezer, to chill it right down, slice it
Speaker 2: really thinly, a bit of salt on it, and then
Speaker 2: just on the barbecue really quickly, like you know, to
Speaker 2: see her each side. And then into a taco. It's
Speaker 2: some pineapple and corn susa. Maybe it'd have avocado, and
Speaker 2: that's genius. And it's really cheap and it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's good. I'm not a massive fan of the big steak,
Speaker 2: but you know, the rule with the steak is as
Speaker 2: hot as possible, as hot as possible, one side, one side,
Speaker 2: until the color comes. When you look at the edge
Speaker 2: of the steak, you can see it changing color from
Speaker 2: red to red to basy brown when the color gets
Speaker 2: halfway up the steak, check where your time is, so
Speaker 2: it's four minutes, flip it over and then do half
Speaker 2: the time on the other side, two minutes on the
Speaker 2: other side, and then you should get a medium were
Speaker 2: steak every time.
Speaker 1: That is phenomenal. Now, if you're not hungry by now
Speaker 1: of star, I'm about to go a lot du last questions,
Speaker 1: what's for dinner? It's not.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Actually there's absolutely there's literally, because my
Speaker 2: family's been away, there's literally nothing in the couple. We're
Speaker 2: just throwing away some old some old sushi rolls, terrible sin.
Speaker 2: They didn't get eaten. So I'm thinking tonight you've been
Speaker 2: a Carbonara of the night before, so it won't be pastor.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking it might be. It might be those little
Speaker 2: chicken nuggets, huge rat and I think in wraps it's quick,
Speaker 2: it's easy, and whenever the kids are drift back in,
Speaker 2: there'll be some waiting the album for them.
Speaker 1: So good. Well that's it from the fans questions. I
Speaker 1: just want to say, first of all, you should be
Speaker 1: super proud of everything you've done now, like doing this research,
Speaker 1: You've done that many different things from radio TV, food
Speaker 1: and everything else. It's so impressive. I've got friends from
Speaker 1: all over the world that know who you are, and
Speaker 1: you've been so successful and do it such a positive manner.
Speaker 1: I think it is something that everyone kind of you know,
Speaker 1: is attracted to. And I really appreciate you coming on. Man,
Speaker 1: it's been an amazing time. We're going to have this
Speaker 1: carrot cake try it and that'll be maybe a little
Speaker 1: extra bonus bit to this podcast. But seriously, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on. It's been an absolute honor.
Speaker 1: Learned a lot in this learned a lot, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things.
Speaker 2: I've just put on my menu, I think, so, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm expecting I'm expecting images to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been a lot of content coming your life.
Speaker 2: It's good to say. No, it's a pleasure, Mason, and
Speaker 2: it's a it's always a joy to talk with someone
Speaker 2: who loves their food, and it's it's always lovely to
Speaker 2: be going around town and see your your small, unimposing
Speaker 2: frame sitting on some corner table. Gang is that Mason
Speaker 2: Cocks folded up followed. It's great. It's great, Mason. Congratulations
Speaker 2: on the show. It's really good.
Speaker 1: Thanks nice to come around for the next Thanksgiving dinner
Speaker 1: and I can't wait. Candy yams, Yep, we got the
Speaker 1: whole thank do, the full spraat deep fried deep fried turkey. Nah,
Speaker 1: don't beg enough that here, don't be enough, the whole
Speaker 1: baked eight hours. It's a full thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 1: But like you said before, it's about the people you're
Speaker 1: starting with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Thanksgiving Day in
Speaker 2: twenty seconds.
Speaker 1: Twenty fifth, twenty fifth, thank you. That's a question, Mirk.
Speaker 1: I'm not having you look Today's fourth of July. That's
Speaker 1: all I know. Happy for the July. Trying to get
Speaker 1: away from the fact I.
Speaker 2: Don't know what thank Giving changes.
Speaker 1: It's a Thursday, the last is that what it is?
Speaker 1: That is?
Speaker 2: You know we're gonna work out when thanks Doing, because
Speaker 2: you know, I've looked as I've just had an invitation
Speaker 2: for dinner at Mason has and I'm quite excited about that.
Speaker 1: That's good, that's just