MasterChef Australia

Matthew Caldicott
Accountant (NSW)
AGE: 21
HOME TOWN: SYDNEY, NSW
MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE
COOKING STYLE: MODERN AUSTRALIAN WITH FRENCH INFLUENCE

Possessing artistic flair and mouth watering creativity when it comes to food just doesn’t add up for Matthew. The 21-year-old is a third generation accountant, and by rites, should be more interested in the cost of ingredients rather than the flavours they exude. But Matthew is no ordi- nary number cruncher. He loves the feeling he gets in his heart when he creates a culinary work of art, and can’t get enough of reading cookbooks. “My dad is an accountant, my uncle is an accountant, and my grandfather was an accountant,” says Matthew, revealing his family is concerned about the risk of him leaving a mapped career path. “It’s always been expected of me that I would be an accountant. I never met my grandfather but he gave up accountancy and become an artist for Coca-Cola. I’ve always had an artistic flair in my body so I think the creativity must come from him. “When I’m cooking, it’s an escape for me to do something creative and I try to make my food look as beautiful as possible, and it’s a chance for me to express myself.”

His colourful world away from the black and white of numbers began when he was studying at university and be- came a gym junkie. “I’d get home after the gym and cook dinner,” says Matthew, who names Peter Gilmore from Sydney’s Quay restaurant as his favourite chef. “Pretty soon I was cooking every night of the week and really started to get into it. I love cooking intricate dishes, and I guess my style is Modern Australian cooked in the French style.”

Matthew learned from a young age that dinner time with his parents John and Lisa, and older sister Alison, was sacred. Indeed a nice, home cooked dinner is the very essence of his family. “I’ve been raised in a family where my mum has always put a home cooked meal on the dinner table, every single day for my entire life,” explains Matthew, who dreams of one day training in France before owning a restaurant. “I’ve literally never had dinner in front of the TV, the radio is never on, and it’s always family time, with all of us around the table talking. “It’s made me the person that I am because I’ve always had that communication with my parents and have been able to talk about anything with them. I never used to think that was unique until I’d speak to some friends and they just had dinner in front of the TV on their own.” “I just want to be able to cook food that tastes as good as it looks,” he says. “I’m still really young so I’ve got lots to learn. But I’m amazed to have got this far. I just hope the judges like what I cook and I’ll learn as much as possible from them.”

Peter Kritikides
Lawyer (VIC)
AGE: 29
HOME TOWN: MELBOURNE, VICTORIA
MARITAL STATUS: MARRIED
COOKING STYLE: GREEK

Food and family are two things that are intrinsically linked for Peter, and, like MasterChef Australia judge George Calombaris, his cooking is heavily influenced by his Greek family and heritage. “I grew up with the front door always open and there was always food piled up,” says Peter. “My mother and grandmother were my inspiration. They were singlehandedly responsible for my childhood weight! We ate a lot of Greek food – generous, colourful and flavourful and that continues into my cooking today.”

Lawyer Peter relishes the time he spends in the kitchen as it gives him the much needed opportunity to wind down after a hard day at work. However, he readily admits that despite his love of food, he probably wouldn’t have applied for MasterChef Australia this year without a push. “I’m the type of person to sit on my hands,” he confesses. “I’m not sure I would have filled out an application had a friend not done it for me. This represents the unknown for me and it’s not necessarily fitting with my personality.” Peter is married to his childhood sweetheart Erica, and describes her as the “open one” in their relationship, compared to himself as being “conservative.” Putting himself in the spotlight is a complete role reversal for the couple. “Erica has been so supportive,” says Peter. “All she wants is for me to be happy. I’ve been plodding along in life and she knows I haven’t had that spark for a while. This is a journey for me, and it’s helping me to realise what I want to do. I’m starting to open up. For the first time in my life, I’ve got a chance to think, breathe and consider that there might be a clean slate in front of me.”

His wife had wanted him to apply for Season One of MasterChef, but Peter was concerned about the concept of being judged. “My first thought was that I wasn’t prepared to have people judge my cooking,” he says. “As I watched more though, I realised the show was about getting the best out of people. I kept my change of mind very quiet though.” Pragmatic by nature, Peter doesn’t necessarily expect MasterChef Australia to give him a new career, but he recog- nises that already it has changed him as a person. “People here love food, we talk about it 24/7 and I find that amazing. It’s really enabling me to develop and I want to continue building the trait of my personality that involves risk taking,” he says. “If I decide after this experience that cooking is something that I keep for my family and friends to enjoy then still I’ll be a richer person for it.”

Philip Vakos
Auditor (TAS)
AGE: 27
HOME TOWN: HOBART, TASMANIA
MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE
COOKING STYLE: GREEK

When Philip closes his eyes and thinks of food, he sees his Greek grandfather in his backyard greenhouse picking fresh tomatoes, and can smell his grandma’s feta and spinach pastry pies sizzling on the kitchen hotplate. Thanks to his grandmother Eleni, cooking runs through Philip’s veins, allowing him to re-live his cherished childhood memories every dinner time. “I was pretty much born into food,” says Philip, who was brought up with his sister by his maternal grandparents in Hobart after his parents separated when he was four-years-old. “They’re not with us anymore but when I pull off a dish that’s as half as good as my grandmother’s, it brings back all those memories of her. When I miss her, I love to recreate some of her food and it makes me feel better. “When she passed away six years ago, she left me with her passion for cooking. That part of her is still here and now it’s inside of me. Hopefully, one day I’ll pass that on to my children.”

Philip spent his childhood picking vegetables from his grandfather’s four greenhouses for his grandmother to cook. As he stood on his toes to see over the kitchen bench, his eyes widened as Eleni cooked. He learnt from an early age the first rule of Greek cooking: food fixes everything. “No matter how bad things are, when you get everybody together and have good Greek food, everything is fine and happy,” he smiles. “It’s medicine.” While cooking is in his heart, Philip’s bread and butter comes from his job as an accountant. “When I was finishing school, I wanted to be a chef but everyone turned me against it to go to university,” he ex- plains. “Being a good Greek boy, I did what everyone expected of me, and I’ve now been an accountant for two years. But I’m at peace when I’m in the kitchen, and I love it.” He’s hoping that being in MasterChef Australia may be the beginning of a new life as a chef. “I have everything to gain and nothing to lose,” he says. “Being on MasterChef is like experiencing an apprenticeship on steroids.”

If appearing on MasterChef is the ultimate training ground for a budding chef, then student Philip has landed his dream teacher in judge George Calombaris, who the contestant idolises. “It’d be great to get a job in George’s restaurant in Mykonos!” he laughs. “But seriously, my biggest hero out of all the chefs I know is George. What he does with Greek food is what I want to do.”

Sarah Carmichael
Police detective (VIC)
AGE: 30
HOME TOWN: MELBOURNE, VICTORIA
MARITAL STATUS: MARRIED
COOKING STYLE: VARIED, BUT LOVES ITALIAN

To put your life temporarily on hold to chase the ultimate food dream is a challenging task at the best of times. But when you are a mum of two young children, the emotional strain of trying to become Australia’s next MasterChef can reach boiling point. Sarah, however, is adamant she can handle the pressure. While she desperately misses her sons, three-year-old Harrison and seven-month-old Samuel, she knows appearing on the show could be life-changing. “If I win, it could potentially be the most awesome thing for my family, setting ourselves up with the café I’ve been dreaming of,” explains Sarah. “If, down the track, I do open a café then hopefully the kids can eventually get involved and it’ll be a lovely family business. “I’m lucky to have such a supportive family. My husband has taken six months off work to look after the kids, and my parents have moved into our house as well for support.”

As her husband of two years – who is a Victorian taskforce detective – fills in as the family cook at dinner time, Sa- rah is toiling away at a dream career change. “I’ve been with the police for 10 years and, while I enjoy what I do, I want to be doing something in the morning where I get really excited about the day ahead,” says Sarah, who regularly keeps in touch by Skype and phone calls with her family from the MasterChef house. “I love preparing and love serving food. I’ve just turned 30 and I have recently had another baby, so now is the perfect time for having a change. I’m ready to jump into the unknown – it’s a massive step to go from the police force into the food industry.” Sarah’s relentless curiosity of exotic foods as a youngster showed all the hallmarks of a detective in the making. “My mum wasn’t too keen on cooking,” she says. “We had a lot of packaged food and traditional Australian meals like sausages, but my next door neighbour was Malaysian and they’d always have beautiful Asian food. My love of food started then really, where I got to taste all this exotic stuff that we just didn’t have in my mum’s pantry.”

What started as a curiosity has now blossomed into a love affair with food, reading as many cookbooks as she can get her hands on and trying foods from across the world. She loves dinner parties, where her signature dishes include gnocchi in mushroom sauce and a panacotta dessert. “I was an avid fan of last series and as a family we sat down and watched every episode,” she says. “I love food, I love cooking and I’m competitive – that’s what it’s all about. I was going to put an application for the last series but I was pregnant so I had to wait.”

Sharnee Rawson
Law student (QLD/WA)
AGE: 21
HOME TOWN: BORN IN PERTH, WA, AND NOW LIVES IN BRISBANE, QLD
MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE
COOKING STYLE: ECLECTIC AND LOVES MAKING DESSERTS

When Sharnee’s old school friends used to visit her at her family home, instead of playing on the computer, she would get them all in the kitchen amongst the pots and pans. “When I was in high school I was cooking all the time,” says Sharnee, who is in her final year of a law degree. “When friends came over instead of sitting around playing computer games we’d cook in the kitchen. It took me a while to realise that that wasn’t a normal thing to do, because my friends would be like, ‘why do you want to cook?’ I just thought that’s what everyone did.” Sharnee has always loved to cook, inheriting her mum’s passion. She is mainly self taught but regularly asks her mum for advice, and fondly remembers her early teens spent waitressing and helping out in a Mediterranean restaurant her mum part-owned on the Sunshine Coast.

In Sharnee’s house, it was a case of tough cooking love when a dish just didn’t work. “It used to be that if I cooked something and screwed up, I had to eat the whole thing – so that made me improve my cooking skills quickly,” she laughs, admitting that cooking for her parents and younger brother is more intimidating than cooking for the MasterChef Australia judges. “My parents were really against wasting food so if I made any- thing really bad, I paid for it!”

Sharnee applied for MasterChef Australia after becoming disillusioned with studying law. “I’m feeling a bit lost and I’m hoping that being on MasterChef will give me a better idea of what direction to go,” explains Sharnee, who describes her cooking style as eclectic, and often with seafood, but enjoys cooking desserts and cakes. “I do enjoy law but I love food.” Being a budget conscious student has allowed Sharnee to experiment with food. “As I’m cooking on a small budget, I look at what I have in the cupboard and try to turn it into a meal you’d see in a restaurant,” she says. “I could never do two minute noodles or baked beans! I’d rather buy nice food and ingredients than spend all my money on drinks during nights out.”

She is hopeful that she can eventually realise her school girl dream of opening a café. “It’s been a long term dream since I was 12 to open a café when I’m older,” says Sharnee, who names Shannon Ben- nett from Melbourne’s Vue de Monde restaurant as her favourite chef. “In maths class I used to write sample menus in the back of my book instead of listening to the teacher. It’s been an absolute passion for me.”

Skye Craig
Graphic designer (QLD)
AGE: 35
HOME TOWN: BRISBANE, QLD
MARITAL STATUS: IN A RELATIONSHIP
COOKING STYLE: SUSTAINABLE, ORGANIC RAW COOKING

When Skye goes bushwalking, she doesn’t just see trees, leaves and scrub. She sees her dinner shopping list, with native Australian ingredients like macadamia nuts, wild limes and Davidson’s plums inspiring her to cook up a storm. “I love to cook with native Australian ingredients and am a big advocate of using raw, organic and sustainable foods,” says the self-confessed yippee – part hippie, part yuppie. “The reason why you would lean towards using raw food in a dish is that the ingredients are alive – all of the nutritional content is retained and it hasn’t been cooked out. There’s a real vitality and freshness about that kind of food.”

While her style of cooking may be unorthodox, Skye is keen to show off how the ingredients in Mother Nature’s pantry can taste amazing without boiling, searing or baking. “There was some resistance from the judges at first, but hopefully I’ll win them over,” admits Skye, adding that not everything she serves up is raw and she always cooks meat. “I’ll describe some of the raw desserts to someone and when they taste it, they can’t believe it’s a wild lime tart with macadamia splash. For something like that, I’ll blend avocado for the base – it’s great because of its natural fat content – then I’ll use the flesh and milk from a young coconut, and use a low GI sugar substitute. You’d be amazed just how beautiful blended avocado and lime can taste.”

Every time Skye creates one of her dishes, it’s in dedication to her younger sister Erin, who tragically died in 2002. Erin was devoted to the world of sustainable, organic and raw food movement, and her death inspired Skye to learn more about the style of cooking. “My sister, who I was very close to, passed away seven years ago when she was 26-years-old,” says Skye. “She was living in Indonesia and she got cerebral malaria. She had married an Indonesian just before she died and was pregnant at the time. It happened so quickly. We were best mates and it was a very challenging time to say the least.”

Understandably, her family was left shattered. “Food really ties in with all of this because my family needed a way to let go of our grief and we needed a way to re- juvenate and heal,” says Skye. “The whole raw food thing that my sister was really into played a part in that, along with yoga. Here, I’m cooking for my sister. I feel a lot closer to her when I’m cooking the way I do.” Skye has come along way since she learnt to make pikelets as a seven-year-old from a child’s cookbook that her mum gave her, and she hopes that MasterChef Australia will help her achieve her dream of opening a dessert bar in Brisbane.

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5:15pm Monday, July 19 on TV One

The MasterChef Australia judges are back to put Australian amateur chefs through their paces in one of television’s toughest challenges (tonight at 5pm on TV ONE).

Chef Gary Mehigan, owner of acclaimed Melbourne restaurants, Fenix and Maribyrnong Boathouse, joins 31-year-old restaurateur George Calombaris, owner of three Melbourne restaurants and one in Greece, together with internationally acclaimed and revered food critic Matt Preston to judge the hopeful chefs.

In the second series of MasterChef Australia, the challenges will be bigger, the expectations higher and the competition more intense. From testing challenges aboard a cruise ship, cooking off against world-renowned chefs, to tasks that will test their cooking creativity, this season’s batch of contestants will have to prove that they can handle the heat.

They will also be given the opportunity to learn from some of the best. For Mehigan, these contestants aren’t just vying for the coveted MasterChef title. They are his apprentices and he is their mentor. “I love teaching people stuff,” he says. “I want them to cook good food. You deliver the bad news first then give them the nice news afterwards. I never finish anything on a bad note.”

Fellow chef Calombaris agrees that being able to inspire the contestants gives him a kick. He also sees another positive effect from series that pulled in over four million viewers for the finale in Australia.

“It’s getting a generation of kids to eat better, understand about food better, and the only reason why I’ve worked that out is I have four nieces and nephews and I’ve been to all their schools. You go there and you hear kids talk about food.”

MasterChef Australia 2010 begins with the top 50 contestants cooking a barbeque dish of their own choosing. The ten contestants who cook the dishes the judges like the least have to face an elimination round.

Guest judge, cookbook author Donna Hay judges the contestants as they then have to recreate her special pavlova recipe, with the five best pavlovas earning their cooks a place in the next round; but the other five contestants will be sent home.

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