Matt Preston unveils all in new memoir
MasterChef icon Matt Preston has spilled it all in his new memoir Big Mouth.
Speaking to news.com.au to promote his new memoir, the former MasterChef judge revealed the story behind the “secret hand gesture” he made on-screen.
“The first four years of MasterChef were shot in Sydney and my family lived in Melbourne,” he explained.
“So I had to find ways when she was watching the show, of letting her know that she was there.
“At that point, I used to wear two wedding rings on my left hand, so during tastings I would twist the ring on my finger … so that she could watch and know that I wasn’t just lost in some strange MasterChef celebrity bubble but I was actually remembering her.”
He also revealed a few behind the scenes secrets about MasterChef, including the tension between him and fellow judge Gary Mehigan in the first season.
“You have to understand that there is a fundamental cobra versus mongoose relationship between food critics and restaurateurs,” he explained,
He added that things might have been “a little frosty” between them because of a review he had written about one of Mehigan's restaurants in the past.
“I’m the guy who came to Gary’s restaurant, The Boathouse, and had a wobbly table and wrote about how wobbly my table was. He wasn’t happy.
“So there was a certain amount of professional suspicion, shall we say,” he laughed.
However, the pair have figured things out and Preston now considers Mehigan as “one of my most trusted friends”.
Preston also answered the one question viewers always ask in every season: “Don’t the dishes go cold before the judges have a chance to taste them?”
“We had a number of strategies to ensure that we could see the food in its best form,” Preston told the outlet.
One of those strategies was getting the contestants to make a second dish after the challenge ended, and tasting that first.
“We’d taste that in a speed tasting before we did the main tasting,” Preston said. “We would go around and look at things like how high the souffle had risen and were the chips crispy.”
“We were wandering around the whole time, you could see us in the back of each shot, poking into pots and tasting,” he said.
“All you’re trying to do is make the playing field for the contestants as even as possible.”
The memoir will be released on November 7 and also explores Preston's adoption, his fractured childhood and a few family tragedies.
Images: Getty