TV’s gourmet cooking judge Gary Mehigan has some stiff foodie competition in his home kitchen, he tells Lucy Chesterton.
Many eight-year-olds struggle to make a chicken sandwich, but little Jenna Mehigan has already mastered an Indian butter chicken curry.
Then again, not every child gets a masterclass each night as Dad explains the right size to cut vegetables and how long meat should rest before serving.
“I am very pushy in the family kitchen,” MasterChef’s loveable judge Gary Mehigan, 43, says with a grin.
Mandy, Gary’s wife of 19 years, has to agree. “Gary is always pushing me out of the kitchen!” she laughs.
Gary’s culinary creativity hasn’t been hampered by his plastered knee, the legacy of a nasty fall he had while taping the new series of MasterChef, due to air on Network Ten later this year, but the family don’t expect posh meals every day.
“We tend to favour family-style dishes at home,” says Gary. “Spaghetti and meatballs are a definite winner.” And it’s this simple style of fare that has inspired his latest cookbook, Comfort Food (Penguin Books), crammed with recipes for such traditional family meals as lamb stew and chicken pie.
Read the full story in this week's Woman's Day, on sale March 29, 2010.
