Back to the classroom for MasterChef hopeful Matt
BBCAn IT teacher from Bradford is heading back to the classroom after falling at the first hurdle in TV show MasterChef.
Forty-one-year-old Matt failed to secure an apron on Tuesday's show, which saw some of the country's best amateur cooks go head-to-head in the first round of the kitchen contest.
Matt earned praise for his signature dish, a dessert described by judge Grace Dent as a treat for "real chocolate lovers", but she was less complimentary about the "vicious" hollandaise sauce he concocted in the next challenge.
Matt said: "I have had such a nice time, I have put out some dishes which I would have eaten - maybe even my dog would have eaten - so I have got to be happy with that."
Matt, a self-confessed "picky eater" in his youth, said he only began cooking during the coronavirus lockdown.
"What started as something to pass the time quickly turned into a bit of an obsession," he said.
"Cooking has become the way I relax, experiment and bring people together and I've gone from being a picky eater to eating everything."
Matt's signature dish was a dark chocolate delice topped with tahini cream and a brown butter tuile, served with a black sesame and praline crumb, fresh blackberries on blackberry gel and a miso caramel sauce.
When that was not enough to see him through to the second round, he and the remaining contestants were tasked with preparing a classic recipe.
Using a threadbare recipe with measurements and some instructions withheld, they had to prepare an Irish potato cake with smoked salmon, wilted spinach and hollandaise.
Dent was less than impressed with the taste of Matt's sauce, with her fellow judge, chef Anna Haugh, slightly more diplomatic in her assessment, describing it as "unpleasant".
"When I saw all those ingredients on the table my heart absolutely sank because I thought, 'this is not going to go well'," Matt admitted.
Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
