Quick Fire: 10 Questions with the MasterChef Judges

Sarah took 10 rapid-fire questions about cooking and entertaining to the four judges of MasterChef Australia and their answers are a rollicking good time!

POH LING YEOW

1. What’s your favourite dish you’ve eaten on the show this season?
Depinder’s Chiu Chow chilli ice cream.

2. What do you find most stressful around judging?
When it’s very close between two contestants and we can’t agree.

3. What brings you the most joy on the show?
Mentoring the contestants and then becoming friends.

4. Which of the contestants would you like to cook your dinner?
Sav. I’ve already put in a request!

5. What’s a food that you always have in your fridge or pantry that makes everything better?
Crispy chilli oil.

6. Who inspired your love of food and why?
Mum and Aunty Kim. Mum taught me precision and persistence because she was a fiendish baker. Even though I was tiny, she expected me to do things properly. Aunty Kim is 84 and still has an encyclopaedic memory for recipes. She can take three ingredients and make the most delicious thing.

7. What’s your favourite dining experience of all time?
I think the first time I finished a bowl of asam laksa. I was only about 6 and I was so proud because it was spicy as hell!

8. What’s your first food memory — traumatic or otherwise?
Helping to make Tong Yuen, little glutinous rice balls eaten with ginger pandan syrup on special occasions.

9. What’s the one thing you can’t/won’t eat?
I really struggle with goat’s cheese.

10. What’s your favourite music to cook to?
Old world jazz — Ella, Louis, Frank, Dean.

ANDY ALLEN

1. What’s your favourite dish you’ve eaten on the show this season?
The relay dish from Callum, Laura, Andre and Depinder — potato noodles, charred potato skin broth, whiting and pipis.

2. What do you find most stressful around judging?
The toughest part of judging is delivering feedback to a contestant when they haven’t smashed it out of the park. Especially if it’s a dish that is part of their family’s heritage.

3. What brings you the most joy on the show?
Seeing the contestants grow throughout the competition and realise their dreams can come true!

4. Which of the contestants would you like to cook your dinner?
Depinder. I can’t wait to get to her restaurant in Newcastle!

5. What’s a food that you always have in your fridge or pantry that makes everything better?
Anchovies.

6. Who inspired your love of food and why?
I owe everything to MasterChef. As soon as I walked through those doors in 2012, I knew that food was going to be my career for the rest of my life.

7. What’s your favourite dining experience of all time?
My wife and I had an unforgettable experience at Belcanto in Lisbon a couple of years ago.

8. What’s your first food memory — traumatic or otherwise?
My first and still very fond memories of food were going out fishing with my family back home as a young boy and cooking what we caught. Sometimes it was as simple as boiling up some blue swimmer crabs, piling them onto the middle of our dining room table covered in newspaper and sucking every last piece of meat from the crabs.

9. What’s the one thing you can’t/won’t eat?
Tubed wasabi.

10. What’s your favourite music to cook to?
Led Zeppelin IV.

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE NOVELLI

1. What’s your favourite dish you’ve eaten on the show this season?
All of the contestants in different stages of the series entirely impressed me and I felt very grateful. But the one that impressed me first and immediately was Pete Campbell. He is excellent in classic knowledge, fantastic at desserts.

2. What do you find most stressful around judging?
The bloody clock! Especially the last five minutes of every cook.

3. What brings you the most joy on the show?
Watching every one of the cooks excelling, also becoming more resilient and developing a quick sense of improvisation and creativity. This is what gives me the biggest thrill.

4. Which of the contestants would you like to cook your dinner?
So far, I would be delighted for any one of these talented contestants to cook my dinner. But you know what, we have an amazing food team behind the scenes who work like elites, and one of them is Cyril Quiquampoix. One day he gave me a slice of duck ballotine with liver and pistachio, followed by an ox cheek merlot stew with liquorice and baby onions — the most unexpected, delicious treat.

5. What’s a food that you always have in your fridge or pantry that makes everything better?
There’s always organic milk, Comté or Beaufort cheese, and proper cornichons. Importantly, there is always something seasonal welcome in the fridge.

6. Who inspired your love of food and why?
My mum, my auntie Louisette and my grandmothers. My five senses were not developed at the time, but somehow I managed to memorise everything.

7. What’s your favourite dining experience of all time?
Marco Pierre White at Harveys in 1985 before he got his first Michelin star. I was honestly blown away by everything, including the service.

8. What’s your first food memory — traumatic or otherwise?
Anything my mum used to cook was always pleasurable. The most traumatic was a crushed banana sandwich with sugar — oxidised, gluey and disgusting!

9. What’s the one thing you can’t/won’t eat?
Anything that contains a surprising hair.

10. What’s your favourite music to cook to?
If I use music, it has to be my daughter Christina Novelli’s Rising Up.

SOFIA LEVIN

1. What’s your favourite dish you’ve eaten on the show this season?
This is too hard a question — in the first couple of weeks alone we ate hundreds of dishes.

2. What do you find most stressful around judging?
Providing the contestants with the clearest, most valuable feedback I can, balanced with the fact that it’s a television show and we need to entertain viewers too.

3. What brings you the most joy on the show?
Two things: watching the contestants grow exponentially in the MasterChef kitchen and working alongside Poh Poh!

4. Which of the contestants would you like to cook your dinner?
Honestly, any of them. But I love unfamiliar dishes with a personal or cultural story — so Snez, Depinder or Samira.

5. What’s a food that you always have in your fridge or pantry that makes everything better?
A range of spicy condiments — chilli crisp, Sichuan oil and sauces from Mexico or South America.

6. Who inspired your love of food and why?
My family — their contagious enthusiasm for food and the way we’ve always gathered around the table.

7. What’s your favourite dining experience of all time?
Every food experience is a stitch in a tapestry that’s come together over my entire life.

8. What’s your first food memory — traumatic or otherwise?
Going to a local Italian restaurant for daddy-daughter dates and ordering “square noo-noos” (ravioli).

9. What’s the one thing you can’t/won’t eat?
Persian fairy floss. I can’t understand why anyone would want to eat sugar with the texture of hair.

10. What’s your favourite music to cook to?
Jazz and soul.