Premier chef and restaurateur, Matt Moran, gets down and
dirty to discover and cook with some of Australia’s home-grown treasures when
his brand new series, Paddock to Plate, premieres Wednesday,
November 6 at 8.30pm only on The LifeStyle Channel on Foxtel.
After 20-odd years in the food industry, Matt is leaving the kitchen and
chefs whites behind to embark on a road trip to meet the best growers,
producers and farmers that the East Coast of Australia has to offer. And once
he has his hands on their wares, he’ll cook up plenty of delicious dishes in
beautiful and unique locations.
Matt left school at
fifteen-years-old to start his apprenticeship as a chef and has never looked
back. He established his love and appreciation of fresh produce from an early
age growing up on a dairy farm, so it seemed only fitting that he get out of
the kitchen and discover food right at the source.
Matt said: “This is dream TV for
me. I’ve been in the food industry for a long time, but the people that I’ve
met and the knowledge I’ve been able to take from this experience, has been
incredible and so inspiring. It’s made me realise how beautiful and diverse the
country is and how lucky we are to have the produce we do.”
Filming Paddock to Plate was
an exciting journey of discovery for Matt, as he experienced for the first
time; milking a fresh water salmon and spit roasting a rare black pig. He faced his fear of (and his allergy to) bees to get some local honey straight
from the hive and faced his fear of sharks to dive for abalone. He makes his
first visit to an Ostrich farm, and cooks and tastes these birds for the first
time too. It was also a personal highlight to learn first-hand from the ladies
at Holy Goat Cheese how to make their prize winning La Luna and to tick off
truffle hunting from his ‘bucket list’.
The series takes Matt back to his
roots in the country, when he visits the town where he was born in Tamworth and
joins his father, Jim, and son, Harry, at the picturesque Moran Family Farm as
three-generations of Moran men cook some of the family’s famous lamb.
Paddock
to Plate has food at its heart but gets
under the skin of the people that produce it, like; Annie Smithers, who is
living and breathing a paddock-to-plate lifestyle – growing her own produce in
a one acre plot and feeding the locals in her own restaurant; fifth-generation
potato farmers Lola and Mal Orr – who at 70-years of age – are still working
the land growing and harvesting nine different varieties of potatoes. And snail
farmer, Robyn Shrader, who rebuilt her home and a snail farm after the Black Saturday bushfires
– and the farm, is thriving thanks to the snails surprisingly prolific sex
lives!
Paddock
to Plate is developed and produced
exclusively for The LifeStyle Channel, by ITV Studios Australia.
