Meet the Masterchef
Natalie Coleman positively gushes when you ask her about food. ‘The other day I had massive beetroot cravings,’ she reveals, ‘and I also went through a stage of having cucumber cravings. I’m not pregnant,’ she affirms, ‘I just always know what I want to eat.’
Six months ago, this 30-year-old from Hackney became the third woman to win the hugely popular MasterChef series. For Natalie, the victory had been a long time coming. ‘I applied to the series five times,’ she says, ‘and they finally let me on. The whole experience was surreal. When I first saw John [Torode] and Gregg [Wallace] it felt like I was watching TV, except I was on the TV!’
Natalie won over audiences with her no-nonsense East London charm and the notoriously strident judges also said many nice things about her various creations, including her twist on a roast dinner with a Scotch egg, which won her the series. ‘I just think of things I like eating or that people in my life would like to eat,’ she says.
Natalie grew up cooking with her grandmother, and her grandfather Chris was a reliable tester throughout filming. Natalie would turn up at his flat in Hackney at all hours, desperate for him to try something, and he would always happily oblige. (‘She manages to make everything tasty,’ he said in an interview at the time.)
For Natalie, it is the eater’s reaction that fuels her passion. ‘It’s making other people happy, that’s what I like. When I have people over for dinner, I end up not eating much myself. But when everyone is really enjoying it, that is what makes me happy.’
She mentions that just the other night she cooked for her parents (David, a black-cab driver and Mary, a housewife) and received a particularly gratifying reaction. ‘I cooked them some Moroccan lamb and couscous. My dad doesn’t like couscous normally, but he ate everything and liked it all,’ she smiles.
The 5.5 million-strong audience found out she was the MasterChef victor at the start of the summer, but Natalie herself found out in December last year. The victory, of course, was shrouded in secrecy for months.
‘I stopped going out for a while,’ she says matter-of-factly. That’s not to say she wasn’t busy, however. Two weeks after filming wrapped up, she and the other two finalists – Larkin Cen and Dale Williams – began penning the MasterChef cookery book. Each chef contributed 30 recipes, with Natalie’s showcasing her inventive spins on classic British food. Standout dishes include beetroot and goat’s cheese risotto, beef and oysters, and her granddad’s favourite meal – panfried sea bass with fennel.
Since winning, life has been transformed for this former credit controller and part-time DJ. She has cooked in the kitchens with some of the biggest names in the business, including Michel Roux Jr, Tom Kerridge, Theo Randall and Marcus Wareing. It’s an industry with more than its fair share of testosterone, but Natalie is relishing it. ‘I couldn’t be around girly girls all day worrying about breaking their nails, that would do my head in,’ she states. ‘I’d much rather be with the boys.’ She has special affection for the boys in Kerridge’s kitchen. ‘They’re a right laugh – and they have drum and bass on in the kitchen!’
Thomasina Miers went on to open the Wahaca chain of restaurants after she won in 2005, but Natalie is still deciding what direction she wants to take. ‘I want to do everything. I’ve been doing some teaching in schools, and I’d love to do more of that. There’s also the Good Food Show, as well as going round the country doing work experience with the chefs.’
Wherever her new career takes her, Natalie could not be happier that she persevered with getting on the show. ‘It just goes to show that if you keep trying at something, you can do anything. It’s confirmed my belief that I want to cook every day.’
With many more dishes ahead of her, is there anything she won’t eat? ‘Celery,’ she says gravely. ‘It’s the devil’s food.’
MasterChef: The Finalists, with photography by David Loftus, is published by Absolute Press, £20.
Serves 4
For the honey mustard sauce
For the apple sauce
For the black pudding Scotch eggs
For the caramelised shallots
For the sous-vide pork tenderloin
For the pomme purée
For the cabbage
To make the honey mustard sauce, heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and brown the trotter, pork offcuts and bones, and the trimmings from the tenderloin with the sprig of thyme. Tip into a pressure cooker. Brown the pork mince in the same frying pan, adding a bit more olive oil if necessary. You want the mince to be a bit crispy. Deglaze the pan with a little of the chicken stock, then add to the pressure cooker. Soften the onion and carrot in the frying pan with a little more olive oil for 5 mins. Add to the pressure cooker along with the rest of the chicken stock and the bay leaf. Bring up to pressure and cook on the hob for 1 hour. (If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can use a large stock pot, covered tightly. Cooking time will be 2-3 hours – check the depth of flavour after 2 hours.)
Strain through a sieve into a clean pan; discard the contents of the sieve. Bring to the boil and boil to reduce by half. Add the mustard and honey and nish with the butter and a good grinding of pepper. Set aside, ready to reheat for serving.
To make the roast pork belly, preheat the oven to 160C/gas mark 3. Score the skin of the pork belly using a Stanley knife, or ask your butcher to do this for you. Pat dry, then season the flesh side with salt and pepper. Drizzle olive oil over the skin and sprinkle with salt and the thyme leaves, rubbing these into the skin and pressing into the scores. Place skin-side up in a baking tray and roast for 1½ hours.
Turn the oven up to 190C/ gas mark 5 and roast for a further 25 mins. If the crackling is not crisp enough, remove it from the belly and roast for 10 more mins. Leave the pork belly to rest, covered with foil, for 15 mins before carving. While the belly is roasting, prepare the other elements of the dish.
To make the apple sauce, put the apples into a saucepan with 5 tbsp water and the lemon juice. Cook gently for 10-15 mins or until the apples collapse. Whisk in the butter and sugar, and season with salt and pepper. Set aside, ready to reheat for serving (or you can serve the sauce cold if you prefer).
To make the black pudding Scotch eggs, bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Add 1 tbsp salt and the quail’s eggs and cook for 1 min 55 seconds. Remove the eggs and plunge them into a bowl of iced water. Add the vinegar to the bowl and set aside in the fridge for 1 hour (to make the eggs easier to peel).
Put the black pudding and sausage meat in a food processor and blitz until they are mixed together well. Shape the mixture into four small balls and atten out on a sheet of cling film. Peel the eggs, then carefully wrap in the black-pudding mixture, moulding into four smooth balls. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Before serving, dust with seasoned our, then dip into beaten egg and, finally, coat with breadcrumbs. Heat oil for deep-frying to 180C. Fry the Scotch eggs for 3-4 mins or until golden brown all over. Drain on kitchen paper and keep hot.
To make the caramelised shallots, put the peeled shallots in a saucepan with the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 25-30 mins or until softened. Drain. Slice the shallots vertically in half and set aside. Before serving, reheat in a pan with the butter to caramelise the cut surface and season.
To make the sous-vide tenderloin, season the tenderloin with salt and pepper, then put into a vacuum bag with the cider and cook in a water bath at 68C for 1 hour. If you don’t have a vacuum-pack machine and a water bath, you can use a deep saucepan, a digital thermometer and some cling film. Marinate the tenderloin in the cider overnight, then tightly wrap in three layers of cling film. Pierce the cling film with a skewer to release any air before wrapping up in a final thin layer of cling film to seal. Heat a deep saucepan of water to 68C, then reduce the heat to maintain this temperature. Place the parcel into the pan of water and cook for 45 mins to 1 hour, monitoring the temperature the whole time with the thermometer.
When the tenderloin is cooked (you want to serve it a little pink), remove it from the vacuum bag or cling film.
Heat the butter in a frying pan and lightly brown the tenderloin on all sides. Season to taste, then keep hot.
To make the pomme purée, put the whole, unpeeled potatoes into a pan of boiling water, add the Maldon salt and cook for 40-50 mins or until softened. Drain. When cool enough to handle, peel the potatoes, then press through a potato ricer into a pan or bowl. Heat the butter with the cream in a pan, then whisk into the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Keep hot.
Now blanch the cabbage in a pan of boiling water for 3 mins, then drain well. Just before serving, heat in a pan with the butter and season with salt and pepper.
To serve, cut the pork belly into four neat rectangles. Slice the tenderloin on the diagonal, portion into four and place on the plates. Add a teardrop shape of pomme purée on each plate, a Scotch egg, randomly scatter some shallots and add a spoonful of the apple sauce. Scatter the cabbage over the top and garnish with pea shoots. Drizzle some honey mustard around the ingredients.
Serves 4
For the blueberry compote
To make the rice pudding, put the rice, milk, caster sugar and coconut milk in a saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod and add to the pan along with the pod. Cook gently for about 20 mins or until the rice has softened; stir every few minutes so the rice doesn’t catch on the bottom of the pan. When the rice is ready, remove from the heat and keep warm.
To make the blueberry compote, put the blueberries (reserve a few for garnish) in a saucepan with the caster sugar and orange peel. Heat for 2-4 mins or until the blueberries start to release their juices and become jam-like. Remove the orange peel and set the compote aside until ready to serve.
Toast the macadamia nuts in a frying pan, then pulse in a food processor until roughly chopped. Set aside.
Toast the desiccated coconut in the frying pan for 20 seconds, keeping an eye on it as it can burn quickly. Tip on to a plate and leave to cool.
To serve, spoon a layer of rice pudding into each serving glass, then add a layer of blueberry compote. Add another layer of rice, followed by a layer of compote and a nal layer of rice. Top with toasted coconut, macadamia nuts, the reserved whole blueberries and orange zest. This is best served warm, but cold is nice too.
Six months ago, this 30-year-old from Hackney became the third woman to win the hugely popular MasterChef series. For Natalie, the victory had been a long time coming. ‘I applied to the series five times,’ she says, ‘and they finally let me on. The whole experience was surreal. When I first saw John [Torode] and Gregg [Wallace] it felt like I was watching TV, except I was on the TV!’
Natalie won over audiences with her no-nonsense East London charm and the notoriously strident judges also said many nice things about her various creations, including her twist on a roast dinner with a Scotch egg, which won her the series. ‘I just think of things I like eating or that people in my life would like to eat,’ she says.
Natalie grew up cooking with her grandmother, and her grandfather Chris was a reliable tester throughout filming. Natalie would turn up at his flat in Hackney at all hours, desperate for him to try something, and he would always happily oblige. (‘She manages to make everything tasty,’ he said in an interview at the time.)
For Natalie, it is the eater’s reaction that fuels her passion. ‘It’s making other people happy, that’s what I like. When I have people over for dinner, I end up not eating much myself. But when everyone is really enjoying it, that is what makes me happy.’
She mentions that just the other night she cooked for her parents (David, a black-cab driver and Mary, a housewife) and received a particularly gratifying reaction. ‘I cooked them some Moroccan lamb and couscous. My dad doesn’t like couscous normally, but he ate everything and liked it all,’ she smiles.
The 5.5 million-strong audience found out she was the MasterChef victor at the start of the summer, but Natalie herself found out in December last year. The victory, of course, was shrouded in secrecy for months.
‘I stopped going out for a while,’ she says matter-of-factly. That’s not to say she wasn’t busy, however. Two weeks after filming wrapped up, she and the other two finalists – Larkin Cen and Dale Williams – began penning the MasterChef cookery book. Each chef contributed 30 recipes, with Natalie’s showcasing her inventive spins on classic British food. Standout dishes include beetroot and goat’s cheese risotto, beef and oysters, and her granddad’s favourite meal – panfried sea bass with fennel.
Since winning, life has been transformed for this former credit controller and part-time DJ. She has cooked in the kitchens with some of the biggest names in the business, including Michel Roux Jr, Tom Kerridge, Theo Randall and Marcus Wareing. It’s an industry with more than its fair share of testosterone, but Natalie is relishing it. ‘I couldn’t be around girly girls all day worrying about breaking their nails, that would do my head in,’ she states. ‘I’d much rather be with the boys.’ She has special affection for the boys in Kerridge’s kitchen. ‘They’re a right laugh – and they have drum and bass on in the kitchen!’
Thomasina Miers went on to open the Wahaca chain of restaurants after she won in 2005, but Natalie is still deciding what direction she wants to take. ‘I want to do everything. I’ve been doing some teaching in schools, and I’d love to do more of that. There’s also the Good Food Show, as well as going round the country doing work experience with the chefs.’
Wherever her new career takes her, Natalie could not be happier that she persevered with getting on the show. ‘It just goes to show that if you keep trying at something, you can do anything. It’s confirmed my belief that I want to cook every day.’
With many more dishes ahead of her, is there anything she won’t eat? ‘Celery,’ she says gravely. ‘It’s the devil’s food.’
MasterChef: The Finalists, with photography by David Loftus, is published by Absolute Press, £20.
ROAST PORK BELLY, SOUSVIDE PORK TENDERLOIN, BLACK PUDDING SCOTCH EGG, POMME PUREE, CARAMELISED BABY SHALLOTS, SAVOY CABBAGE, APPLE SAUCE AND HONEY MUSTARD SAUCE
Serves 4 - 1 x 600g piece pork belly
- olive oil, for drizzling
- leaves of 4 sprigs of thyme
- pea shoots, to garnish
For the honey mustard sauce
- olive oil, for frying
- 1 pig’s trotter, split and chopped into 6 pieces
- 1kg pork offcuts and bones (ask the butcher for these)
- 1 sprig of thyme
- 200g pork mince
- 500ml chicken stock
- 1 large white onion, roughly chopped
- 1 large carrot, roughly chopped
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 tbsp wholegrain mustard
- 1 tbsp honey
- a knob of unsalted butter
For the apple sauce
- 2 big Bramley apples, peeled, cored and chopped
- juice of ½ lemon
- 50g unsalted butter
- 1 tsp caster sugar
For the black pudding Scotch eggs
- 4 quail’s eggs
- 3 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 150g black pudding, roughly chopped
- 300g pork sausage meat
- seasoned flour
- 2 eggs, beaten
- fine dry breadcrumbs
- oil for deep-frying
For the caramelised shallots
- 12 baby shallots, peeled
- 250ml chicken stock
- a knob of unsalted butter
For the sous-vide pork tenderloin
- 1 large pork tenderloin (fillet), 600g, trimmed (reserve the trimmings for the sauce)
- 150ml good-quality apple cider
- a knob of unsalted butter
For the pomme purée
- 800g large Maris Piper potatoes
- a handful of Maldon salt
- 50g unsalted butter
- 75ml double cream
For the cabbage
- 100g Savoy cabbage, finely sliced
- a knob of butter
- salt and pepper to taste
To make the honey mustard sauce, heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and brown the trotter, pork offcuts and bones, and the trimmings from the tenderloin with the sprig of thyme. Tip into a pressure cooker. Brown the pork mince in the same frying pan, adding a bit more olive oil if necessary. You want the mince to be a bit crispy. Deglaze the pan with a little of the chicken stock, then add to the pressure cooker. Soften the onion and carrot in the frying pan with a little more olive oil for 5 mins. Add to the pressure cooker along with the rest of the chicken stock and the bay leaf. Bring up to pressure and cook on the hob for 1 hour. (If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can use a large stock pot, covered tightly. Cooking time will be 2-3 hours – check the depth of flavour after 2 hours.)
Strain through a sieve into a clean pan; discard the contents of the sieve. Bring to the boil and boil to reduce by half. Add the mustard and honey and nish with the butter and a good grinding of pepper. Set aside, ready to reheat for serving.
To make the roast pork belly, preheat the oven to 160C/gas mark 3. Score the skin of the pork belly using a Stanley knife, or ask your butcher to do this for you. Pat dry, then season the flesh side with salt and pepper. Drizzle olive oil over the skin and sprinkle with salt and the thyme leaves, rubbing these into the skin and pressing into the scores. Place skin-side up in a baking tray and roast for 1½ hours.
Turn the oven up to 190C/ gas mark 5 and roast for a further 25 mins. If the crackling is not crisp enough, remove it from the belly and roast for 10 more mins. Leave the pork belly to rest, covered with foil, for 15 mins before carving. While the belly is roasting, prepare the other elements of the dish.
To make the apple sauce, put the apples into a saucepan with 5 tbsp water and the lemon juice. Cook gently for 10-15 mins or until the apples collapse. Whisk in the butter and sugar, and season with salt and pepper. Set aside, ready to reheat for serving (or you can serve the sauce cold if you prefer).
To make the black pudding Scotch eggs, bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Add 1 tbsp salt and the quail’s eggs and cook for 1 min 55 seconds. Remove the eggs and plunge them into a bowl of iced water. Add the vinegar to the bowl and set aside in the fridge for 1 hour (to make the eggs easier to peel).
Put the black pudding and sausage meat in a food processor and blitz until they are mixed together well. Shape the mixture into four small balls and atten out on a sheet of cling film. Peel the eggs, then carefully wrap in the black-pudding mixture, moulding into four smooth balls. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Before serving, dust with seasoned our, then dip into beaten egg and, finally, coat with breadcrumbs. Heat oil for deep-frying to 180C. Fry the Scotch eggs for 3-4 mins or until golden brown all over. Drain on kitchen paper and keep hot.
To make the caramelised shallots, put the peeled shallots in a saucepan with the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 25-30 mins or until softened. Drain. Slice the shallots vertically in half and set aside. Before serving, reheat in a pan with the butter to caramelise the cut surface and season.
To make the sous-vide tenderloin, season the tenderloin with salt and pepper, then put into a vacuum bag with the cider and cook in a water bath at 68C for 1 hour. If you don’t have a vacuum-pack machine and a water bath, you can use a deep saucepan, a digital thermometer and some cling film. Marinate the tenderloin in the cider overnight, then tightly wrap in three layers of cling film. Pierce the cling film with a skewer to release any air before wrapping up in a final thin layer of cling film to seal. Heat a deep saucepan of water to 68C, then reduce the heat to maintain this temperature. Place the parcel into the pan of water and cook for 45 mins to 1 hour, monitoring the temperature the whole time with the thermometer.
When the tenderloin is cooked (you want to serve it a little pink), remove it from the vacuum bag or cling film.
Heat the butter in a frying pan and lightly brown the tenderloin on all sides. Season to taste, then keep hot.
To make the pomme purée, put the whole, unpeeled potatoes into a pan of boiling water, add the Maldon salt and cook for 40-50 mins or until softened. Drain. When cool enough to handle, peel the potatoes, then press through a potato ricer into a pan or bowl. Heat the butter with the cream in a pan, then whisk into the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Keep hot.
Now blanch the cabbage in a pan of boiling water for 3 mins, then drain well. Just before serving, heat in a pan with the butter and season with salt and pepper.
To serve, cut the pork belly into four neat rectangles. Slice the tenderloin on the diagonal, portion into four and place on the plates. Add a teardrop shape of pomme purée on each plate, a Scotch egg, randomly scatter some shallots and add a spoonful of the apple sauce. Scatter the cabbage over the top and garnish with pea shoots. Drizzle some honey mustard around the ingredients.
COCONUT RICE PUDDING WITH BLUEBERRY COMPOTE AND MACADAMIA NUTS
Serves 4 - 200g pudding rice
- 300ml whole milk
- 80g caster sugar
- 1 x 400ml can coconut milk
- 1 vanilla pod, split open
- 50g macadamia nuts
- 20g desiccated coconut
- fine strips of orange zest, to garnish
For the blueberry compote
- 250g blueberries
- 1 tbsp caster sugar
- 2 strips of orange peel
To make the rice pudding, put the rice, milk, caster sugar and coconut milk in a saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod and add to the pan along with the pod. Cook gently for about 20 mins or until the rice has softened; stir every few minutes so the rice doesn’t catch on the bottom of the pan. When the rice is ready, remove from the heat and keep warm.
To make the blueberry compote, put the blueberries (reserve a few for garnish) in a saucepan with the caster sugar and orange peel. Heat for 2-4 mins or until the blueberries start to release their juices and become jam-like. Remove the orange peel and set the compote aside until ready to serve.
Toast the macadamia nuts in a frying pan, then pulse in a food processor until roughly chopped. Set aside.
Toast the desiccated coconut in the frying pan for 20 seconds, keeping an eye on it as it can burn quickly. Tip on to a plate and leave to cool.
To serve, spoon a layer of rice pudding into each serving glass, then add a layer of blueberry compote. Add another layer of rice, followed by a layer of compote and a nal layer of rice. Top with toasted coconut, macadamia nuts, the reserved whole blueberries and orange zest. This is best served warm, but cold is nice too.