MASTERCHEF finalist Michael Weldon will cook up a storm at the Henty Machinery Field Days’ Farm Gate Produce Market kitchen this week.
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Weldon will prepare pot roasted sausages with tomatoes and sage, marinated butterflied lamb leg with flat bread and green sauce and beef chilli with sour cream and rice during the field days.
He will be on deck in the kitchen at 11am and 1pm on Wednesday and from 11am until 2.30pm on Thursday.
Weldon is in charge of the food for Adelaide’s Crab Shack, a large outdoor bar and restaurant specialising in local seafood cooked with an American influence.
He also takes the lead for the Royal Croquet Club, a month-long festival venue located in Adelaide’s Victoria Square and catering for up to 5000 visitors during the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
He works regularly with Coles Supermarkets on projects such as the Gluten Free Expos around Australia, working with Coles butchers during their training programs and on charity events and dinners. Although a keen cook from an early age, Weldon’s passion for food didn’t take off until he entered the 2011 season of MasterChef Australia.
His runner-up finish was enough to instil a desire to cook food for a living.
After MasterChef, Weldon spent time in high-profile kitchens around Australia learning from some of the finest chefs.
After long stints in Melbourne and Sydney, Weldon returned to his hometown of Adelaide and began working on new cooking opportunities.
He has since opened a burger bar, a catering business and works as a consultant to other food businesses.
Another MasterChef finalist Courtney Roulston will create for Henty visitors lamb, carrot and mixed quinoa salad with carrot top pesto; Angus beef meatball salad and Vitello tonnato with eggs and capers.
Raised on a hobby farm in the western suburbs of Sydney, Roulston made the finals of MasterChef series two in 2010.
She had spent the previous 11 years as bar manager at a Sydney lawn bowls club and was plucked from among thousands of applicants for the cooking show.
“Dad was a greyhound trainer so we had about 20 dogs, geese, chooks and my own cow to milk,’’ she said.
“As the chooks slowly disappeared, the area was rotary hoed into a vegetable garden.
“Dad did most of the cooking at home – I was the youngest of six so was the first one home from school and was given the instructions on how to put the lamb in the oven for tea.
“It got me out of doing homework and I enjoyed it.’’
