6 1GT Thursday July 30 2020 | the times

the table

sponge with crème pâtissière and

pistachio, flavoured with anise and

macerated strawberries soaked in

ouzo. I had to pipe on some double

cream and top everything with

caramel spikes.”

A challenge, even in a well-equipped

kitchen, but Tzortzoglou still had to

drive it on the back seat of their car

to Scotland. “When we pulled up,

the crème pâtissière was looking a

bit sad. I thought, ‘This is not good

enough. It’s over.’ ”

Of course, the panel didn’t see it

that way and Tzortzoglou was

accepted as a contestant. Perhaps it

wasn’t just the pudding. After all, she

sets great store by the Greek

ingredient meraki. It’s not something

you put in food. There is no direct

translation in English, but it is roughly

the equivalent of “soul” or “passion”.

“If you’ve ever been dragged into a

taverna, plied with food and drink,

danced and cried, you’ve felt it,” she

says. Even on a buffering Zoom

connection, Tzortzoglou throbs with it.

Filming started in September 2018

and sometimes her meraki dial

went into the red. Tzortzoglou is a

perfectionist, and even if they didn’t,

she felt things were going wrong. In

her first task she was required to make

a lemon tart with a citrus sorbet. The

tart, she felt, lacked zest. She asked

to go home.

“John Torode gave me some good

advice. He said, ‘Why don’t you let me

‘I

t was the worst I have ever

felt,” says Irini Tzortzoglou,

reflecting on her recent

illness. “One bedtime I said

to my husband, John, ‘If

anything happens to me in

the night then I am happy

and I’ve enjoyed my life.’ I

thought I was going to die.”

There’s no good time to fall seriously

ill, but 2020 really ought to have been

the 62-year-old Greek cook’s year.

After she won MasterChef in 2019 with

her extraordinary take on her native

cuisine, TV companies, publishers and

big-name hotels who wanted her as a

guest chef had immediately come

calling, but her moment in the

spotlight was cruelly cut short.

No sooner was Tzortzoglou crowned

champion than, back in Crete, her

mother suffered a fall and was taken to

hospital. Sadly, she died in July 2019.

Then in March this year Tzortzoglou

contracted what, according to her

doctor, was probably an acute case of

Covid-19 — most likely from her

husband, who, shortly before

lockdown, had travelled from their

home in Cartmel in the Lake District

to see a friend in London. This friend

had been skiing in northern Italy and

subsequently fell ill with the virus.

Her husband, it seems, returned to

their Lake District home

asymptomatic. She was less fortunate.

“As my symptoms developed, I

couldn’t even stand in the shower,”

Tzortzoglou says. “For a month all I

could bear to consume was apples and

water with lemon. I felt like my heart

might stop at any moment.”

She still sounds a little raspy from

a secondary chest infection, but is

thankful to have suffered no other

lasting ill effects. “Now I am just

happy to be alive and have a second

chance,” she says. “We have both been

very careful because there are a lot of

elderly people in the village and the

virus could do terrible damage. Don’t

take risks. It is a horrible experience.”

Tzortzoglou was born into village

life. She grew up in the tiny Cretan

village of Ano Akria (population 35),

where once a week all the local

families baked together at one house

because it had an oven and many

didn’t have one of their own. Despite

widespread poverty, there was

plentiful produce in the fields. Even

now her brother Yiorgos runs a

smallholding and will delay lunch by

half an hour to ripen the tomatoes to

the exact moment of perfection.

She has just written her first

cookbook, Under the Olive Tree:

Recipes From My Greek Kitchen, a

tribute to the family and culture that

brought her up, as well as a guide to

some of the refined cooking she has

learnt more recently. However, for a

long period after her move to the UK

from Crete in 1980, she all but

abandoned her vocation.

The MasterChef ’s masterclass

After she was crowned champion of the

TV show in 2019, Irini Tzortzoglou’s

year was marred by tragedy. Now she’s

just happy to be alive. By Michael Odell

“During my first marriage I

embraced the traditional role of Greek

wife and cooked a three-course meal

every night for my British husband,

Ian. But he started to complain I was

making him fat, so I stopped and

focused on other things. My cooking

instinct lay dormant,” she says.

Fast-forward to 2009, and after 30

years working at a bank in London,

Tzortzoglou and her second husband,

John, decided to leave the capital and

move to the Lake District. It’s a foodie

paradise — Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume,

famous since its appearance in Steve

Coogan and Rob Brydon’s TV series

The Trip, is in the same village — and

Tzortzoglou was soon getting restless.

“I wanted to start a business, but

my mother wasn’t very well and there

was lots of travelling backwards and

forwards to Crete,” she says. “Still, I

had this urge to express myself.”

One evening in 2017 she and John

were arguing. He still got to travel with

his work. She was bored. He had

noticed her avid attention whenever

the MasterChef judges John Torode

and Gregg Wallace were solemnly

tasting a contestant’s dish. He told her

to have a go. “I thought, ‘Could I?’ It

had been a long time since I’d taken

cooking seriously.”

Before she had even filled out an

application form, Tzortzoglou was

obsessed. It’s hard not to imagine the

theme tune to the film Rocky as she

recounts her training regimen.

“I said to John, ‘First, we need to

redesign the kitchen. MasterChef uses

induction hobs and we don’t have

one. And I don’t know anything

about molecular cooking, so I’ll

need a kit from Ferran Adrià [with

his brother Albert, the former owner

of the world-renowned El Bulli

restaurant and a pioneer of molecular

gastronomy] and a dehydrator [an

apparatus for drying fruit skins and

flower petals for decoration].’ ”

They spent £27,000 refitting their

kitchen. In total, Tzortzoglou

estimates that her assault on the title

cost her £40,000. “I wanted to go from

someone who could put together a

good mezze to mastering molecular

gastronomy and sous-vide cooking,”

she says. “But yes, I went a bit crazy.”

Just to push herself a bit harder,

Tzortzoglou told all her friends and

family she intended to compete and,

for her 60th birthday in February

2018, she was inundated with new

spatulas, aprons and whisks. Finally,

after nine months of practice, she

filled out the application form in June

2018 and underwent two exploratory

telephone interviews. “When I told

them about my kitchen, I think they

sensed my passion,” she says, giggling.

By August she had been selected for

an hour-long screen test 170 miles

away in Edinburgh. The test? Bring a

stunning pudding to the TV studio and

plate it in front of a panel. “I made a

DAVID LOFTUS

Ingredients

2 tsp dried active yeast

A pinch of caster sugar

300ml warm water

500g plain flour

100ml extra virgin olive oil

A pinch of salt

30g stoned kalamata olives

A few fresh rosemary sprigs

Fleur de sel and extra virgin

olive oil, for sprinkling

Method

1 In a bowl, mix the yeast and

sugar with the warm water.

Cover and put in a warm place

for about 15 min, or until you

see bubbles on the surface.

2 Place the flour, olive oil and

a pinch of salt in the bowl of a

stand mixer and add the yeast

liquid. Using the dough hook,

knead the dough for 5 min at a

medium speed. Alternatively,

knead it by hand on a floured

surface for about 20 min, until

it is shiny and elastic.

3 Place the dough in a clean

bowl with a little oil, cover the

bowl with clingfilm, then a dry

tea towel, and leave in a warm

place for 1 hour, until it has

risen to double its original size.

4 Knead gently again, then

shape into a flat piece about

2cm deep and place it on a

baking tray lined with baking

parchment. Gently push the

olives and rosemary tips into

the dough, sprinkle with a little

fleur de sel and extra virgin

olive oil, cover with a slightly

dampened tea towel, and leave

for 30-60 min to rise.

5 Preheat the oven to 200C/

gas 6. Put the bread into the

oven and bake for about 30-

min. Remove when it is golden

in colour and hollow-sounding

when you tap it underneath.

Olive and rosemary bread

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Irini Tzortzoglou