Larissa Takchi - affectionately known as Larry - took out season 11 of the hit cooking show MasterChef last week, catapulting to the top of the leaderboard with a Szechuan Pavlova finished with a beetroot and blackberry sorbet, beetroot syrup and lemon cream.
The dish may have been an unusual combination, but the judges awarded her perfect score of 30/30, which helped her scored an impressive 85/90 in a three-course service challenge.
The win cemented the 22-year-old's spot as the competition's youngest-ever winner.
"It was hard being the youngest, I was dealing with contestants who are much older than me. With age, you’re more exposed to the food industry so when I joined, in the beginning, I was trying to find out what I was good at," she told SBS Arabic24.
"It worked as an advantage. Sweet and savoury, I was like a sponge soaking up all the knowledge. I was trying to find myself there."
Since filming wrapped up months ago, the young chef has kept busy working at Fred’s in Paddington as well as helping out at the family cafe, The Wild Pear in Dural, north-west Sydney.
While she got to show off her skills in the kitchen in front of the camera, her love for cooking began in her formative years.
"He [grandfather] had a stone fruit farm in Glenorie, which is about five minutes away from where I live now. I lived on that stone fruit farm for about 10 years of my life," she said.
"Both of my grandparents moved from Lebanon to Australia as migrants. They had to do something to make a living in a foreign land, so my grandfather started to build a farm and a nursery at the same time; 23 acres of land. A lot of that was peaches, plums, cucumbers. A lot of fresh produce that I grew up seeing as a child.
"A lot of my happy memories were there. My grandmother used to yell at me for picking the peaches too early off the tree and grandpa had to sell them at the market the next day.
"My passion for cooking started at a very young age, I was brought up on a stone fruit farm; my grandfather’s farm. I had this connection with food, you know, watching the food grow."
Ms Takchi said her Lebanese heritage attributed to her passion for food.
Source: Instagram: masterchefau
"Everything about my culture, being Lebanese, I was brought up in such a beautiful, amazing, huge family culture that celebrates food on every occasion," she said.
"My mother is a foodie. She’s opened up a restaurant in Dural and I’ve been working there for a very long time, and my love of food just grew from there as well."
Olives in a dessert?
On the show, Ms Takchi wowed the judges with creations like her sweetcorn pannacotta with cornflake ice-cream and her lemon parfait with black olive madeleines.
It was the olive dish, made during the mystery box challenge, which impressed the judges most.
She explained how the unlikely dish came together.
"The judges give you a box of ingredients when I lifted the box, I found a letter from home and a bunch of lemons. The letter was all about love and support from home and the challenge was that families from home had to choose an ingredient. My family knows I love lemons because it’s a beautiful ingredient that can be used for sweet and savoury," she said.
"Each contestant had a different ingredient depending on what their family chose for them.
Given it was a family challenge, I was inspired and thought of home straight away. Lemons and olives make together a match made in heaven in my eyes.
"We obviously make our own olives at home. The way my grandmother has taught us is that we put lemon wedges in the olive when we make them so when you eat the olive, you kind get a lemony olive oil flavour. I’m sure it’s normal in Lebanese culture to have lemons and olives together."
As for the future, she plans on opening a pop-up cafe with fellow MasterChef contestant Derek Lau.
You can listen to the interview in the attached podcast.
