Although her arrival into the world of competitive gastronomy did not follow a direct path, Andy Vignati says her passion for cooking has been burning since she was a child.
It's a passion that has led her to showcase her skills in the kitchen on the popular TV cooking show, Seven Network's My Kitchen Rules.
"My grandmother cooked a lot and we all love to eat, so from a very young age I always had a passion for food," she says.
However, her journey was stunted during her youth by family demands.
"I wanted to study at Instituto Le Cordon Bleu [in Peru] and become a chef but my dad told me not to mention it, he said 'you're going to do business management'," she says.
After a few years immersed in the world of marketing and finance, she decided to shift her focus to gastronomy when she met her partner in the program, Ruby, at the party of a Peruvian friend.
Their common love for Peruvian food made them congenial immediately and after a year of friendship, they applied to be contestants on the show they both eagerly watched.
"I thought it would be a very good idea because they had never had a Latino group in the competition," Ms Vignati says.
The application process was long. From April 2018 the pair began sending in videos and recipes.
When they finally received word that they would appear on the 2019 season, Ms Vignati says she and Ruby "were too happy" and "could not believe it".
Filming began in June 2018 and was a commitment that forced them to leave their jobs to devote themselves fully to the program's recordings.
"They told us 'you may be filming for a month or six months', so I said 'no, I'm going to quit my job and dedicate myself completely to this,' which is important."
Ms Vignati says she likes to think of Peruvian cuisine as an infusion of cultures and influences from different countries, such as Japan, China, Italy and France.
In one of the programs, in which they had to prepare a menu for the jury and the rest of the contestants, they prepared the following:
- Scallop & Fish tiradito (Peruvian sashimi)
- Arroz con pato (Peruvian duck with Rice)
- Alfajores con helado de Lucuma (Dulce de leche cookies with Lucuma ice cream)
"The hardest part is filming, the hours are long ... the stress, not only of having to represent Queensland but also representing Peru and Latin America in general," she says.
Ms Vignati recognises that appearing on television has changed his life: "I go out and people recognise you, they tell me, you're from the show, but I want to use it as a platform."
"Now I'm working on my channel on YouTube called Eating with Andy, I'm also working on recipes, filming, editing, [it's] a long process.
"With my YouTube channel I want to teach Australians how rich and easy it is to cook Peruvian food in their homes, but since I'm also half Italian, I want to show my family's recipes, teaching my passion for food.
"We want to set up a Peruvian food truck but at the moment we are going to start doing pop-ups in restaurants, doing demonstrations of Peruvian food."
She says that not many Australians know Peruvian food because there are very few Peruvian restaurants down under.
"In Australia, the ingredients are hard to come by, but we want to make pop-up {stalls] to show how delicious Peruvian cuisine is."
