Airdate: Paddock to Plate

Matt Moran’s new series Paddock to Plate, in which he leaves the kitchen and gets back to finding produce on Australian farms will premiere in November.

The series is produced for The LifeStyle Channel by ITV Studios Australia,which recently produced River Cottage Australia.

After 20-odd years in the food industry, Matt is leaving the kitchen and chefs whites behind to embark on a road trip to meet the best growers, producers and farmers that the East Coast of Australia has to offer. And once he has his hands on their wares, he’ll cook up plenty of delicious dishes in beautiful and unique locations.

Matt left school at fifteen-years-old to start his apprenticeship as a chef and has never looked back. He established his love and appreciation of fresh produce from an early age growing up on a dairy farm, so it seemed only fitting that he get out of the kitchen and discover food right at the source.

Matt said: “This is dream TV for me. I’ve been in the food industry for a long time, but the people that I’ve met and the knowledge I’ve been able to take from this experience, has been incredible and so inspiring. It’s made me realise how beautiful and diverse the country is and how lucky we are to have the produce we do.”

Filming Paddock to Plate was an exciting journey of discovery for Matt, as he experienced for the first time; milking a fresh water salmon and spit roasting a rare black pig. He faced his fear of (and his allergy to) bees to get some local honey straight from the hive and faced his fear of sharks to dive for abalone. He makes his first visit to an Ostrich farm, and cooks and tastes these birds for the first time too. It was also a personal highlight to learn first-hand from the ladies at Holy Goat Cheese how to make their prize winning La Luna and to tick off truffle hunting from his ‘bucket list’.

The series takes Matt back to his roots in the country, when he visits the town where he was born in Tamworth and joins his father, Jim, and son, Harry, at the picturesque Moran Family Farm as three-generations of Moran men cook some of the family’s famous lamb.

Paddock to Plate has food at its heart but gets under the skin of the people that produce it, like; Annie Smithers, who is living and breathing a paddock-to-plate lifestyle – growing her own produce in a one acre plot and feeding the locals in her own restaurant; fifth-generation potato farmers Lola and Mal Orr – who at 70-years of age – are still working the land growing and harvesting nine different varieties of potatoes. And snail farmer, Robyn Shrader, who rebuilt her home and a snail farm after the Black Saturday bushfires – and the farm, is thriving thanks to the snails surprisingly prolific sex lives!

Wednesday, November 6 at 8.30pm on The LifeStyle Channel.