Matty Matheson’s admission makes the chef across the table bury his face in his hands.
“I always add sugar to every tomato sauce,” he says.
“Oh Jesus,” groans Rob Gentile, one of Canada’s leading Italian chefs, who has joined Matheson for a meal in the first episode of new show, It’s Suppertime (Double episodes Fridays 6.35 pm - watch episode one below, or catchup via SBS On Demand).
“You have to - to balance out the tin,” says Matheson.
Let's talk meatball sauce, shall we.... Source: It's Suppertime
Gentile is horrified, Matheson unapologetic.
“You should make a tomato sauce from fresh ripe tomatoes,” says Gentile.
Not so, says Matheson. “I’m a cook for the people.” Sometimes people can’t get fresh tomatoes. Sometimes you use tomatoes from cans. “So I add a little sugs’ to it.”
Watch episode one right here, or read on for more about what Matty Matheson has in store for us:
Matheson – the tattoo-ed, forthright Canadian chef previously seen in Dead Set on Life (you can watch all three seasons on right now), who’s planning his next trip down under for mid-year – is on a mission to get people to cook.
“If you are a big dog, a medium dog, a small dog, if you’ve never cooked, if you know how to cook, I hope there’s going to be something you see that inspires you want to cook, “ he says, when SBS catches up with the chef, on the phone from Canada.
So what’s with the “big dog, medium dog, small dog” thing? That’s the scale Matheson uses in the new show to indicate how big a project a recipe is. Spaghetti with meatballs, from the first episode - yep, that’s the sauce made with canned tomatoes - is a “small dog” recipe. [Get the recipe ]
Think of It’s Suppertime as dinner ideas (remember, over where Matty hails from, they say supper where we say dinner) that don’t require two days of prep, presented with some straight talking, and you’ve got the general idea.
Matty Matheson's spaghetti and meatballs Source: It's Suppertime / SBS Viceland
“The biggest thing with cooking is time,” he says, when we ask about that conversation with Gentile. “A lot people just don’t have time.”
Take hummus, which he makes in episode 3 of the new show [get the recipe ], as part of a Middle Eastern spread. Sure, he says, it might be lovely to start from scratch, with dried chickpeas, but he’s a realist.
“If you want to make hummus, you have to buy dried chickpeas, then you have to soak them overnight, then you have to cook ‘em, then you have to make hummus.” And as someone who’s trying to inspire people to cook, he’s all too aware that “you’re fighting that people can just walk into the store and grab hummus”.
Matty's creamy hummus Source: It's Suppertime / VICELAND
“If someone wants to soak and braise and cook chickpeas and make hummus out of that, of course they can, and god bless ‘em if they’ve got that kind of time, but a lot of people don’t and I’m just giving them opportunities… It’s like ‘yeah, you can do that, but you can make great product with canned tomato sauce and canned chickpeas’.”
That doesn’t mean It’s Suppertime is all about shortcuts and fast food. There’s a porchetta with AMAZING crackling in episode 4 (catch that one on Friday Feb 7) that’s worth planning ahead for, so you can grab hold of Matty’s crackling technique! Likewise the fluffy, buttery breadrolls he makes in episode 5 (Feb 16).
Matheson is heading our way again in person later in the year. He’ll be hitting Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in June-July to do some events with local chefs, although he says he can’t talk about any details just yet.
Matty's porchetta Source: It's Suppertime / SBS Viceland
He’s more than happy to talk about how much he loves Australia, tho.
“I always say Australia is like bizarro Canada, where it’s like as if Canada was actually hot!”
Matheson paid his first visit down under early last year, and was blown away by the food and the people. “I haven’t had a bad bite since I got here,” he said during last year’s visit.
But before he can jump on a plane, he’s got a lot of work to do - he’s working on his first cookbook, and he’s opening a restaurant towards the end of the year, in Toronto.
“It will be my first restaurant, I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of different restaurants and that kind of stuff but this is my restaurant.
And the cookbook? “It’s going to be very different from what people expect, I think. … It’s a book just about my life, so recipes from my childhood up until now. I just saw a few sample pages and it made me pretty emotional.
“Yep, 2018 is going to be pretty special.”
