Gina Ottaway, known as Nonna G, in the MasterChef kitchen. Photo: Supplied.
Before entering TV show MasterChef in 2018, Flinders resident Gina Ottaway had a vision of teaching people how to cook like a nonna – and she’s now living that dream.
From September, the woman known as Nonna G, will host Create and Sip Pork and Prawn Wontons in Asian Broth masterclasses at Shellharbour Civic Centre, along with sharing her tried and true cooking hacks.
It’s among one of many popular cooking classes she now runs at the civic centre, Stockland Shellharbour and WEA Illawarra.
Gina said she often came up with a list of recipes for class ideas, but certain classes always sold out due to their popularity – pasta 101, ricotta gnocchi, dumplings and wontons.
“We’ve had to put on extra classes just for the demand,” she said.
“Technically, it’s just cooking like a nonna, because we do very simple, easy things.
“When we do the gnocchi class, I explained to them that I’ve done it for years obviously, but I could have that on the table coming home from work for 10 people in half an hour.”
Born in Benevento, northeast of Naples in Italy, it was her mum who taught Gina the basics, especially rich pasta dishes with beautiful sauces.
“I love doing the cooking classes,” she said.
“When I was on MasterChef, they asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, ‘I want to teach people how to cook like a nonna’.
“And I’m actually doing that now.”
However, Gina never wanted to apply to MasterChef, admitting she was “frightened of that mystery box”.
“I could cook from four o’clock in the morning to eight o’clock at night,” she said.
“While I’m making one thing, I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got that in the freezer’ and ‘I’ve got this so I could make that’, but it takes me a while to think of what to cook.
“So that mystery box scared the life out of me, because you’ve got five minutes and if you don’t come up with anything, you’re gone.
“But would you believe that’s what I excelled in?”
She said she first came on the producers’ radar after winning a national cooking competition by Taste magazine, hailing her Australia’s Super Cook 2011.
It led to her receiving constant emails asking to apply for MasterChef, along with the odd nudge from family and friends.
“I put in my application. It was 10 o’clock that night, and it closed at midnight,” she said.
“Within half an hour, I got a response: ‘Be in Sydney on Saturday.’”
Gina during one of her Shellharbour masterclasses. Photo: Supplied.
She recalls how reluctant she must have appeared during a conversation with one of the producers.
“I said, ‘If you are after someone that uses chemicals and makes fancy stuff with things sticking out of them, don’t put me through, because that is not my style of cooking,’” she said.
“His response to me was, ‘We are looking for people whose food tastes good’.
“I’m just homegrown cooking. I mean, I won a challenge on a schnitzel. You’re on MasterChef and you’re winning a challenge on a schnitzel.”
One of her more controversial moments was her mother’s recipe for a simple orange cake during a 90-minute challenge.
“Over the years, I had perfected this orange cake where I didn’t have to boil the oranges for two hours; I threw them in whole,” she said.
“The brief was, if we came to your house for dinner, what would you make us?”
She said she could hear hosts George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan talking to producers through an earpiece near her bench, saying “What is she thinking? She’s on MasterChef and she’s making an orange cake”.
“I thought to myself, ‘That’s it. I’m gone,’” she said.
“You can see when they come around, Gary says, ‘Oh, so the challenge is for 90 minutes. What’s the nonna going to do? She going to have a nap?’”
At that point, she switched to including mascarpone cream, candied orange peels, orange sauce, candied almonds, a praline and zabaglione.
And it was a hit.
Being pre-taped, the episode aired when she was back home.
“MasterChef was putting up the link to the recipe and, as soon as Gary said on TV, ‘If anyone is not downloading this now from the Channel 10 website, they’re bonkers’, the site crashed.
“They kept putting the link up, and it kept crashing.
“Then finally, someone wrote, ‘The recipe that broke the internet.’”
She’s been blown away by the experiences since, including cooking with Wollongong TV chef Mark Olive and fellow MasterChef cook Adam Liaw in Shell Cove, to a stint in English celebrity chef Rick Stein’s South Coast restaurant.
“I thought, my God, what company. That was a big deal for me,” she said.
Gina said MasterChef had been an incredible platform for her to now do what she loves.
With her life full working in the disability sector and running masterclasses, she’ll continue to cook for her greatest joys – her grandkids – and keep her four home freezers full of food.
Create and Sip Pork and Prawn Wontons in Asian Broth masterclasses is at Shellharbour Civic Centre on 26 September and 3 October from 6 – 9 pm.
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