Dalby’s Delicious and Delightful Festival: Matt Golinski kicks off with a bang

Celebrity chef Matt Golinski’s cooking demonstration was a popular starter for a favourite country Queensland food festival where two local ingredients were the unlikely stars of the show. VIDEO.

Matt Golinski’s first cooking demonstration of the day set the tone for Dalby’s Delicious and Delightful Festival for 2022, featuring a Western Downs staple.

Hundreds of people have walked through the gates of the festival which is dedicated to showcasing the region’s produce and includes food stalls, cooking demonstrations, competitions, games, live music, and a fire show in the evening.

Golinski, who credits growing up on a farm for his love of fresh produce and cooking, featured chickpeas in his first demonstration, showing the crowd five ways to use the legumes in half an hour in what he described as a “fast and furious” style of cooking.

“I spent a lot of my time as a child baking and cooking on weekends, it started when I was eight,” he explained

The celebrity chef also served up falafel, hummus, tabouli, meringue and crepes using chickpea, which are a prevalent crop in the Western Downs, as the main ingredient.

“We get a lot of vegans coming through my restaurant so we’ve had to find new ways to create dishes they can eat,” he said.

Celebrity chef Mat Golinski shows the crowd how to cook the perfect chickpea dishes at Dalby's Delicious and Delightful Festival 2022. Picture: Emily Devon

Rob Evans, who has worked as a mung bean seed inspector for more than 20 years, watched the demonstration with wife Denise and said he thought it’s great that people like Golinski could showcase local produce.

He said while it was his job to inspect a wide range of crops, mung beans, another major export in Dalby, took up a huge amount of time due to how often they could be farmed and how much Australia exported to other countries.

Golinski told the crowd about 99.9 per cent of mung beans farmed in Australia were exported overseas and that it was an ingredient he believed should be traded more in this country.

Denise and Rob Evans at Dalby's epic Delicious and Delightful Festival 2022. Picture: Emily Devon

Last weekend the star chef was also spotted at BaconFest in Kingaroy where he showed hundreds of people different ways they could use pork.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a crowd of 300 people or 30 I’m still hoping to get information about local produce across to as many people as possible,” he said.

The celebrity chef’s next cooking demonstration was due at 3:15pm and mung beans were on the menu.

Both chickpeas and Mung beans were set to be featured at 5.15pm.

The demonstrations took place in the ‘Community Platter’ section of the festival at George Anderson park.

Residents can learn more about the festival here.