Life as a retired banker bored Irini Tzortzoglou, so she decided to enter the cooking competition. She trained hard to win and now works as a chef, writer and public speaker
When she worked in banking, Irini Tzortzoglou’s idea of cooking was to pick up a ready meal from Marks & Spencer at Waterloo station on her way home, and put it in the oven. But now, since winning the BBC cooking competition MasterChef in 2019 at the age of 60, with menus inspired by her Greek heritage, food has become her life and new career.
She had not been overly interested in cooking, she says with a laugh, though as a child, food was an important part of her life. Tzortzoglou, 64, was born in Crete, where her grandparents’ house was always open – her grandfather was a priest – and her grandmother would often be cooking for dozens of people. Tzortzoglou would help out: “I loved the smells, I loved the processes.” After her parents moved the family to Athens when she was about eight, she didn’t really cook again, until she got married and moved to London. “I thought: ‘I better be a good housewife and feed my husband.’ I bought recipe books, and started cooking three-course meals every day because I was bored.”
