Matt Terrell’s New Cooking And Lifestyle Show Demonstrates Fun, Simple Ways To Live Your Best Life
Matt Terrell describes his new cooking and lifestyle show, “Living The Dream,” as “Martha Stewart meets Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.” The chef brings fun and creativity to his genre, with a cooking philosophy of “minimum effort with maximum pleasure.” He also brings a lot of Atlanta into the mix, with guest roles played by his friends and neighbors, and featuring appearances by popular local entertainers like Amber Nash and Lucky Yates; even puppets and animations. Terrell is also the author of “The Magnolia Bayou Cookbook,” a fictional Southern cookbook, He joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes over zoom to share more about his whimsical world.
Interview highlights:
Matt’s approach to cooking:
“I’m not going to be toiling over a hot stove, sweating and smelling like onions any day of my life,” said Terrell, laughing. “There’s an idea from the Italian renaissance and baroque era called sprezzatura … which means working hard to make it look like you’re not working at all. So a lot of my recipes in my show involve a lot of pre-work so that when you do go to actually make dinner, it’s really just throwing a few things together and heating it up.”
Sources of inspiration:
“I would say some of the favorite dishes my mom and I make today are things that we had when we’ve traveled through Europe and through Mexico, even in the U.S. Those dishes are really a great way to recreate and remember those times traveling with my mom. [The mole sauce at Pujol, Mexico City] was so interesting and deep and refreshing and exciting, that we had to recreate it when we got home,” said Terrell.
“I spent a lot of time by myself as a kid … I think I was 8 when we got Food Network, it debuted where we lived in Mississippi. I was watching Food Network all the time,” said Terrell. “So there’s a lot of things in my cooking show that do come from my mother, particularly gumbo, but I would say that I have a more ‘cheffy’ outlook that comes from the TV that I watched growing up.”
The new show launches today and can be streamed on Goddessblessyou.com.