Jack Lucas

Food is central to all our favourite celebrations and feeding the people you love with something special is one of the greatest gifts you can give. I like to prepare dishes that makes eyes widen and mouths water when I bring them to the table. My Celebration Cookaway menus are impressive, joyful, and of course, completely delicious. What's more, they are surprisingly simple to create, because when you are celebrating, you still need time to have fun!

I taught myself to cook while I was at university. We lived across the road from a supermarket and I worked out when to shop to get interesting ingredients that had been reduced for a quick sale. My housemates thought I was mad when I would come home with half price venison while they were making cheese toasties! I watched every Gordon Ramsay video on Youtube and experimented with new ideas. I took ideas I had picked up from my mum and gran, and gave them my own twist. When I entered Masterchef at just 21 years old, I was fairly relaxed about it, and I think that helped me reach the final. Since then I have cooked professionally, and love to pull together flavours and ideas from wherever I travel to create food that makes people happy.