Miguel Maestre

Pictured: Florentina Maestre

Miguel Maestre was born in Murcia, Spain. He decided to make Australia home and enjoys life in Sydney with his wife and young children. As the co-host on Channel Ten’s The Living Room, he dishes up his culinary delights to a national audience, and the cookbooks he produces take his flavours to kitchens all around the world. When Miguel thinks of his mama and the way she handled life with three very active sons, he has one burning question: How did she do it?

To be honest, I was a full-on child. Very outgoing. Very confident. Very loud. My other two brothers, Carlos and Antonio – they were more quiet. Of the three of us, I made my mama work the hardest. I look back on that now and wonder how she did it.

Like all parents, mine really wanted me to find the right direction when I was young. It was obvious I was really outgoing and I had a lot of friends, and I think because they didn’t know which way I was headed, they wondered what might happen to me. We were not a rich family – just average – but my papa always worked hard for us to go to the better schools. My brothers both got degrees from a good university, but I didn’t have an interest in that kind of study. I was the one who was happy just being with my friends, playing sport and not focusing too much on my future. I wasn’t very good at school – there was just too much fun going on elsewhere.

Mama was so patient with me. Her patience affected me in an amazing way because throughout my youth I didn’t really know what goal to go after. I thought I wanted to be a chef, and because my mama told me all my life that I was good at cooking and had been so supportive, I had the motivation to just go for it. Mama always made me feel I could have a big dream and make it come true.

I told my mama and papa I wanted to go overseas and become a chef and Mama immediately supported it. I told them: ‘I want to experience life, go to another country, learn English,’ and they helped me do that. I was surprised in a way because it is quite scary for parents to have their child go to another country. But they let me. I was eighteen when I left home and in Spanish families that is very unusual. Normally, in Spanish families, everyone stays together for a long time.

Now that I’ve got kids, I don’t know how I’ll be. I am sure that, secretly, they must have been worried, but Mama never showed me that and because I knew they were happy for what I was doing, every little step I took – learning a new language, becoming a chef, and slowly getting better at what I was doing – they were always there for me, a hundred per cent.

The strength of who I am today is because of the support that my mama – and my papa – gave me. It was one of the very important parts of my life. I would not have my success, my job, or even my family, if they had stopped me from doing what I believed in.

My memories of my mama are all really beautiful. Taking us to school, holding our hands, always being kind and loving us so much. She has always been very passionate about family because she comes from a huge family. Back in Spain, at one stage my mama had twenty siblings. Some of them died when they were just little babies and a couple of my uncles died later on, but there are still twelve brothers and sisters alive today.

I think she has got it in her blood a little bit – being a really good mother. Everything I remember of Mama is always just really wonderful – and there are many memories of her in the kitchen, cooking for us. She is a really good cook and she always cooked a lot of food for us. She would cook these amazing omelettes – thirty eggs and it would last three or four days for the whole family and I would ask her: ‘How you do that?’ or: ‘Can I peel the potatoes?’ The Mediterranean family is so much about food, and with the food comes the family, so I think Mama and I have got a great chemistry when it comes to food. She always raised us boys to know how to look after ourselves and she told me that I had better know how to cook some dinner. I always listened to what she said – but then I always ended up doing whatever I wanted.

Mama was also very serious about cleaning. That’s something she passed on to me. I am a really tidy person. My mama always had us cleaning the house – just making it a beautiful place for all of us to be. When I’m cooking now at home, even before I finish cooking, all my dishes are spotless already and I’ve got the dishwasher waiting for more when we finish dinner. It’s something I am very grateful for – these habits.

Mama was so good at home, and she was so organised with life. And sewing – she loved to sew. I remember her always changing the pillows on the sofa. She was so skilful. She would buy fabrics and sew them into new curtains, new pillow covers – our house always looked fresh and clean. I remember my jeans breaking and she’d fix them in no time, or I remember if a t-shirt had a little stain she was really good at just getting rid of it somehow. It was like magic, the things she used to do.

We always felt like she was there for us all the time but, really, she was doing so many other things too. Mama and Papa had a few shops and she was always cleaning, checking that there was enough stock to sell – she was so busy helping my papa run the shops on top of running the whole house, too. She never made it seem like she was too busy for us – she was always there when we needed her.

Mama still gives me advice and tells me what to do. That’s what mothers do, right? It never stops – even when you grow to be a man. Yesterday, I was cooking dinner – I was making a quail and chorizo paella for dinner for all of us – and my mama was looking at me saying: ‘Oh, Miguel, you should fry the rice first, or you should put this in, or that.’ I said: ‘Mama, are you going to tell me anything else? I am already a chef – I know how I like to cook paella.’ But she said: ‘No, no – before you were a chef, I told you how to do this, and now you are changing it.’ In situations like this I always tell her that I am cooking one of my recipes, but she still will not give up – she says that I should have put the paprika in earlier. We have always had an amazing rapport and we still do. Sometimes, you just have to listen to your mother and not argue. It happens a lot. We will have these amazing conversations about the way to prepare food the ‘proper’ way. It’s not a fight – never a fight – but Mama is happy to tell me what she thinks.

My mama’s ambition? Simple – for us to be successful, for us to be happy. I think she is really happy now because we are all settled in a kind of really nice life in different ways. They never had expensive cars or expensive presents or expensive watches or anything like that. Their focus was on loving us. That’s what my mama did so well. I think that has helped the three of us boys make better lives for ourselves – our ambitions are probably to show our parents that all their hard work actually paid off. My brothers and I are all happy and we have our own families and we do well and all of that is because of them. Mama, of course, but Papa as well. In that way, my mother’s ambitions have been fulfilled.

Now I have a company that sells Spanish products to Australian supermarkets and it is my dream come true – to have all my family working together in one business.

My parents still live in Spain and I go there to see them when I can. When I was younger, I used to travel for ages all around the world – I went to a million places – but now, the older that I get, the more I miss my family every day. Having my own family is a big part of that – it makes you remember how important little things are. There are so many special things that come from being with people who know you and love you. My parents have been visiting this past week. They are staying with us for a month this time and I can already feel in my chest that those days are counting down. I already miss them and they have not left yet. Eventually, I would like to bring them here to live with us in Australia, but – who knows?

I think the key to being happy in life is finding that one thing – that thing that is yours. To do that, you must try the many tastes of life. Like when you are eating food – you don’t know you like a cuisine until you try them all.

So what we are trying to do as parents is just have an idea that, if we let our children try sport, or let them try dance, or let them try music, or try painting, that one day they will identify with one thing that they love. I would give everything I have to help my kids follow their dreams – because my mama did the same for me when I was young.

Where I grew up in Spain, in Murcia, it is all beaches, like here in Sydney. Because we lived very close to the coast, Papa got a sailing boat and used to always take us sailing. My mama had her huge family and my papa had five brothers and sisters and there were always cousins and friends and grandparents – so many people, all the time. Someone would go hunting and Mama would cook some rabbits and my grandma would cook a huge paella – there were always so many people. Sunday lunch meant there was so much to do – so many plates to put out, so many big tables to sit down at.

We’d go and see the chickens at my grandfather’s farm, go for a swim – with so many people around me, childhood felt like a big event, all the time. It was never just the five of us.

When I think of us growing up like that and then my family here in Australia, I am always trying to do that. I try to bring a little of my childhood from Spain into my Australian lifestyle on a daily basis, any way I can. So when my boy turned one year old, I put on a big birthday party and invited a hundred of my friends. People were like: ‘Miguel, you invite all these people, do all these crazy things – I normally just have ten people.’ But for me, the people – all my friends and people I love – are so important. It reminds me who I am and why I am here – and it reminds me of Mama. It’s crazy and noisy, but that’s how I grew up.

I speak Spanish to my kids, Claudia and Morgan. Claudia is already fluent – she can understand everything I say – and I try to keep different little Spanish customs happening in my family. I am also trying to keep using Skype with mama and papa so they can keep those Spanish roots alive for me and for my kids to grow up with.

In my house, there is not one day in the week that there are not four or five people for dinner. My sister-in-law lives next door and she comes for dinner, and my mother-in-law is very close and she comes for dinner, and my father-in-law lives close and he comes for dinner, too. I like to have my table full of people because the way I express myself is through my family and it makes me strong – it makes me the richest man in the world. I consider myself the richest man in the world because when I come home there are always people there – and it is beautiful.

That’s another special connection between my mama and me – I have her name. My street name is Miguel Cascales Maestre. Cascales is my papa’s surname and Maestre is my mama’s surname, so I cut my name short when I went to Australia because the full Spanish surname is too long for my media career. Miguel Cascales doesn’t sound as good as Miguel Maestre. Now it has a better flow, but in Spanish culture it is very funny not to have your papa’s name. I asked my papa: ‘Are you okay, are you sure that you don’t mind?’ My papa always jokes, and he says: ‘I am going to start calling myself Antonio Maestre.’

So now my kids and my whole family will carry that surname forward from my mama, and that is really, really special – just so special.

People always try to think about who they are more like – their papa or their mama. In my family, I think both my brothers are more like my papa, but I am almost the double of my mama – she is always really happy and is a very family-oriented woman. My mama is also very strong. I’ve seen her crying only once or twice in my life. I remember my mama being very upset when my grandpa died.

When my mama comes here to visit and we go to the super­market, sometimes people stop and take photos of me and it makes my mama so proud. I understand it more and more now because I have got kids of my own. Being a parent is such a powerful feeling and I think, really, only now do I really understand how she feels. I would find it so hard to have my own kids living so far away – 17,000 kilometres from me – but I think it is actually making our relationship stronger because we know there are other things we are missing by not being in the same country together.

When you are an immigrant like me – it’s hard to explain. Sometimes you feel Spanish, sometimes you feel Australian and sometimes you don’t know what you feel because you’ve got so much of each culture – two lives apart in two very different places. It must be hard for my mama to understand, but I believe she is really proud that I embraced my Australian life in such a beautiful way with our home and our family. My kids are Australian, my wife is Australian and mostly I feel like a normal Australian guy – a normal bloke. But, I believe I am really a Spanish guy as well and my connection with Mama is a big part of feeling that way.

I always try to call Mama two or three times a week and because the show is not shown overseas, I always send all the links of everything we do and I try to keep the family updated.

Me having kids didn’t change anything between my mama and me. I haven’t started to see my mama as grandmother of my kids – I still see my mama as my mama.

To be honest, I haven’t changed much from those early days. I have become a little more mature but I am still really full-on and really hyperactive – twenty-four hours a day. I think Mama would define me as a really, really active kid with a really big smile and always, always being really happy, always with a lot of friends.

I was the kid who would be trying to catch a snake, the one who would be going for the crazy things, the one running up the stairs, the one who would not be scared to do tricks on his bike, the silliest one, the loudest one, and the one who wanted to have the most attention.

I think it is very challenging in life to find a person who you can share your life with – all those years with – because you know every day is a different day. To find somebody you can spend all that time with is really hard, and my parents are lucky that they found each other. I think I am lucky that I did, too, and I’m just trying to live by their example. I wish everyday that when I am sixty, my wife, Sascha, and I are just and strong and happy as my mama and papa are.

The Spanish name for grandmother is abuela. I make sure I tell stories about her and keep her name within us, even when Mama is not here, so my children know her and remember her.

She is too young now, but when Claudia grows up she will understand that Abuela is Papa’s mama. I cannot wait to go on holidays to Spain more often so she can see where I grew up, so she can understand, so I can tell her that Abuela and I did this and that when I was a kid, so I can show her another example of how a childhood can be lived. When you become a parent, looking back on your own life becomes even more important and has a bigger meaning. I am looking forward to all of that.

One of the proudest moments for my mama and Papa was when I was awarded the Spanish Order of Civil Merit for the work I am doing in the media to promote my country. When the Spanish newspapers called me and featured me, they asked me who my idol was – who I wanted to be when I was older. My answer was my papa.

Papa was really emotional when he read that in the Spanish paper. When I was a little boy, he never cried, but my mama said she saw him crying that day.

The impact for them is very big. They are both so proud, because they just can’t believe it – they can see me on TV or in a magazine and they can see our products in supermarkets with my name on them, and it’s a good feeling for them, that I achieved something.

Mama always says; ‘Oh, Miguel you are the champion, you did so well,’ but it is the same with my other brothers too – she is a very good mama and she has that pride – that love – for all three of us in her heart.

I think she is really good at spreading her love, and very good at spreading encouragement. That’s what great mamas do – they have a power that makes all their children feel special.

I think what I learned the most from Mama is how to be really happy and be really strong, and to have the strength to never give up on things. That has been one of the very best lessons. In the past, when I failed at something and would not want to try again, she would always say something to make me keep going – and that is when I would succeed.

I hope she feels she has done a good job. I truly believe she has.

Hopefully, one day, my kids will say the same about me.