Bacchus Marsh’s Dyna Eldaief has returned home after cooking up a storm in Egypt.
The mother of three and food blogger embarked on a “once-in-a-lifetime” trip to Egypt last year to be part of the nation’s version of cooking show The Taste.
Producers of the show found Ms Eldaief through her website, where she collates her late mother’s recipes and blogs about Middle Eastern cuisine.
She received a phone call asking her to be part of The Taste.
Ms Eldaief, whose parents were Egyptian, at first thought it was a hoax but told the woman on the phone she was interested anyway.
Eight months later the woman called again and asked if she’d travel to Egypt “in the next month” for filming.
With encouragement from her husband, Ms Eldaief was keen to grasp the opportunity so she flew to Egypt for filming with contestants from all over the Middle East.
“It was an amazing experience, a lot of fun, although it was really hard.”
Ms Eldaief was born and raised in Australia and hadn’t experienced the Middle East before.
“I got to see another culture, another religion and another world that was really foreign to me,” she said. “I learnt a lot.
And I’d love other Aussies to know they’re not looking at us saying, ‘You’re different and you’re not Muslim’. They’re actually saying, ‘We love this about you and we love that about you’.”
Ms Eldaief didn’t win the contest, but she now aspires to have her own cooking show in Australia based on Mediterranean cuisine.
She also wants to collate her mum’s recipes in a book.
For more information, including episodes of The Taste, visit www.dynaeldaief.com.
