Mary Carney (28) is the MasterChef Ireland champion for 2011 and is from Waterford and lives in Dublin. She is married and works as a telecommunications policy and strategy advisor with a large telecommunications company, after recently moving back from London where she worked as a policy advisor at the Communications Regulator.

She learned to cook from her mother, who involved the whole family in the preparation of meals, and while she says she has stacks of cookbooks and has tasted Michelin-starred food, she would still credit her mother as her greatest influence.

Living in London also influenced her, allowing her to spend weekends traipsing around London’s Borough Market sampling cheese, meats, scallops etc. Mary is eager to work in the food industry, ideally running her own ‘Ottolenghi style’ cafe serving delicious, fresh and healthy food to happy customers! She’s hoping MasterChef will bring her closer to this ‘pipe dream’.

The dish that got her into the final 50 was Ham hock Three Ways: ham hock scotch egg, rabbit and ham hock terrine, ham hock and pea puree shot. Her audition dish was Pan fried scallops served on a bed of cauliflower puree with smoked bacon mousse, roasted hazelnuts and parmesan.