MasterChef champion savours victory

SHE can cook — and has the apron to prove it — but Ireland’s top amateur chef has no immediate plans to permanently pack in her day job.

Instead, Mary Carney, 28, is taking a year-long career break from her job as business manger to the chief executive of Eircom, to focus on food writing, launching a website and developing her own recipes after taking top honours in the country’s very first MasterChef competition.

Producing a cookbook is high on the agenda if her soon-to-be- launched website — marycarney.net — gets the kind of feedback she’s hoping for.