Wells Festival of Literature has booked a serious kitchen heavyweight for its popular Saturday morning cooking spot, with double MasterChef champion Ping Coombes appearing on Saturday, 24 October. The Malaysian-born chef and author will be at the festival at 10.30 am, bringing a session rooted in rice, family cooking and flavour with backbone.

Coombes won MasterChef in 2014 and returned in 2022 to win MasterChef Champion of Champions, making her the first double MasterChef champion. That is not a bad CV for a Saturday morning in Wells, where festival audiences are more used to big ideas than big pans, though the two have never been mutually exclusive.

Her latest book, Rice, is described as a homage to the grain that sits at the heart of countless kitchens across the world. It includes recipes for dishes to serve with rice, savoury rice, rice snacks, fried rice, one-pot rice, pickles and condiments.

The book also tackles the deceptively serious rice questions that can divide a kitchen faster than politics at Christmas. Coombes covers whether rice should be washed, how to reheat it safely and why sticky rice is not simply overcooked rice.

Born in Ipoh, Malaysia, Coombes has spoken often about being inspired by her mother's cooking. Her food draws on Malaysian heritage while using modern techniques and local ingredients, with a style that has carried her from the MasterChef kitchen to supper clubs, books and her own food range.

She now lives in the UK and regularly hosts supper clubs in Bath and around the country. She has also launched a range of chilled ready meals and chilli condiments, because apparently winning MasterChef twice still leaves room in the diary.

The event forms part of the 2026 Wells Festival of Literature, which runs from 16 to 24 October. Full details of the programme and speakers are available through the Wells Festival of Literature website.

Coombes' appearance gives the festival a closing Saturday slot with broad appeal, mixing memoir, food culture and the kind of practical advice people may actually use once they get home. For Wells, it is another big-name booking for a festival that has long made room for politics, history, fiction, science and, when required, a properly cooked bowl of rice.

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