He spent most of his time post-win working on his obligatory cookbook, Cook With Me, released this month, and had a short stint cooking in the big smoke at Simon Gault's harbourside restaurant, Euro.
Aaron's 'food dream' at the end of the TV series was to open a bakery and give lessons in how to bake sourdough bread. That's "evolved" over the past 12 months.
Now the zen cook wants to "balance out" that post-MasterChef chaos and stay put in the Waikato with his wife and teenage daughter. His food dream a year on: to fuse yoga with food in laid-back Raglan town.
"We're really keen to keep life stable ... we're very in touch with our Raglan life," he tells nzherald.co.nz.
"My wife teaches yoga at home so what we want to do is have one-day retreats and people can come do things at home with us. Food and yoga in a way that really has a mini-holiday feeling."
He plans to cook "vital ... nutritional and really tasty" food for a handful of guests, while his wife takes visitors through a series of yoga poses.
The first two retreats will happen in May - with about ten people on each - and Aaron says he plans to charge somewhere in the realm of $180 for the experience.
Aaron's likable food-slash-yoga philosophy is still as clear as ever during our interview a year on from his win - he likens his regular salute to the sun to sourdough.
"There's a real mixture of the scientific making things happen kind of side and intuitive watching things happen," he explains.
"Based on how the dough is, there's a certain aspect of stepping back. You have to make the process happen, but also let it happen."
To find out more about Aaron's retreats visit his website here.
Aaron's very vibrant salad with tasty tofu.
Photo / Random House
Check out Aaron's recipe for Very Vibrant Salad with Tasty Tofu here.
