04 January,2009 08:49 AM IST | | Madhulika Barooah
You went "on a life-changing trip to China in 1999". You mentioned that Shanghai was where you had the "juiciest pork and crab dumplings" and "pot-stickers from a roadside stall were the freshest" you had ever eaten. What is necessary to ensure such quality?
You have to have a lot of heart and a lot of love for it and the freshest possible ingredients.
The Tibetan version of the Jiaozi is the momo, a very popular dish in Northeast India. What makes the dumpling so popular?
Small, bite-sized, delicious, easy to eat, inexpensive, hot, heart warming, comforting.
You mention your mother often in your shows. Any dumpling secrets that were handed down?
My mom is a great cook in our family. She taught my two brothers and I how to cook Chinese food from the age of five. She taught us everything about food from market to table. I mean she not only taught us the technicalities of cooking, stir frying, scoring squid, cleaning bok choy, all of that, she also taught us how to shop for it, bargain for it.
Have you visited India? We have our own version and variation of Chinese cooking. Are you a purist or are you one for fusion?
I have not been to India, but would love to visit it one day. I have always loved Indian people and culture u00e2u0080u0094 I am a practitioner of Buddhism. We don't find spirituality in Australia, I love that about India u00e2u0080u0094 the food, all the colours, there's so much vibrancy.
I love food that is cooked with fresh ingredients and a lot of heart and generosity fusion or non-fusion.
Being a chef, you have tried various cuisines. How familiar are you with Indian food?
I have had Indian food in Sydney on several occasions I would not say it was authentic Indian cuisine, so I must admit I am not familiar with it. All I know is that I love the spices, the chutneys, the pickles, the curries and its general style.
In China, what were the impressive things you saw or learned that helped you improve your recipes? Anything you started to use in your cuisine?
I loved going to the food markets in the regions we were in I love food markets, full stop but the markets in China are something else.
I loved learning that Chinese people go to the fresh food market twice a day. They go every morning and evening. So it was wonderful to have that reaffirmed. Chinese people are obsessed with freshness and that's something that my mother drummed into us when we were little. But actually going back to the homeland and seeing all of that in action was amazing.
Going to Yunnan Province and Sichuan Province were two eye-opening experiences for me in terms of the wonderful strong flavours. I saw the Sichuan peppercorns of Sichuan and the beautiful chili taste of Sichuan. I love chili. I love spicy foods, so one of the great highlights was going to the wonderful spice market in Chengdu.
Seeing how passionate the Chinese are about their food, it's extraordinary. Everywhere you look around when you're in China, no matter what time of the day it is, everyone's just eating. All the restaurants are full, everyone's just eating, eating, eating. So I felt much at home there.
In contrast, was the basic food I came across in my family village. One day we were there, and we had bought fresh produce at the local market, because I was planning to cook. I bought pumpkins. We intended using them as props for photos for a book. I had never grown up cooking pumpkin Chinese-style. My mom would roast pumpkin with nutmeg and butter, Western style.
I was at my family village cooking away and one of the family villages sort of grabbed a pumpkin off of me and sliced it into a million pieces and then stir-fried it with black bean and ginger. And I was like, "That is so delicious." So I made a mental note of it and I now serve it in my restaurant organic pumpkin, black bean and ginger. So many great moments like that where I just tuned into certain food things and took those ideas home.
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And what I learned too was how wonderful the Chinese are with ingredients, humble ordinary ingredients like pumpkin and potato. But the way they cook them and flavour them, they turn them into these extraordinary dishes.
