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Happy Australia Day everyone!

As an Asian Australian it makes me incredibly proud this year to be both Sydney’s Chinese New Year Ambassador was well as an Australia Day Ambassador at the same time. As a country, Australia has such a rich shared history with Asian culture, especially in terms of food.

It’s wonderful to see so many Asian restaurants in Australia and I am on record many times saying that in terms of its depth, diversity, availability of ingredients and authenticity, Australia is the best place in the world to eat Asian food. Many of Australia’s best chefs such as Neil Perry, Peter Gilmore, Mark Best and Tetsuya have undeniable Asian influences in the way they approach (and define) modern Australian cuisine.

I’ll be spending my Australia Day in Adelaide with my family – having a BBQ, watching the cricket and tennis and having a few nice cold beers. I hope you all have a cracking day!

These photos are from an initiative called ‘Australia – Make Your Mark’. As an Australia Day Ambassador, I was asked to write an inscription on one of these giant letters about what it meant to me to be Australian. Mine read:

“Australia isn’t just a place. We are also a community. More than just being here, we need to be involved in our country. Make your mark!”

I’m not a superstitious person, but at Chinese New Year even the most rational of us find ourselves following the old traditions such as buying new clothes, cutting our hair before new year’s day, paying off debts, cleaning the house and giving red packets. For many of us these acts are more of a mental exercise of renewal and an adherence to culture than any belief in luck, good fortune or evil spirits.

In the past few years I have had my own Chinese New Year To Do list, taking the opportunity to remind myself to keep my digital world updated. Given the amount of time we all spend on computers and digital devices these days, it’s worth spending a few hours at least once a year making the effort to keep these things running the way they’re supposed to.

If you’re one of those people to which these kind of things come naturally, my hat goes off to you. But if you’re anything like me, you might benefit from the list below:

• Backup all your hard drives
• Update your existing software on all devices (computers, iPods, iPads, phones, GPS etc.)
• Clean up folders and purge or organize old files
• Tidy up your desktop and dock or taskbar
• Clean up and organise your music, photo and video libraries
• Change your wallpaper
• Get any new software you’ve been needing and delete unused programs
• Synchronise your bookmarks across all your computers
• Clean your screens and keyboards
• Clean the outside of your computer
• Change your online passwords (Security experts recommend that this be done several times a year, but most of us don’t do it at all.)

Chinese New Year is coming up in a few days and I so I thought I’d share with you one of my favourite CNY dishes.

Yee Sang is a very popular Chinese New Year dish around Malaysia and Singapore (Do people eat this in China or Hong Kong? I really don’t know), and my family usually eat this on the eve of Chap Goh Meh, which is the 15th and final day of the new year festival.

Yee Sang is a colourful salad of prosperous ingredients, which are tossed together with a sweet dressing. Everyone around the table puts their chopsticks into the salad and tosses it high in the air. The superstition goes that the higher the salad is tossed, the more luck that will come in the new year. It’s can get a bit messy, but tossing the yee sang are some of my favourite memories of my childhood.

There are lots of recipes for Yee Sang around, and most of them use raw salmon or smoked salmon but I thought that this year, because it is the year of the Water Dragon, I would use lobster sashimi instead. Of course, if you want a more traditional yee sang, just substitute the lobster sashimi with another raw fish.

Chinese new year foods are full of symbolism – Fish symbolise wealth because ‘yu’, the Chinese word for fish, is synonymous with the words for wealth and abundance. Long noodles signify a long life. Oranges signify good luck, and pomelos or grapefruits also signify wealth and prosperity. One of the most popular areas of symbolism is the balance between yin and yang, or the dragon and phoenix. In food the dragon is often symbolised by lobster or prawns, and the phoenix is often symbolised by pheasant or chicken. In this year of the Water Dragon, what could be more fitting than a celebratory dish paying homage to the symbolic Water Dragon, the lobster.

Dragon Yee Sang

Ingredients

• 1 live lobster
• 6 wonton wrappers
• Oil for deep frying
• 1 tbsp white sesame seeds
• 1 carrot, peeled and julienned
• ½ Continental cucumber, peeled, deseeded and julienned
• ½ daikon white radish, julienned
• 6 leaves Chinese cabbage (hakusai, lombok), shredded
• 1 cup pomelo or grapefruit, torn into small pieces (peel, pith, seeds and any membrane removed)
• 1 bunch fresh coriander, leaves picked
• 2 tbsp Japanese red pickled ginger (benishouga)

Dressing

• 150ml plum sauce
• 2 tbsp honey
• juice of 2-3 limes
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp peanut oil
• ¼ tsp five spice powder

Method

1. Slice the wonton wrappers into thin strips and deep fry in batches in hot oil until crispy, then set aside to drain. Don’t fry too many at one time or they will stick together. Also, it’s best not to slice the wrappers all stacked together, or they may clump on the board. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry frypan until golden brown and then set aside to cool.
2. Julienne the cabbage, daikon, carrot and cucumber. Arrange these on a large platter and separately place on the pickled ginger, coriander and wonton crisps around in separate piles.
3. To prepare the lobster, chill the lobster in the freezer for about 2 hours until it is asleep. Kill it quickly with a spike through the head and separate the meaty tail from the head. Cut down either side of the soft underside of the lobster and remove the flesh from the shell using your hands, and using a paring knife if necessary. Remove the vein from the lobster as neatly as possible and wipe away any residue. Although I don’t recommend this, if the lobster meat is very dirty and you feel that you have to, you can rinse the meat very quickly in a mixture of iced water and salt (using enough salt to give the mixture the saltiness of seawater).
4. Heat a large pot of water until boiling and add the lobster head and tail shell to the pot and boil until the shell changes colour. Clean the shells and remove any meat that was clinging to the shell, reserving it for another purpose (an egg white omelette with cream and spring onion is perfect, or you can just dip it in a little yuzu kosho tabasco – but that’s a recipe for another time…)
5. With a very sharp knife, slice the lobster into very thin slices and arrange over the centre of the salad.
6. If you would like to use the tail for presentation, clean it well with a paper towel and, if it’s looking a little dull, polish the outside with a small amount of oil.
7. For the dressing, mix together all the ingredients.

To serve, gather everyone together and give them a pair of chopsticks each. Pour over the sauce and scatter with sesame seeds. Everyone reaches in with their chopsticks to toss the salad. Toss it as high as you can for good luck!

Hi all,

I’m really proud to announce that I am an official Ambassador for Sydney’s Chinese New Year celebrations this year!

There’s lots to do in Sydney during the festival – the Belmore Park night markets, banquets, dragon boat races and even an enormous dragon parade of over 3000 (yes, that’s THREE THOUSAND) performers. You’ll even get to see me riding a giant dragon during the parade (which is something I’m very excited about).

For all the information about the http://www.sydneychinesenewyear.com/

But just to whet your appetite, here’s a few points about Chinese New Year this year, and how my family celebrates it:

• This year is the year of the Water Dragon.
• There are 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac and 5 elements (metal, water, wood, fire and earth), meaning that the year of the Water Dragon only comes around every 60 years. The last year of the Water Dragon was in 1952.
• The first day of the new year is 23 January 2012.
• Before the start of the new year, many people will clean the house, cut their hair, buy new clothes, pay off debts and try to begin the new year on the best possible footing.
• Each Chinese New Year period I also update all of my software, clean out my hard drive of unnecessary files, back up all of my data and generally just clean up my computer. This is my 21st century way of spring cleaning.
• During the new year, married people usually give red packets (‘hong bao’, or ‘ung pao’) to unmarried people.
• The new year festivities end on the 15th day of the new year known Chap Goh Meh. For the entire 15-day period of the new year, visitors to your home should be well taken care of. (When I was young, many of my Australian friends visiting my house during the new year period would be very happy when my Dad suddenly surprised them with a red packet.)
• On Chap Goh Meh, my family usually eats Yee Sang, a salad of raw fish, vegetables and fruits with a sweet dressing. Everyone around the table puts their chopsticks into the dish and tosses the salad high into the air. The higher the salad is tossed the more luck the year will bring.

So please come along and enjoy the festivities. Until then, Gong Hei Fat Choi, Xin Nian Kuai Le and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

If you ever felt inclined to make a list of “food trends” for the past couple of years, “adding kimchi to everything” and “Mexican-Asian fusion” would both certainly be near the top. It seems that everywhere you turn these days there’s a kimchi quesadilla, spicy pork burrito or bulgogi taco. David Chang and Roy Choi should be getting royalties for this stuff.  Paying too much attention to food trends is a often a dangerous thing to do, but  love them or hate them, there’s no doubt that a tasty dish is a tasty dish. Let’s not take ourselves (or our food) too seriously.

I love breakfast, but as a meal it’s often overlooked as a source of variety. Day in and day out we turn to toast, cereal, bacon, the occasional pancake, and then add some eggs – fried, poached or scrambled. Even the simple and delicious breakfast dish of Eggs Benedict has lately been co-opted by brunch, that most mystifying and indefinable of meals. But such is the lack of respect we in the West tend to afford our breakfast. It’s ironic really, considering just how versatile eggs can be.

It’s easy to see where we get disillusioned by breakfast. We are constrained by time, ingredients, appetite and nutritional value.  We need something that’s fast, nutritionally balanced, not too difficult on the stomach and which will carry us through to lunch (forget brunch). But in the face of this adversity, we form solutions. I think the constraints of breakfast can be a source of great creativity, as we are almost forced to think outside the box.

Taking the old Mexican favourite, Huevos Rancheros (Cowboy’s Eggs) and combining it with some very good kimchi and enoki mushrooms resulted in this dish, which will definitely be taking its place in my kitchen’s breakfast repertoire.

Huevos Coreanos – Korean Eggs (Cowboy Style)

Serves 1

Ingredients

• ½ cup cherry tomatoes, quartered (80g)
• ½ cup enoki mushrooms (50g)
• ½ cup kimchi (with juice), roughly sliced (100g)
• ¼ cup tomato passata
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• ½ small red onion, sliced
• 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
• 2 free-range eggs
• 1 tbsp fresh coriander leaves
• 1 large red chilli
• Grated cheese (optional)
• Salt (to season)
• Black pepper and buttered crusty bread, to serve

Method

Preheat your oven’s overhead grill. Heat a small cast iron or other ovenproof pan until very hot. Add the olive oil and sautee the onions, tomatoes, chilli, mushrooms and kimchi until all are softened and nearly cooked through. Add the tomato passata and vinegar and cook for a further 1-2 minutes. Taste and season.

Make two small wells in the mixture in the pan and crack an egg into each. (If you wish, you can now scatter the top with a little grated cheese). Transfer the pan to your grill and grill the top for about 2 minutes until the whites of the eggs are set but the yolks are still runny. The heat of the pan will continue to cook the eggs from the bottom.

Grind over a little black pepper, scatter with some coriander leaves and serve with some buttered crusty bread.

Note: For a more mild version, you could reduce the amount of chilli or substitute with thinly sliced red capsicum.

Hearty lamb shank dishes are a winter staple in Australia, but this dish is a great one for times like now just as the weather starts to warm. We often think of lamb shanks as a hearty winter dish, but lamb curries in South East Asia work fantastically well in warmer weather.  This dish crosses the boundary of the seasons and takes advantage of the great spring lamb that we have in Australia, and matches it with the nostalgic Malaysian flavours I grew up with.

Malaysian Curry Paste

• 3 brown onions (or 6-8 red schallots)
• 15 small dried red chillies, seeds removed and soaked in hot water until soft
• 2 stalks lemongrass, white part only, sliced
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 tsp grated ginger
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground fennel seed
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tsp belacan
• 5 candlenuts

• ½ cup neutrally flavoured oil
• 1.75kg lamb shanks (about 6 shanks), (Alternatively, you could use 1.5kg lamb chops, or 1kg boneless lamb leg, cubed)
• 400ml coconut cream
• 400ml water or White Chicken Stock
• 6 cloves
• 2 sticks of cinnamon
• 1 star anise
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 kaffir lime leaves
• a handful of curry leaves, picked

Make the curry paste by processing all the paste ingredients together to a fine paste. If you have time, I recommend doubling or tripling the recipe freezing the paste in portions for later use.

Heat the oil in a large casserole dish and fry the paste for 5-10 minutes until it is coloured and fragrant, stirring frequently so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom. Add the lamb shanks to the paste and oil and lightly brown on all sides. Add all the remaining ingredients to the pot, bring to the boil and simmer covered for about 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally. Remove the lid and simmer for a further 1 to 1.5 hours until the meat is very tender, pulls away easily from the bone and the liquid has reduced to a thick gravy.

Cover the curry and allow it to cool on the stove. Refrigerate overnight if possible. Reheat and adjust seasoning before serving. Serve with white rice and sliced cucumbers.

I happened across this old tweet of mine today and realised that I had written it exactly two years ago to the day. When you find something like that, you can’t help but think what your life would be like if things had gone differently.

My life of two years ago wasn’t a bad one. I was a lawyer working for The Walt Disney Company in Tokyo. It was a good job, that I enjoyed, in the field I trained in, and in an interesting country. All in all, I had a really nice life. While I’d like to be able to tell you all that there was a “piece missing” or that I hated my old life, the fact of the matter is I was really very comfortable doing what I was doing and quite content. So much so that this tweet was actually about the second MasterChef audition I was invited to.

The first audition was in my home town of Adelaide and it was scheduled while I was supposed to be visiting Cuba. Having planned the holiday for months, I declined the audition and went on holiday instead. When I returned to Japan, I called the producers and asked them if there were any other auditions that I could go to and they invited me to come to Sydney. Again, I ummed and ahhed and tried to decided whether I would travel all the way from Tokyo for a long-shot chance at something I wasn’t even really sure if I wanted to do.

In the end, the only way I could look at it was to say “Why not?”

Why not go to the audition? Why not give it a shot? If I fail, my worst-case scenario would be that I continue on doing what I’m doing and I have an interesting story to tell. The best-case scenario, of course, would be that I get through the audition and I have another, more interesting decision to make.

As is no-doubt obvious, I ended up going to the audition, having a ball, and getting through to the next round. The rest is history. There were lots of other moments and other decisions (and actually, I pulled out of the show at least 2 more times over the following few months – but that’s a story for another time), but this was the first one. Every single thing in my life would now be different if I had made that one little decision differently. I wouldn’t have had the amazing experience I have had over the past two years, the new career I have now, and a future that I’m incredibly excited about.

It didn’t seem like an important decision at the time – it was tiny, insignificant and almost laughable – but it was the first one, and it turned into one of the most important decisions I’ve ever made. I don’t think that all the important decisions in life present themselves with banners, fanfare and prancing horses. Sometimes it’s the little decisions that reach further and wider than you’d ever imagine.

I’m sure that right at this very moment there’s someone else, somewhere in Australia (or elsewhere in the world) that’s trying to decide whether or not they should audition for MasterChef or take a different kind of new step. Who knows, maybe in a few months they’ll be the one centre-stage when the gold glitter rains down.

There are many “home truths” in practical cooking, but how true are they really?

As part of my promise to write more on this website, this is the start of a series of short posts about some of the things we believe in the kitchen that may not be what they seem. I hope you find them interesting!

One of the most identifiable skills of classic cookery is the art of the flambé. Picture a busy and bustling kitchen, punctuated by fireballs of purple-yellow flames leaping from pans rattled by white-jacketed chefs. Adding alcohol can introduce complex flavours and aromas to a dish, but too much alcohol can be unpleasant and overwhelm other delicate flavours. For that reason, in cookery we are often taught to flambé – to “burn off” the pungent taint of raw alcohol. But how well does it really work?

To flambé, a strong alcohol (usually higher than 20% alcohol per volume) is added to a pan of sauteing ingredients and ignited with an open flame. While flambéing is often used tableside for dramatic effect, the process does have an effect on flavour. The extremely high temperature of the alcohol flame (about 1100C) leaves a very light singed taste to flambéd ingredients within the flame, and the reactions of the burning alcohol with other ingredients can create additional complex flavours and aromas. This process of flambéing also burns off some of the added alcohol to take the edge off the strong and sometimes unpleasant alcohol ‘burn’ found in some strongly alcoholic dishes.

However, the processes of flambéing does not remove all of the alcohol. In fact, a short flambé will still leave around 75% of the added alcohol in the finished product. Even after simmering for an hour, about 25% of the alcohol still remains, and after 2 hours that proportion drops to about 10%.

Considering the relatively small amounts of alcohol added to foods, and the portions of those dishes we eat, the final alcohol content of dishes is not usually a problem. Even a whole bottle of 14% alcohol wine added to a Coq au Vin will first dilute to about 7% amongst the other ingredients, then and after cooking for a hour will result in a dish of only about 2% alcohol. Divided amongst perhaps 4 people, the final amount of alcohol consumed by the diner is quite small. However, those with alcohol sensitivity might want to hold back on that extra serve of a flambéd Bananas Foster, as each plate would contain alcohol from rum roughly equivalent to a swig of a cheeky dacquiri.

Picture Credit: Someone with waaay too much time on their hands

The finale of Season 3 of MasterChef Australia is just a few days away now, so I thought it would be a good time to revisit some of the skills we contestants learn throughout the competition. The style of competitive cooking on MasterChef is very different from cooking in a commercial kitchen or cooking for your family at home, and it can take some time to get used to. Yesterday the News Limited papers published an article I wrote sharing a couple of tips for getting ahead in the MasterChef game. There was no online version of the article, so I thought I would share it with you here.

For those of you that want to put their hat in the ring for next year’s MasterChef title, applications are already open. You can apply here.

The article “My recipe for success”, as it appears in The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun, The Advertiser and The Courier Mail:

“The finale of this year’s MasterChef is just a few weeks away and from nearly ten thousand hopefuls a few months ago we will soon have another winner joining Julie and me in our little club. For anyone wanting to try out next year, here are my six tips to help you come away with the MasterChef crown.

1.  Find your own style. 

At home, we might like to try different things and we all have our strengths and weaknesses, but in the MasterChef kitchen you need to think beyond that to find your own style of food. Even if you can cook everything from Asian Abalone to Zimbabwean Zucchini, you still need to work out exactly what warms your cockles.

I love Asian food and it’s what I cook at home, but for the first few months in MasterChef I was making fancy European dishes that I thought would impress the judges. It wasn’t bad food, but it wasn’t getting me anywhere in the competition. It was  only when I started to cook the food I loved that I started winning challenges.

People cook the way they like to eat. It’s natural and authentic, and that’s what the judges want to see. As Jimmy will happily tell you, it’s better to be a one-trick pony than a dead duck.

2. Cook to the challenge

Cooking in the MasterChef kitchen is very different from cooking at home. There are absurd time limits, weird ingredients, ridiculous themes and long tasting procedures. You need to think about all of that when you decide what to cook. Give yourself plenty of time and don’t try to be too ambitious. Good food doesn’t have to be difficult, and in fact, for amateurs like us, it usually isn’t.

In terms of tasting, the first thing you realise in challenges is that the food on MasterChef is usually cold when the judges taste it. The contestants cook in the morning and then the food goes into the fridge while the kitchen resets for the tasting and the benches are cleaned by magical elves. However, before that break the judges will zip around the room for a mini pre-tasting to give them an idea of what to expect in the real thing.

The easiest way to make an impression is to leave enough time and ingredients to make a second plate that the judges can taste warm without ruining the dish that needs to be presented later. If the judges have a chance to taste your food the way it would normally be eaten, you’re immediately off to a good start.

If you want to be really clever, you can even add a touch more salt to the dish that will be tasted cold, because the saltiness of the dish will mellow as it cools.

3. Tell the story

Food is better in context. If we think back to the favourite meals we’ve eaten, we rarely remember the food alone. We remember the company, the restaurant, the atmosphere – the whole experience.

The judges have tried thousands of dishes in the MasterChef kitchen, and so it is sometimes hard to create that special experience around yours alone.

To make your dish stand out you need to explain not just what is on the plate, but also why it’s there. Is it inspired by a childhood memory? A simple family favourite? An edible homage to a Rolling Stones song? This doesn’t mean that every plate needs to be dedicated to an elderly relative, but it does help to give the judges an idea of why you made that dish and what makes it tick.

4. Know the judges’ tastes

All the judges love good food, but they still each have their preferences. George likes food prepared with professionalism and discipline – that means your dish should be well-seasoned, clean and elegant – Gary loves unpretentious food made with humility and strong technique, and Matt likes ‘smart’ food where he can see that thought has gone into the dish.

When you cook for the same guys day-in and day-out and hear their feedback on everything you make, you pick up on their likes and dislikes. If you can make a dish that tickles all the judges in all the right places, you’re looking good.

5. Listen and learn

The person who wins MasterChef is not necessarily the person who comes into the first day of the competition as the best cook. If it was, we could have probably just given Marion the title in the first episode last year and called it a day.

The entire process takes ten months from audition to finale, and for the whole period you are living, breathing and (of course) eating food. In that time you have an opportunity to learn from the people around you – the judges, the guest chefs, the other contestants. Absorb information like a sponge and accept every piece of judges’ advice and criticism as like manna from Heaven. Then put it all into practice in the next challenge.

6. Embrace the experience

A big part of winning the MasterChef title is about keeping yourself in the right frame of mind to cook well. It’s not easy. There are the long hours, the early starts, the isolation from your friends and family, and lots of pressure. But the trade-off for all of that is the chance of a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience. Once you accept that fact, you can relax, make friends and have fun. Happy cooks make happy food, and I certainly could not have won MasterChef without the friendship and support of the other contestants… but those guys probably didn’t want to hear that.”

It just dawned on me that it’s been 1 year to the day since I won MasterChef. Exactly 365 days ago Callum and I were centre stage in the most watched non-sport TV event in Australian history. We came out of the MasterChef house into a whirlwind, and it’s been a manic 12 months since. To mark the occasion, I thought I’d just look back at the year that’s been:

     I’ve received tens of thousands messages of congratulations from within Australia and all over the world. England, India, the USA, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, the Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France… the list really does go on. In fact, it might even be easier to list the countries I haven’t received messages of thanks from. The sheer number of messages has been enormous, but please believe me when I say I’ve appreciated every single one.

     I’ve worked in some of Australia’s best restaurants, including Tetsuya’s in Sydney and The Flower Drum in Melbourne. I’ve cooked every day and developed my cooking skills more than I thought possible in just one year. I’ve written more than 300 recipes and spent countless hours in the kitchen, enjoying every minute.

   I’ve written a cookbook, and fulfilled a lifelong dream in doing so. It’s something that I’m extremely proud of and it’s received some fantastic reviews (like this one… and this one… and this one). It happens to be selling quite well too. I’ll even be attending my first Byron Bay Writers’ Festival just next week… as an author. It’s incredibly humbling when somebody tells you they’ve cooked one of your recipes and it’s changed the way their family cooks and eats. Never in my life would I have thought I could make a tangible difference, however small, to people’s lives through food.

     I’ve filmed for TV in Australia, New Zealand and soon Malaysia; done literally hundreds of interviews for TV, radio and print; and photo shoots galore. It’s all a bit much really, but it doesn’t get in the way of the food. One thing I am really happy about is that I am getting a chance to write a lot more for magazines and newspapers. I’ve even had the opportunity to take Australian journalists and bloggers around Malaysia to show them what I love about the food of the country of my birth.

     I’ve travelled on more than 120 flights, spent nearly 150 nights in hotel rooms, and travelled nearly 200,000 kilometres. That’s an average of new city every three days, and a total distance of nearly 5 times around the world! It’s exhausting, but post-MasterChef life is certainly good for the frequent flyer points.

I really think it would be easier if I just started flying myself.

     I’ve moved back to Australia from Japan. I spent a 6 wonderful years living in Japan and travelling around Asia – eating, learning and working – but it is so nice to be back home in Australia.

     I’ve won awards like FHM Australia’s “2011 Food Hero”, and been variously nominated for others as strange and diverse as “Favourite TV Star” at the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards. Walking red carpets and signing autographs for squealing fans is certainly not something I’m used to.

     I’ve met some amazing chefs from around the world including Rene Redzepi, Heston Blumenthal (again), Florence Tan – the Queen of Nyonya Cuisine, and especially Iron Chefs Hiroyuki Sakai and Chen Kenichi, who I had the pleasure of dining with in Melbourne recently and who I will be working with in the near future.

     I’ve cooked banquets at the World Expo in Shanghai, demonstrated at the Auckland Food Show and countless other shows around Australia such as Taste, Good Food Show, MasterChef Live and Fine Food Australia.  I’m soon to travel to South Africa to demonstrate at the Good Food Show over there and am cooking a series of degustation dinners in North Queensland. These are all extraordinary experiences that I am incredibly grateful for. In my wildest dreams I never would have imagined my life would involve travelling the world, cooking and eating. It’s amazing fun and it never feels like work to be talking to people about good food.

So, what’s next?

The biggest project I’m working on at the moment is a plan for a casual Japanese restaurant (izakaya) here in Sydney. There’s nothing concrete to announce at this stage but we’ve put hundreds of man-hours into it so far with the hope of opening very early next year. I know it’s been a long time coming, but for me and my partners in Japan it is more important to get it done right rather than fast. Stay tuned for more on this one.

I have a few trips coming up to Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and Japan. I’m soon hosting a tour to Japan to assist (and cook for) victims of the tsunami and nuclear disaster along with the fantastic Iron Chefs, Hiroyuki Sakai and Chen Kenichi. I’m also planning a stage in one of my favourite restaurants in Japan.

I’m working on plans for my second book and hope to have that out within the next year. Writing my book last year was a wonderful experience, and it was so gratifying to see all the positive feedback. Still, I hope my next book can be even better!

While not the most exciting development, I know this blog is long overdue for an overhaul. I hope to start writing more regularly and especially posting more recipes and photos of what’s been happening. Stay tuned for a newer and more interesting site over the next few months.

They say that moving house, changing jobs and getting married are the three most stressful things you can do in life. In the past year I’ve done two of those things, but it’s been far more wonderful than stressful. I’m truly thankful to all of you for making this possible.