Adam Liaw finds cooking is easy

Master chef Adam Liaw on action. Courtesy of MasterChef.com.auLife has taken a different twist for Adam Liaw after he won MasterChef Australia two years ago.

The cooking competition show brought Adam to fame, taking him to different parts of the world to inspire people to become chefs and allowing him to experience first hand the kitchens of top restaurants.

In town to promote his newly launched cookbook, Two Asian Kitchens, which hit stores mid last year, he had not changed from the man seen on the MasterChef competition.

His warm and calm manner made talking with him effortless. He responded to all bursting questions with smiles, and in detail.

Considering the book as his biggest achievement last year, he felt the writing process was so much fun.

“I’ve always thought that I want to write a book one day. Now that I’ve had the chance to do that, it’s really hard, but I really enjoy it,” he said when sharing bits and pieces of his new life at the Portico restaurant in Senayan City shopping mall in South Jakarta.

The 33-year-old lawyer-turned-chef said the book’s concept was very personal for him, illustrating dishes from old and new kitchens, the dishes that he experienced when growing up, including his family’s dishes and ones from some other countries that he had traveled to, such as Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.

“The book shows all the things that influenced me,” said Adam, who grew up cooking Malaysian and Chinese dishes as well as Australian food.

At the age of 14, Adam stayed with his grandmother Chew Kwei-Eng in Adelaide, Australia when his mother and stepfather moved to New Zealand.

Growing up, he pursued a career as a lawyer and moved to Japan but when the MasterChef fever hit, with encouragement from friends he decided to apply and won without having watched any of the MasterChef shows.

With clear excitement in his eyes, Adam said he was satisfied with his cookbook, which had sold well in a number of countries. After the completion of his first book, the Japanese food lover has one more dream to accomplish this year — opening his restaurant.

“If I try to do both [the book and the restaurant] within a year, I probably will kill myself. Once it opens, I expect to have more free time in the next five years,” he said, chuckling.

A teaching post in a culinary school is also something that crossed his mind, but a cooking show may take him a while to decide.

He was thinking to open his own Japanese Izakaya, or a pub with a casual restaurant, in Sydney, a location he preferred since it is the most populous city in Australia with the urban center occupied by some 20 percent of Asian Australians.

Preparations for the restaurant are in full gear but his team was still looking for the perfect site.

Adam’s penchant for Japanese food began when he was living in Japan.

At that time, he came to a local restaurant and, not being able to decipher the menu in Japanese characters, he just ordered one dish called yashi tomato.

“When it came, it was just a plain cold tomato. I was thinking, ‘Should I complain or not?’. But then I just ate it and it was the most delicious thing!” he said, adding that he always ordered it every time he came back to the restaurant.

Only when he was able to speak Japanese around a year later, he found out that the restaurant obtained the tomatoes from a special farm and strived to obtain the right ones.

The experience taught him to appreciate the simplicity of food, one of the reasons that made him fall for Japanese cuisine.

And he applies this simplicity to his cooking style, just like the advice of a MasterChef judge: an amateur cook keeps adding things to make the food taste better or right, while a professional keeps taking things out.

Simplicity is also one of the many things he picked up from his 85-year-old grandmother, his biggest inspiration who also happens to be his biggest fan.

“I remember trying to make my grandmother’s noodles and I put everything from the pantry into the wok. One day, I saw her making it and it turned out she just used a bit of salt and chicken stuff,” he said.

“You know, she’s like all Chinese grandmas. When you ask her what she puts in there she just says its soy sauce!”

In his cooking, Adam believes that food has to be authentic and must make sense, from its shape to its taste. Atmosphere that surrounds the food is an important aspect too since it accentuates the taste and the feel for the food.

 “I like to make a cake at dinner parties. When you serve the main course, you put the cake in the oven and then by the time they finish the main course, they can smell the cake. Then you bring out the hot cake and cut it,” he said.

Returning to his old job as a lawyer did cross his mind but despite his love for the job, he still wants to do what he loves doing – cooking.

Some people may think that cooking is hard but Adam disagrees.

“The cooking process is very easy. Great chefs get the respect they deserve for putting all those easy things together [to produce great food]. That’s maybe something that not all of us can do.”