John Torode - John Torodes Sydney to Seoul: Recipes from my travels in Australia and the Far East

Copyright 2018 John Torode

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First published as an Ebook in 2018 by
HEADLINE HOME
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Location photography 2018 John Torode

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 2666 2

Commissioning editor: Muna Reyal

Designed by Mark Harper at Bonbon London

Photography: Yuki Sugiura

Food styling: Lizzie Kamenetzky

Food styling assistant: Katie Marshall

Art director and prop styling: Cynthia Inions

Editor: Kay Halsey-Delves

Project editor: Kate Miles

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John Torode is one of the UK's best-loved chefs and judge of BBC One's MasterChef, Celebrity MasterChef and Junior MasterChef. John's food and travel series, Australia, Malaysian Adventures, Korean Food Tour and John Torode's Asia have aired on the Good Food Channel.

Follow John on Twitter @JohnTorode1 and Instagram @johntorodecooks

Recipes, tales and travels from Sydney to Seoul.

I have been lucky enough to travel through Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, China, Hong Kong, and with my early years in Australia, the food from these countries has inspired my cooking. Joyous, generous dishes taught to me by friends I've met along the way and I am excited to pass them on to you.

Here are the best dishes I've discovered, from a classic Thai Green Papaya Salad to Tteokbokki my version of Korean Bolognese and a quick and easy Peppered Tofu with Aubergine. There are also salads, including my Sweet Basil Salad a Sydney-Asian fusion and a Thai Lamb Salad that turned out not to be as Thai as I thought, plus curries, soups, noodles, rice and, of course, kimchi.

I hope that you will enjoy my stories and be inspired to try a few of my recipes too.

To all the women who have taught me to cook.

My love of cooking began with my Nanna, photographed here at our home in rural New South Wales with my brothers and me looking pretty smart for my first communion. Years later, Id be cooking in Sydney harbour.

This is a book of recipes collected whilst travelling the world and has been inspired by the food of every country I have visited along the way. Its a book of dreams that have come true, of recipes with tales that could be fact or fiction, but also a book full of ideas and thoughts on food and the recipes collected from streets, restaurants, friends and family.

Having been fortunate enough to travel to many a place over the past twenty years with food being the main reason, whether it be filming my own television series in Korea, Thailand and much of the rest of Asia or filming with MasterChef, I have seen a huge amount, met many wonderful cooks and explored lots and lots of markets and street food stalls.

Much of the food that I love has been discovered by walking. Those who know me well will tell you that I love a market, and when I say market, I mean food market. There is something about a market that allows me to soak up the culture, to hear the rhythmic chattering of the local people and the traders and to take in the all-important smells, be they pungent or intoxicating. These are the places where great food is born. Markets have long been at the centre of the community, not just somewhere to drop in and grab a bag of groceries, but a hub, a meeting place, a place to catch up with friends and mingle, and always a place to stop and eat.

Throughout my life I have been fascinated by people and how they eat, what they eat and when they eat. I love to watch people eat, using a spoon or chopsticks, fingers or hands. There is something very revealing about how people eat and there is always a story and reason why the global population have opted to all eat in different ways, using different tools and even sitting differently. How is it that through food we have all been able to keep our own national personalities? Even chopsticks can identify the origin of the food metal, Korea, short and flat, Japan, long and rounded, China. And a fork and spoon on a table without a knife and you are in Thailand, as a knife is considered a weapon and so is never placed on the table. A huge amount of information can be gathered by looking around the streets and the street stalls anywhere in the world.

Street stalls, be they in Korea, Thailand or anywhere else in Asia, in a covered market or simply on a street corner with a few brightly coloured plastic stools and tables, are my favourite places in the world to eat. The greatest of foods I believe are born out of necessity and came from ordinary people. They are crowd pleasers, the things that we all talk about. It could be soft corn tacos filled with pork or churros in Mexico, tteokbokki or iced noodles in Korea, wontons and soup noodles in Hong Kong, fish cakes and sweet chilli sauce or som tam in Thailand, sushi and sashimi in Japan or samosas and pani puri in India. They are always cheap, and I dont mean cheap quality, but inexpensive and delicious. These food stalls are not set up for the tourists, they are for the locals. This is where everyone goes to eat and so the food has to be good or there would be no return customers. I always gauge the deliciousness of the food in markets and street stalls by the number of people eating and waiting the more the better. This is not food to be rushed, but savoured.

AN EXTRACT FROM MY DIARY AUGUST 1997

Thailand
Thursday

Early morning market with Khun Pip (khun is a formal title and used out of respect, a bit like Mr & Mrs). Very different market to Pak Klong Talat in Bangkok dried rats, frogs and little turtle looking things, snails as well as vegetables everywhere. Great big hydraulic coconut milk press. Khun Pip knows how to act for the cameras. Dinner last night very Thai chicken green curry, sweet potatoes/yam and prawns, laap, tom yum, lots of chilli. Cooking lesson was slow because of cameras, really hot, laap gai, pad prik ong (surprisingly they use tomatoes). Lunch set for all of us again red pork curry, laap, pad prik and vegetables and rice soup, as I had at breakfast.