Suzie Lee - Simply Chinese: Recipes from a Chinese Home Kitchen

I am Suzie Lee (Arbuthnot), the 2020 winner of the BBCs Best Home Cook and the presenter of my own TV show called Suzie Lees Home Cook Heroes on BBC One. I am British-born Chinese (BBC), and was brought up by my Hong Kong parents in Northern Ireland. My dad moved to Blackburn when he was 11 with his parents to seek a better life. Fast forward seven years and Dad asked Mum to marry him via letter and she travelled to Blackburn to marry him. Fast forward another nine years and I was born (number four of five children).

The Man Lee takeaway in Ballymacash was established in 1980 when my parents moved to Lisburn to look for a better life yet again.

Having been brought up with my family running a Chinese takeaway, I was surrounded by food 24/7. In Chinese culture, food and family are intertwined. I was taught that good food can bring harmony and closeness to friends, family and strangers. This is a principle I live by, and I feel when I cook and feed people that I am making a connection with them.

My mum is my inspiration. She was a self-taught cook who ran our takeaway and was our head chef. She loved food and was so passionate about cooking. I am very lucky to have acquired this passion from her. I have such lovely memories of her last year alive, where we went to restaurants, cafs and coffee shops in her very limited spare time to enjoy the delights that Northern Ireland had to offer. If we liked something, we ate it then either she or I would try to recreate it.

The pivotal moment in my cooking life was 25 December, 1999. To my horror, a few days before the holidays, my mum announced she was not going to make Christmas dinner for my extended family. So, I took up the challenge and became familiar with our takeaway industrial oven and gas-fired woks, so I could make dinner for our 40-plus relatives. I love Christmas it symbolises everything I enjoy about family: time together, food, chatting, laughing and just pure happiness.

Mum unfortunately passed away suddenly on 8 February, 2000. My life was turned upside down and I was propelled into adulthood a lot sooner than I expected. In a strange way I think my mum refusing to cook Christmas dinner the year before was her way of preparing me for the future!

During my 20 years of cooking, I have learned so much through television, magazines, books, my Auntie Linda (my dads sister) and by experimenting! This meant many different cuisines and ingredients being tried and tested for lots and lots of recipes. Because of this I love a good rustle-up for me, it goes hand in hand with reducing food waste and using leftovers and what you have at hand in your cupboards, fridge and freezer! I discovered through this writing journey (which was both therapeutic and very emotional) that my mum also rustled-up many a dish and that they were her own original creations.

Cooking Chinese food would not have been my number-1 go-to as I always felt my dishes were not as good as my mums and aunties, and this was a real mental hurdle to get over! But in the past seven years since my children were born, Ive felt it was so important to bring them up to appreciate and taste their Chinese food heritage too.

Having only had a short period of time with Mum, I was really fortunate to taste amazing traditional Cantonese dishes day in, day out. I was blessed that as a family we travelled a lot and without fail we visited Hong Kong at least once a year. The food there is exceptional! So, with those memories, and having visited many Chinatowns around the world (from all over the UK to New York and Sydney), I feel I am now ready to show you my Chinese cooking repertoire, providing you with recipes that give a different insight into Chinese cooking. Some of these are recreated from memories, some self-taught, some takeaway favourites (like ) and all have the Suzie twist to them.

My recipes are not restrictive. I believe in using up ingredients you have to hand, so be brave and swap out ingredients for those you already have. The mantra I go by is prep, taste and practice. This will help you become confident in cooking a delicious meal, no matter what it is!

Cooking is meant to be enjoyable and for me it is my therapy and a way to connect with my mum again I just get lost in the process and go into autopilot as I immerse myself. Now, as a working mum, I am trying to bring my children up to enjoy cooking (playing), eating and communicating through food, whether it is discussing what they are chopping or the simple act of conversation around the table eating the meal that they helped to prepare; food for me is the cornerstone of family life as it brings everyone together.

Go on, give my recipes a try. I promise it really isnt as complicated as it looks.

Enjoy!

Suzie x

Before, during, and after winning Best Home Cook people have always asked for my recipes and top tips in the kitchen. The recipes I have chosen to include in this book are favourites within my small family and can be made by people of all cooking abilities. Cooking should be fun and sharing the results with friends and family makes it all worthwhile.

I was spoilt rotten with all the food that was being cooked around me and my experience of growing up around Chinese cuisine. My Chinese heritage is something I take for granted, and up to now, Chinese cooking was something that I kept within my immediate family. These are memories and my siblings have different ones, but this is my take on some of my mums dishes to make them even more user-friendly for someone wanting simple, tasty, Cantonese food.

This cookbook is for the home cook and making use of ingredients you can get at your local shop or supermarket; you will only need a few specialist ingredients for some of the dishes. Some of the ingredients might be quite surprising and somewhat unconventional for Hong Kong cuisine such as tomato ketchup, brown sauce, spam, corned beef, condensed milk, evaporated milk and butter.

I am a big advocate of reducing food waste, so in this book I will give you my top tips on where you can reduce or reuse ingredients to make things go that bit further. My aim is to avoid putting anyone off cooking any of my dishes because they had to buy a million different ingredients that they only used once!

Ginger, garlic and spring onions (scallions) are known as the three key aromatics in Chinese cooking, and they feature heavily throughout my book.

I love spring onions. I have bunches of them sitting in glasses on my kitchen windowsill. They help to lift any dish. You can use the white part to fry with, which gives a similar flavour to onions (although slightly mellower); the green tops are great to give a kick to finished dishes or used raw in salads. The options are endless.

As well as ginger, garlic and spring onions, my other storecupboard staples are listed on the next page. However, you wont find a sprig of coriander (cilantro) in this book, due to a crucial incident in my childhood when I overate it, which has scarred me for life. One of my aunties called by one evening and Mum invited her to stay for dinner. Mum made Cantonese-style steamed turbot, but to finish off the fish (traditionally) a whole bunch of fresh coriander is placed on top of the steaming fish. That evening I decided to eat a gigantic mouthful of coriander with the fish because I was getting praised (as a seven-year-old this meant a lot) for eating everything Mum had made. I gagged (but ate it anyway) and I felt really sick. And that was it my love affair with coriander was over.