Congratulations on the new show, Poh! Can you introduce us to the “Co.”? “Co.” is my husband [Jono], my dog, my mum, and my great aunty Kim, who’s a huge food influence in my life. They’re the little suburban heroes in food.
We’ve heard you’re a serial midnight baker, particularly during painting spells. What’s your go-to dish to quell the late night cravings? Painting can be quite taxing on the eyes, so it’s a nice little break for me to run downstairs and indulge in my other love, which is baking. It gives me time to mull over issues I’m trying to resolve in composition. One of my favourite recipes is actually on the show; it’s the . I’ve been making it for over a decade now.
Speaking of baking, you run a weekly food stall at the with Jono, best friend Sarah and her husband Matt, called Jamface. Where do you find the time? You think it’s this charming little thing you can dabble in on weekends, but it’s actually starting to encroach further into the centre of my week! It’s been a fantastic challenge and I’ve loved being a part of the market community.
How closely is your pursuit of cooking connected to identifying with your Chinese heritage? Hugely. In fact, it’s the thing that drove me to become so obsessed with food. In my early 30s I found that I’d ditched so much of my culture – my language is completely mangled and I don’t really identify with the values.
Food is something I’ve always identified with because I grew up in such a food-obsessed culture in Malaysia. It was always in my veins. So, I thought, “This is the thing that I have to pursue hard. It’s the only legacy I’m going to have from my culture”.
You credit your mum and aunty for teaching you how to cook. Do you think they've also picked up tips from you? They find it quite entertaining to watch me because I do things in such a wacky way. I always break rules and they shake their heads. When I pull through with the goods, they say, “Oh, you’re just such an idiot. I can’t believe you managed to do that.” It’s nice to be able to give that back to them.
During Poh & Co., your pal Andre Ursini challenges you to cook a service at his restaurant . How did you find the experience of working in a commercial kitchen? I found it really daunting. I did OK, but to be perfectly honest, they didn’t give me a difficult task so I managed. Restaurant service is very different to catering.
So we can’t expect a restaurant from you in the future? Well, never say never. It’s still something I obsess about every day, but I can’t do everything at once.
One of your missions on the show is to create an edible garden at home. Who did all the hard yakka, you or Jono? Jono does no gardening, he just built the garden. He told me this right from the beginning, he said “If you want a garden, you can have it, but I'm just letting you know, I’m not going to have any part in actually gardening.” And he’s been quite resolute about that!
Did you discover a green thumb? I can’t say I’ve found my green thumb, but we’ve had a lot of luck. We put in a fantastic organic loam that's irrigated. I had giant beetroot and, at the moment, I have cos lettuce coming out of my ears. There were a few failures - the main problem being I was getting too greedy and thought, “Oh, I’ll wait until that vegetable’s really fat and then I’ll harvest it.” Some of it went to seed and that’s the end of it. It’s all woody, fibrous and bitter. But considering it’s my first year and I’ve had no help, really, I’ve had a bumper crop.
I think the show is about what everyone aspires to in the suburbs. You know, to have a veggie patch, to put a pizza oven in, and just to cook nice food from ingredients that are accessible. I wanted to make a really ordinary show in many ways, something that a majority of Australians could relate to.
An interesting relationship on the show is the triangle between you, your best friend Sarah and her husband Matt. Fill us in on the backstory. Matt and I used to be married and we’ve just remained really good friends. We have a nice creative synergy. Because we’ve resolved all our grievances, we decided it was a real shame to ditch everything we had, so we ended up being business partners!
You’ve worked with Matt on filming projects in the past and once touted the idea of a drama-comedy collaboration. Perhaps Poh & Co. fits the bill? [Laughs] I don’t know about that! There’s definitely a bit of comedy in there, because I’m clearly a chaotic kind of a person who has her finger in several pies. I get greedy with life and want to have lots of adventures and expression.
You’ve held solo art exhibitions for the past 11 years and we get to peek at your creative process in the show. Is it difficult switching off from distractions, or do you naturally fall into an artist’s trance? Unfortunately, it comes all too easily for me, but it means that a lot of things fall by the wayside. I can just wander through my studio and go, “Oh, I’ll just start a sketch!” and literally, the whole day’s gone and I have a thousand emails. I’ve never had a proper day job, and because of that I find it easy to focus on a task and be quite tunnel-visioned. I’m quite introverted. People think I’m bubbly – and I’m well known for having a good laugh – but I love time out on my own, just making things with my hands. That’s where I get all my energy from.
Your life is driven by creative pursuits. Where or who do you draw inspiration from? I think it’s about being resourceful. A lot of my creativity is driven by finding beauty in ordinary objects. I grew up as a kid who was left to my own devices, so from a young age I was pretty dexterous.
To find out more about check out the . Scroll through Poh's recipes and check out her series of recipe video tutorials .
