Homemade tuna surprise, or takeaway pizza? Which would you choose on a Friday night at the end of a long day?
That tuna surprise – or dishes like it – might be the easier, tastier and almost certainly cheaper option.
“Everyone's working later and there’s so many different things to do,” says cookbook author and TV host , who’s on a mission to help everyday Australians discover how rewarding it can be to “get the pots and pans out and start cooking”, even when life is busy. “Don't get me wrong, everyone has a takeaway. I do, too! But getting into the kitchen and being able to cook for yourself is very important … and it tastes better.”
“My Mum and Dad worked. There were three of us. And I remember Friday night, I would come home and be like, ‘Yes. There's nothing in the fridge there's nothing in the pantry, freezer, yes! We're gonna get takeaway tonight. We're going to a restaurant’. And my Mum would come home and go ‘Hmm, let's have a look. I've got puff pastry and some tuna. Let's make a tuna surprise’. She'd make it sound more fancy with her French [Schofield’s mother is French]. She'd say ‘We're making tuna pithivier’.
“We'd go ‘ugh, tuna surprise’. But it was delicious – we weren’t happy but then we’d eat and be all ‘that’s delicious!’”
“Mum and Dad worked all day. They didn't come in until seven and they still put dinner on the table. I'm not calling them wonder parents. It was just the way we did it.”
Schofield, who will be cooking her way through various parts of Queensland in the new series Tropical Gourmet Queensland (on SBS Food (Channel 33) and ), says she’s learned from eight seasons on that simple cooking – and mastering the basics, like a good steak (get a sneak peek at what she's cooking in Queensland with ) or poached egg – is what a lot of Australians are really excited about.
It’s a long way from her days as a contestant on Masterchef.
Justines cooks a perfect rib eye with charred onion salad in the first episode of Tropical Gourmet Queensland. Source: Tropical Gourmet
“Masterchef it was all about … You wanted to really show that you could cook and take it to next level, as everyone would say. But … the feedback I get from people who watch Everyday Gourmet, which is a lot of Mums and Dads and a lot of teenagers that come home from school, it's saying ‘thanks for showing how to make the most perfect scrambled eggs’. Or ‘I didn't know how to poach an egg’ or ‘Is that how you make a frittata?’
“People are more excited about that stuff as opposed to the complex things.
“If I need to continue saying how to cook a poached egg a hundred times, I'll keep doing it for people who want to know how to do it. And have the thrill, the excitement of cooking for their family. I'm really happy to hone in on the simple things.”
As well as basic techniques, Schofield is passionate about eating with the seasons. “Why would you want an asparagus from Peru in winter? It drives me insane.”
Eating what’s in season is easier and good for the budget, she says, because what’s local and and seasonal is plentiful (so it’s easier than tracking down out of season ingredients) and cheaper, too.
She’s faced with an extraordinary abundance of fresh produce in episode one of Tropical Gourmet Queensland, when she visits in Cairns with north Queensland chef Nick Holloway. Hollway, head chef and co-owner of restaurant in nearby Palm Cove, is one of the many chefs, cooks, producers and fisherman that Schofield meets in the new show.
“It's just such an incredible array of fruit, and vegetables, and wonderful ingredients. I just really, really love coming here every week to shop and to be inspired, and tantalised and seduced by the smells, and the sounds, and the tastes,” Holloway says in the show about the market, which has been feeding Cairns for 30 years. “The great thing about the market is that you've got all of the staples of the European kitchen, but there's also incredible ingredients from the tropics.”
A huge turmeric root was just one of many discoveries as Justine Schofield toured Rusty's Markets with Nick Holloway Source: Food Network / Troical Gourmet Queensland
Produce gathered from the market goes into several of the dishes Schofield cooks on the show.
“He taught me so much about the ingredients that we picked up from the market,” Schofield says.
“He's an incredible chef and to become an incredible chef you have to know how to use everything to the best of its capability, and nothing goes to waste. He really showcases that in his food and still still makes it delicious by showcasing seasonal fruit and vegetables.
“I've eaten at his restaurant a few times. It is always delicious and it's that nice feeling of not knowing what you're going to get until you get there. If crab is not in season, you're not going to get the classic mud crab. It's disappointing but that's the way it is and that's the way it should be.”
Schofield also spent time learning about some popular Indigenous foods with Juan Walker of – luckily, without crocodiles. Along with local chef , she headed out on a foraging adventure in the mangrove mudflats at Cooya Beach, near Port Douglas.
“It was so interesting to know when you walk past a tree, oh that tree actually provides this or, oh look, if you just dig down here you'll find these great native oysters or native mussels that we can cook with that taste so delicious. It was a great learning curve to get out there with him.”
Exploring the mangroves, knee-deep in mud at some points, and foraging for food was one of the highlights of her trip, she says - although not without at least one anxious moment.
“He's like, ‘So just over here you'll find some crocodiles. Usually there are are a few here and there.' He says it so casually. [I thought] we shouldn't be out there! But he said ‘well, this is the way it is up here on the land, you just have to know the land well’.
Schofield is working on her third cookbook, which will be released next year. “It's really based around everything I sort of stand for, getting people to cook more at home,” she says. She’s about to start creating recipes for the next season of Everyday Gourmet, and she’s also getting excited about a trip to Western Australia for the .
“I'll be there in an interview with Rick Stein and Nigella Lawson, which I'm very nervous about!” she says. Schofield will be hosting one of the festival's signature events, the , which features three different menus – dishes inspired by Lawson’s latest cookbook on the Friday night; an all-WA feast with three local chefs on the Saturday; and a seafood feast with Rick and Jack Stein on the Sunday.
But right now, when we chat to Schofield, she’s got soup and bread on her mind, and recipes for the new book.
“Iggy's Bakery is a great a local bakery of mine. I always buy a loaf of bread for myself but I always have leftover and I'm just trying to think of how to use up stale bread without wasting it because it is one of those precious things that we should never waste.
“I use it in a tomato soup, it’s kind of like an Italian-style soup and it's best done with fresh tomatoes but you can also do it with canned tomatoes. Essentially it's just a nice rich soup and then you thicken it up with bread, stale bread. It sort of absorbs all the delicious juices of the tomatoes, Parmesan and basil. It's such a .
“Another way I like to [use bread] is just blend it up [in a food processor] with bacon … make a bacon greasy crumb and saute that in a pan. You can put some thyme through and even some garlic, depending on what you want to do with it.
"That is absolutely delicious over poached eggs. It also gives that really nice texture to any type of salad.”
Schofield’s travels in Queensland sparked more creative cooking – chocolate in an eggplant dip (the combination gives “a subtle, sort of sweet, earthy, nutty, smoky flavour”, a pork and watermelon recipe, and salt and vinegar onion rings (look out for the recipes for these dishes and more on SBS Food as the show goes to air).
It was also a chance to discover parts of Queensland she’d not seen before, says the Sydney-based chef, who had been to Queensland many times for family holidays and work in the past.
The show sees Justine cooking on balconies and beaches across Queensland. Source: Tropical Gourmet
“There were all these cute little pockets that I didn't know of, beautiful little areas,” she says.
“It reinforced that we need to travel more in Australia. Our country is so beautiful.”
Join Justine as she meets producers, explores the countryside and cooks in beaches, gardens and even a brewery, discovering Queensland’s rich array of produce in Tropical Gourmet on and .
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