Pantry hacks, miracle ingredients and gluten-free vegan cooking: behind the scenes of Dan Hong's show, #shelfie

• Dan Hong's strange flavour salad with salt 'n' pepper tofu
• The best places to eat in Sydney: Dan Hong

So what exactly do you cook for a gluten-free vegan?

That's the challenge for Dan Hong on the day I visit the set of his ABC iView show, #shelfie. As executive chef of Ms G's and Mr Wong, he has a habit of portraying dietary restrictions as his arch-enemies on his Instagram - he's famous for uploading dockets that feature outrageous requests - so this adds an extra layer of interesting to this episode.

Hong admits that, nowadays, he says game on to such constraints. He actually enjoys them.

"I really embraced it, because the first three episodes ... they didn't have any dietary requirements, they could eat everything, which was – you know – it's all well and good, but this one was really cool because it presented a challenge to me."

So that's how we find ourselves with a TV crew in the Sydney home of Alannah. She's a 24-year-old working in PR and - as is the premise of #shelfie - Hong picked her as the co-conspirator for his latest episode because he liked the cooking challenge presented by the Instagram that she (@alannaha) posted of her pantry shelf. Her kitchen arsenal of vegan fish sauce, savoury yeast flakes and peanut butter stood out to him. On #shelfie, he must whip up a dish relying on what's at the person's home - he's only allowed to bring two extra ingredients.

On the day of filming, his secret weapons are tofu and chilli oil, which he deploys to make a strange flavour salad with salt 'n' pepper tofu (recipe here) - which, completely busts any scepticism you would have about a vegan gluten-free dish.

"Well, that's the whole point of the show," says Hong. "Just because it's vegan or just because it's gluten-free, just because it's dairy-free, it doesn't have to be less delicious than everything else." The crew rates it as #shelfie's best recipe so far.

Between takes of the show, I eavesdrop on the banter between Hong and his show guest ("It's amazing how much gluten is in everything - even gin," she says; "What?!" says Dan), and note how the filming of #shelfie is a lot like the show's premise (with the small crew making smart use of what's around; they've elevated the kitchen table to camera height by stacking a collection of Alannah's cookbooks under the table legs).

I also quiz the chef for his apocalypse dish, pantry essentials and his two-minute noodle hack ("seriously the best thing you'd ever eat") for the video above, as well as his recipe hacks, miracle ingredients and how to make the most of just two things.

Best two-ingredient dishes

Obviously, instant noodles. You can add one extra ingredient to that to make that awesome: egg, meat or vegetables.

I like eating rice and fish sauce. That's a meal to me. (Writer's note: this is pretty cool coming from a two-hat chef.)

Noodles with oyster sauce.

What's a good sandwich with two ingredients? Nothing [laughs]. Everyone knows how to make a cheese toastie. But a kimchi cheese toastie, that would be awesome. But that's three ingredients.

Dietary-restricting busting ingredient

I guess a certain ingredient that would work across a lot of dietaries would be something like this chilli oil here, which is gluten-free, dairy-free, it's vegan. And this can beef up a lot of things and make it really spicy and delicious.

Best DIY ingredient

There's also a lot of ingredients that have a lot of flavour that you can make – like koji. That can add a lot of umami to your food without having any meat products. Koji's actually really easy to make. You just put salt and rice and you add some of that bacteria to a jar and you just leave it for a week, don't you? It's not that hard. I think you get that bacteria from a Japanese supermarket.

Best use of late-night fridge raids

Take your leftover roast chicken, old hot dogs, bacon – combine with eggs or instant noodles; stir-fry with fried egg on cheese, or [just add] grated cheese.

Best ingredient discoveries

Going to other people's kitchens every other week is an eye-opening experience, because some people may have ingredients that I've never used before. For example:

- vegan fish sauce, which smells surprisingly like shrimp paste, which is cool
- all-purpose seasoning, which is like a gluten-free soy sauce
- coconut sugar, that's like palm sugar
- brown rice flour. I've never seen brown rice flour before, so that's … healthy.
- and savoury yeast flakes, which is the biggest discovery of the day, I think. [It has] undertones of parmesan cheese, shiitake mushrooms. Really delicious, actually.

I might be using one of these things later on at one of the restaurants.

#shelfie airs every Thursday at 11am and can be seen on demand on ABC iView.