After training as a chef, Australian food writer Lara Lee fell out of love with cooking in the haze of new motherhood. Here’s how she got her kitchen mojo back.
My cooking life has pivoted between four notable eras: Cooking without time, cooking with time, cooking all the time and not cooking at all.
My early 20s were spent cooking without time, where “instant” was the main criteria. Two-minute noodles, tom yum soups made from store-bought pastes and a $5 steak at the local pub provided all my body needed to meet university deadlines and give me energy on the dance floor.
Into my late 20s and early 30s, I fell in love and got married. I spent those years cooking with time. A slow meander down the supermarket aisle and a leisurely preparation of feasts and dinner parties was a joyful pastime.
I lived in London back then, before Brexit and pandemics were a thing, and Queen Elizabeth II still reigned. I soon traded a decade-long technology sales career for a culinary one, enrolling at Leiths School of Food & Wine to train to become a chef. Life shifted to cooking all the time.
After graduation, I immersed myself in Michelin kitchens, gaining experience at The Ledbury and The Fat Duck, before launching Kiwi & Roo, an Antipodean catering business, with my New Zealand-born co-founder Fiona Hannah. In the evenings I penned a cookbook celebrating my Indonesian heritage and grandmother’s cooking, miraculously landing a book deal. I fell pregnant, and tested every recipe throughout it with swollen ankles and an unyielding hunger that was most certainly eating for two. Cooking all the time, I submitted the final manuscript on my due date.
And then my son Jonah was born. In the freefall of new motherhood and the realisation that my time no longer belonged to me (it belonged to him), I hit a rut that knocked me to my knees: I was not cooking at all. Once the batch-cooked freezer meals I had prepared during pregnancy ran out, so did all aspects of good food.
I wrote A Splash of Soy for me, but I also wrote it for anyone feeling burnt out or lacking energy. It is as much for those of us not cooking at all as it is for those who have the luxury of cooking all the time.
A side note: if you ever wondered what to bring friends with a newborn, bring them food. The gift of food is as joyful as the gift of sleep. Since the latter is rare (or non-existent) in those early days, feed them, and feed them well.
In the foggy, fatigued haze of new parenting, I had no will to cook. Any free time was allocated to the most immediate of human needs: showering, laundry, or brushing my hair. I went from a glamorous life cooking high-end canapes for the prime minister of Australia to a rotation of frozen fish fingers, microwave quiches and takeaway. Eating was no longer a simple pleasure, but survival.
Yet, my cooking mojo reawakened with the international success of my debut Indonesian cookbook Coconut & Sambal. Commissions to write recipes rolled in from all over the world. The briefs were consistent: editors asked for easy, midweek meals with few ingredients and minimal washing up.
My purpose felt restored. My love for food had defined my identity before Jonah was born. After his arrival my heart was full, but I had pushed cooking aside to navigate my new life. As I surfaced for air, I discovered there was room in my life for both.
In that pivotal moment, the idea for my new cookbook, A Splash of Soy, emerged. I knew the recipes had to be comforting and delicious. I wanted it to nod to my heritage and the Asian flavours that made my heart sing. I wanted to fuse tradition and culture with the reality of the daily grind. The recipes had to be quick and easy, with ingredients I could find at my local supermarket. If I included a specialist ingredient (such as store-bought tom yum paste), it was because that ingredient was life-changing.
I wrote A Splash of Soy for me, but I also wrote it for anyone feeling burnt out or lacking energy. It is as much for those of us not cooking at all as it is for those who have the luxury of cooking all the time.
Many recipes require chopping and assembly only, and some need no cooking at all, just the act of boiling the kettle. Many can be on the table in 15 minutes. I wanted the book to feel inclusive no matter the missing ingredient in your pantry or dietary need; there are substitutes on every page.
The recipes celebrate my love of kitchen shortcuts, life’s small but satisfying victories. If you don’t already use minced garlic paste, ginger paste and lemongrass paste, I urge you to go out and buy them (don’t walk, run). Instant Japanese curry cubes to make a 25-minute katsu curry will change your life (or at least, it has for me).
I tested the recipes on friends, family and the fussiest critic of all: Jonah. He has eaten, and loved, most of the non-spicy meals. The joy of cooking one meal that suits both adults and children cannot be overstated. Sharing the same meal not only simplifies mealtime, it also fosters a sense of togetherness around the dinner table. That is worth cooking for.
There are still days I don’t feel like cooking, and I still love frozen fish fingers. Life can be hectic and exhausting, and we can’t control that. But if you cook these recipes or turn the pages of A Splash of Soy, I hope it rekindles your love for cooking (on the days you feel like cooking), as it did for me.
Serving a hot bowl of katsudon (crumbed pork or chicken and rice) to prime suspects during police interrogations to get a confession is a common trope in Japanese films and anime, such is the dish’s reputation as soul food that can melt even the coldest of criminal hearts.
Katsudon is an auspicious food, too, and is often eaten by Japanese students the night before a major exam because katsu is a homophone for the Japanese word that means “to win”. Basically, this dish is so powerful that you’d be wise to cook it for loved ones for good luck, or when you want the cold, hard truth (like, who did eat the last brownie in the fridge?)
The dish is typically served with tonkatsu (deep-fried pork), but chicken katsu is also popular (see recipe below if you want to make your own), and I’ve included a fish finger option because, let’s face it, they have universal appeal. Serve with microwave rice for speed, or old-fashioned home-cooked rice if you have time.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
Serves 2
There are pasta dishes; there are kimchi dishes. Then there’s cheesy kimchi linguine with gochujang butter, a dish that flies the flag for sweet-spicy-salty-umami-fermented flavour. It’s rich, loud, crimson and glossy.
That it comes together in just 15 minutes with store cupboard ingredients makes it even more special. Key to balancing the dish are the garnishes: flakes of crispy seaweed and spring onions are sprinkled on top, layered with a squeeze of lime and a crispy fried egg whose all-important runny yolk is broken into and tossed together with grated parmesan for a bowl of sheer decadence.
Like wine, the quality of your kimchi can make or break a meal. A good-quality kimchi is paramount to the flavour of the dish, anchoring the sour funk that is so vital to the noodles’ flavour, so look for the fresh, artisan varieties and buy the best you can afford.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
Serves 2
Miso and gochujang bring all the sweet-spicy-umami richness you need to this buttery roasted chicken dish, their distinctive flavour profiles contributing an underlying funk to what is, I think, the perfect marinade. The beauty of this recipe is that it requires no marinating time at all, owing to the deep intensity of flavour that comes from the gochujang, a crimson, fermented Korean chilli paste made from glutinous rice, fermented soybeans, salt and chilli flakes. Miso adds a salty, tangy, savoury depth.
It’s the leftover pan juices at the end of cooking that I love most. Mixed with a little extra gochujang and honey to serve, the pan juices are a blissful blend of rendered chicken fat and the buttery richness of the spicy-sweet marinade, which become an irresistible gravy I like to drizzle over the chicken and toss with steamed rice to create a gravy rice that is heavenly to eat.
The unmarinated chicken skin begins to crisp up during the first half of cooking, so don’t be tempted to brush the butter on the skin until the halfway point, or the sugars in the honey and gochujang will likely burn. Halfway through, once lacquered with the buttery glaze, the chicken caramelises beautifully. It’s fantastic served with steamed white rice.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
Serves 4
If, like me, you find yourself asking for several packets of pickled ginger at the sushi bar, read on. The ginger is intended to serve as a palate-cleanser when eating different varieties of sushi, but I find myself eating it in far larger quantities than it was intended for, thanks to my greedy craving for the tender, sweetened slices of pickle.
This recipe is inspired by this obsession, the young slices of pickled ginger dancing upon the soba noodles they are tossed with, perfectly balanced by the sesame, soy and vinegar dressing. A drizzle of pickled ginger juice to finish adds a sweet, ginger-inflected, syrupy coating.
Boiling the soba noodles is the only cooking you’ll need to do to prepare this dish. The rest is the assembly of store cupboard ingredients and the kind of aromatic staples I recommend keeping in the fridge.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
Serves 2
Chicken katsu works brilliantly as the star for an endless number of dishes. Making it at home is surprisingly quick, and the flavour pay-off is succulent, tender fillets of chicken, crispy and golden in a salty panko crumb.
I can’t stress enough how useful a digital thermometer is for deep-frying. You’ll know when the chicken is cooked through, and it’s the safest way to regulate the heat.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
Serves 2
This is an edited extract from A Splash of Soy: Everyday Food from Asia by Lara Lee, photography by Louise Hagger, prop stylist Alexander Breeze, food stylist Nicole Herft, published by Bloomsbury, $45, out on May 2. Buy now
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