Feedback with Jeremy Pang

Feedback with Jeremy Pang

We are joined this month by British-Chinese culinary wizard, author, and TV personality Jeremy Pang.

He’s the mastermind behind the award-winning School of Wok in London, where his cookery classes specialise in Asian and Oriental cooking. With several cookbooks under his chef's hat, Jeremy's mission is that anyone can become a kitchen ninja with a little guidance. His lively teaching style, passion and enthusiasm has landed him spots on TV shows like Saturday Kitchen and Steph’s Packed Lunch. Jeremy blends tradition with a sprinkle of innovation, encouraging food lovers everywhere to dive into the delicious world of authentic Chinese cooking.

Here he tells us which three ingredients he can't live without, what he thinks about supermarket packs of ready-made stirfry and how a tin of beans makes him happy!

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Photo by Kris Kirkham

What food always reminds you of your childhood?
It’s quite a specific dish for me, red braised pork belly (Hong Shao Rou), which my dad used to cook. He didn't use traditional red fermented tofu, his is a slow cooked pork belly dish with whole boiled eggs. You make three slits around the hard-boiled eggs then place them into the braising stock in the last half an hour or so. He always cooked more eggs than he needed, then he'd crack one or two and the hard-boiled yolk made a paste that created a silky sauce. That reminds me of my childhood a lot. When we were growing up, he used to live in Hong Kong and would come back to the UK maybe three, four times a year. We'd know when he was home because he'd arrive at about five o'clock in the morning and we'd all still be half asleep, and you'd wake up to the smell of the braised belly pork. It was a real homecoming and the one dish that always remind me of my childhood.

Do you have a current favourite or type of restaurant?
I always like small independent restaurants that people don't tend to know about. When it comes to Chinese restaurants I'm quite specific as to which restaurants I go to, and each one will suit a different need. There's a place which is only around the corner from School of Wok in Covent Garden called Xi Home Dumplings, in Chandos Place. They do lots of different types of northern Chinese dumplings - that are more like rolls or wraps that they might fry, boil or steam. It reminds me of a place I took quite a few people to on my Hong Kong trip too on Queen's Road east. It's quite a central area, but they have this tiny little northern Chinese dumpling place that only serves dumplings, little side dishes, and small plates. XI Home Dumplings does quite similar food. It's very clean, even the deep frying is clean. I always know when someone knows how to deep fry; when they cook it in fresh oil, it always comes out much cleaner and crispy, nothing's greasy even if it's deep fried. They make a bean curd skin, spring roll with different crunchy vegetables and mushrooms inside. Dishes like that just really stick with me, I really like that place. There’s another restaurant I like called Diwan on Thayer Street in Marylebone. It’s like a little kebab house and they do the most amazing grilled chicken wings and falafel. Little independent places like that are great, making brilliant food and usually it's made by like the uncles and aunties of the community. There's a hidden gem restaurant near me in Wimbledon called Flavour Hubb - it’s actually not even a restaurant. It's in the Wimbledon Racket Club and the owner is southern Thai and he employs a very young Malaysian chef. The two of them are the only people who are cooking and serving in the whole place, and they're creating and cooking incredible food.

What food or ingredient could you not do without?
I kept the list short!  I’m going to give you three – ginger, garlic and spring onions. We don't have a name for the combination of the three in Chinese because they're all used separately as much as they are used combined. But those three ingredients absolutely, I cannot live without.

What would you say to someone who reaches for a pack of supermarket ready-made stir fry ingredients?
It's a good question and I’d say good on you for at least trying! I think everyone has to start somewhere, and it's a great way to practice your wok skills because usually you wouldn't mix all of those vegetables together unless you have a really, really strong fire. The problem with mixing them all together is that they've always got bean sprouts in them, and they really shouldn't be cooked for any more than 30 seconds to a minute. So, if you cook all those vegetables at the same time and your wok isn't hot enough, your bean sprouts are guaranteed to be overcooked by the time everything else is cooked. But what it does do is gives me an easy way to advise people that the only way to cook a good stir fry with those ready-made packets is to make sure that your wok is extremely hot, and the oil is smoking before you flash fry those vegetables. Straight away, that person has learned something about what a stir-fry really is. Even packet sauces, I’m not fond of myself, but it's a great way for people to start because if they like it, they might look at the back of the jar of sauce and then next time, buy the soy sauce or oyster sauce. So, it encourages people to want and learn to cook better and I'm all for that.

You've been demystifying Chinese cooking, do you think your message has got through and do you think people are more confident than they were?
I think that even though we've got a massive audience today it’s still a tiny part of the society. So, the message has got through and it continues to get through, there's so many more people out there than when I started teaching who are doing a great job of encouraging others to want to learn more about Chinese and Asian food, so I think people are a lot more confident these days. We are teaching the same as we were doing 15 years ago, it's still highly relevant today but what's really nice is that the relaxed education we put across in our classes, in cookery books or whatever it might be, it's there for everyone, not just there for beginners. Some people are little bit snooty and say, 'that's to much of a beginner level for me'. But we get people coming into our classes who are professional chefs. Of course, they're not necessarily going to take from perhaps the knife skills part of the lessons, but what they do learn is a huge amount about how they refine their skill in cooking a completely different cuisine. We continue to teach numerous yacht chefs, people who have to learn about all the types of global cuisine to be able to like cook for the owners, so it doesn't matter how expert you are, you've always got space to learn and I'm a big believer in that. I think it's quite clear that is my number one passion - to get other people to be excited about this food.

At the end of a long day, what's your quick supper and who cooks it for you?
When I work from home I tend to prep during the day when I've got 10-15 minutes, then I'll finish off when the kids get home. Usually during the week my wife tends to cook on weekdays she cooks more western food, usually tray bakes or pasta dishes so if I get home and there's something like that on the table, great. Put half a can of baked beans next to it, and I'm happy!

What was the most memorable meal you can remember eating?
I have two. One that was really bad and another that was the opposite, and they both come from my mum and dad's ancestral villages! So my dad's village is in Jiangxi province in China, and this was the really, really bad meal. I was with my mum and dad and I remember it very vividly because it was a village of a thousand Pangs and because we were the first ever ancestral ancestors to come to the village to visit, they had arranged this police escort to take us through the entrance of the village and when we arrived the police escort set off firecrackers to let everyone know we had arrived. We went to my dad's great uncle's house first, and what I didn’t know was that this was the first huge banquet of two or three, and it was honestly the worst I've ever eaten. In those parts of China it's very rustic, and you get these very dry chilies, there was so much dried chili in the food that when you were looking for a piece of chicken, you really have to search, then when you get to it, it was the toughest chicken, I've ever eaten in my life. In these rural villages they grow their chickens until they're as old as they can be, they don't have the same hanging meat culture as they do in the west. So we slogged our way through this one meal and finished that gruelling process, and then about an hour later went over to a cousin's house and they served us pretty much the same meal for us. So that was my dad's village. 

My mum's ancestral village was Guang Zhou, just across the border from Hong Kong and they really know how to cook. My mum's cousins still own a very famous restaurant in this village and it honestly was the most amazing banquet of roast meats I've ever tasted in my life. I can still remember it to this day, and it was 25-30 years ago! The roast meats were cooked in very, very thick walk-in clay ovens, so big that they were outside the restaurant, they have a chimney at the top and little wind tunnels in the bottom of the thick walls, so it allowed the air to circulate all through the huge ovens. And all the roast meats roast duck, roast pork, and roast chicken, would be lined up on the inside walls of those ovens at the perfect height above the coal that was cooking the meat. I've honestly never tasted roast meat like that before, or even after.

Is there something in particular that you always keep in the fridge?
Yes homemade chilli oil. There's something about it because you can choose what you use. I actually like the slightly milder nature of the Korean chilli flakes so if I'm making a really good chilli oil for home it'll be a simple one with the chilli flakes, maybe some fresh chilies. I won't fry them, I'll just heat the oil really hot to smoking point and then turn off the heat and then let it sit for 20-30 seconds before I pour it hot or over the chili flakes and fresh chilies, maybe a bit of garlic if you wish, sesame seeds and some soy sauce. It's quite simple and the flavour develops over the course of about a week if it lasts that long.

What would be your last supper if any was available? Where would you eat it? Who would you be with?
In Chinese and Asian cooking, you never have one dish, we see the whole table as our dish. I’d eat it with family and friends on a beach or clifftop overlooking the sea and the sunset with a big bonfire nearby. It would be a Chinese banquet with a bit of Southeast Asian influence. Crispy pork, that could be Filipino style, with the lemongrass, garlic and white pepper, marinading the meat with really, really crispy skin. Hong Kong style barbecue pork, soy sauce poached chicken with ginger and spring onion, a steamed whole grouper sweet and sour prawns because you need something crispy with contrasting flavour to the rest of the saltier food. Possibly a braised tofu, mushroom stew on the side, some steamed rice and fish and a nice chrysanthemum tea to drink during the banquet. Then I'd top it off with a western dessert, chocolate orange souffle, and a platter of cheese and biscuits. Then I'd finish off with a Taiwanese whisky, nothing too smoky, then I'd have a long gaze at the sunset as I finished off the whisky.

Head over to our competition page to win a School of Wok cookery class voucher for two and a copy of Jeremy's latest cookbook Hong Kong Kitchen