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00:00Hello, I'm Adam Liao and welcome to The Cook-Up, the world's first cooking show.
00:25Tonight we are making popcorn chicken, tempura eggplant with honey and spices and Korean vegetable pancake.
00:30Let's meet our guests.
00:32My first guest grew up in Peru, studied at Le Cordon Bleu and is now executive chef at Rafi in Sydney.
00:37I bet he's as surprised as anyone that one of his favourite dishes to cook at home is Vegemite meatballs.
00:43Welcome, Matthias Siones.
00:46With all due respect to the accountancy profession, I am thrilled my second guest abandoned a number-crunching career to pursue her love of food.
00:51She's since risen through the ranks to become the first female chef de cuisine at Nobu Perth.
00:56Welcome, Ping Ping Po.
00:57Hi, Adam.
00:58Great to have you here.
01:00Two fantastic chefs working at opposite ends of the country and here you meet right in the middle.
01:06Kind of.
01:06Not really.
01:08Actually, we're only about 10 minutes from your restaurant.
01:10Is this a dream come true for you, Ping Ping, to not to be on the cook-up, but to be the executive chef of a restaurant?
01:19Yes, especially at Nobu's Calibre, yes, definitely, of course.
01:23Matthias, executive chef at Rafi, this is your first executive chef position?
01:27It is in Australia, yes.
01:29In Australia.
01:31What's it like?
01:32Is there pressure on you to take a new restaurant and kind of go, okay, this is what it's going to be all about?
01:37Yes, I love that creative bit.
01:42I love opening new restaurants.
01:44I love creating new teams.
01:46But it's been a bit of a challenge for me to understand fully what Australians are looking for from the customer side of things, but also from the business side of things.
01:56So I've got to make both happy.
01:58I've got to make money and I've got to cook some great food.
02:01Honestly, like, this show is all about cooking, but the business side of things when it comes to restaurants is so much more important than the cooking, in my opinion.
02:09Like, if you can't make it worthwhile for someone to sit in that chair and hand over their money, then you're not going to be around for very long.
02:16That's right.
02:16That's correct, yes.
02:18Feeling peckish?
02:19Love borderline trademark infringements?
02:20Tonight, we will snack, crackle and pop.
02:25Of these things, which one would you keep?
02:29Which would you destroy?
02:31Pork crackling, popcorn, tomatoes, salmon roe and then, like, a little bit of fried rice paper.
02:41Pork crackle, chip.
02:43Pork.
02:44Yeah, I was going to say the same.
02:45Chicharron.
02:46Yeah.
02:46Chicharron and chip.
02:47I think we're all in the same boat there.
02:48Which would you get rid of?
02:51Salmon roe, crispy ricings, popcorn or cherry tomatoes?
02:55For this theme, tomatoes.
02:57Same.
02:57Personally, I could live the rest of my life without salmon roe if I could keep all those other things.
03:02I'm going to make snack, crackle and pop corn chicken.
03:10Popcorn chicken.
03:12I'm going to do sort of a, not a cheats version, but a home version of that.
03:17The first thing is, when you're cutting the chicken, I'm using chicken thigh, you could use breast.
03:23I just always use thigh for these kind of things.
03:26The pieces of chicken are vastly smaller than you think they should be.
03:31Vastly smaller than a chef would ever cut something of this kind, unless they were trying to make a, like a coarse mince.
03:37But it is really quite important, because you do want this to be like popcorn sized, and then once you coat it with the flour and everything, it's going to be quite a lot bigger than even the piece of chicken is.
03:47So I'm even probably slightly on the big side here, to be entirely honest.
03:51First, my marinade for my chicken is going to be a bit of baking powder, well, bicarb actually.
03:57And this, I think it's really important, because the alkaline nature of the bicarb will actually stop the chicken from contracting too much.
04:07This is really important when you're, I mean, it's going to tenderise it in that sense, so it's not going to be too tight.
04:14But when you're deep frying, the chicken or whatever you're cooking releases moisture, and that's what wets your coating, and that's what turns a crispy deep fried thing into a soggy deep fried thing.
04:27It's not the water from the outside, it's actually the liquid from the inside.
04:29So adding a little bit of bicarb into this process actually helps quite a lot with reducing the amount of water that is released, well, not water, but chicken stock, essentially, released by the chicken.
04:39It makes it more juicy on the inside, but also helps quite a lot with not making it too soggy.
04:45I'm putting some celery salt in there, some pepper, and a touch of sugar as well.
04:53Matthias, if you had not been a chef, what would you have ended up doing, do you think?
04:59The time where I started studying, I wanted to be an architect, but now I would say a gardener.
05:07Wow!
05:07A what? A gardener?
05:09Yeah.
05:09Why?
05:10I like plants.
05:11I was raised in a family that grew asparagus and avocados and exported everything to other countries.
05:20So I was always playing between tangerine trees and, yeah, the rivers of southern Peru.
05:28And, yeah, I love growing stuff.
05:33So I dream of having my own orchard.
05:35Can I say you're a very calm man?
05:37Like you just have a calm presence about you.
05:40I would say that's also the nature of having grown in the countryside, I guess.
05:48And it's very important when I'm running the pass at one of the restaurants, like when everything's, you know, when the ship's sinking, you want a calm...
05:56Ping, what about you?
05:57Are you a calm chef on the pass?
05:58Well, I try to be.
05:59Yeah.
06:00I try to...
06:00Well...
06:01Successfully?
06:02Well, we'll find out.
06:03Well, most of the time, but yeah.
06:06But we do our best, you know, sometimes we stir as well, as good as we can.
06:10And, yeah.
06:12So I have some plain flour in there.
06:15I'm going to put in some onion powder, mustard powder, smoked paprika.
06:19This is some oregano, garlic powder, and then some ground fennel seed as well.
06:25I'm also going to throw in some chicken stock powder and mix that together.
06:33My secret ingredient, however, is this.
06:36This is sweet potato flour, and it's Taiwanese sweet potato flour.
06:40And you can see, I'll give you a little bit to play with here.
06:44Oh.
06:44It's like granular.
06:46Ah, I didn't expect that.
06:47And this is...
06:48So the popcorn chicken that most people know is from the place that you would expect.
06:53But in Taiwan, they have Taiwanese-style popcorn chicken, which is served with, you know,
06:58fried basil and things.
06:59And it's coated in this sort of very granular flour.
07:01And that becomes super, super crispy on the outside.
07:04So I'll season that quite well with a bit of salt, but we'll put more on when it comes
07:08back out.
07:09But that should be a nice, flavourful dredge for my chicken.
07:14And because of the size of that chicken, are you going high temp?
07:16High temp.
07:18To be honest, like, I don't mind overcooking it.
07:21It's going to be overcooked anyway.
07:22You know, like, it's not like I'm trying to get a perfect medium rare or whatever inside
07:27a tiny, tiny piece of chicken.
07:28But the high temp, like, that's at about 180, 190 now.
07:32And any little bits of this crispy flour that can stick to the outside here are going to
07:39be very, very delicious.
07:42I'm going to put that in here.
07:43I'm just going to shake out any excess.
07:46Bit of a tip.
07:48But we're going to get a really lovely, flavourful coating on the outside there.
07:53Matthias, what for you is, like, the one dish that you would never get when you go out?
08:00Is there one?
08:00I would say chicken overall.
08:04Right.
08:05And we have a chicken dish at Rafi and it's very successful.
08:08Yeah.
08:09I've eaten it.
08:10But I wouldn't order chicken.
08:13I don't know why.
08:14A lot of chefs are the same, you know.
08:15Like, I think that...
08:18Ping, do you feel the same way about chicken?
08:20Yes.
08:21It depends.
08:22Depends on what kind of...
08:22Like, high-end chicken rice.
08:24Yeah.
08:24I would order it outside.
08:27Yes.
08:27Because people do it better than I can, you know.
08:30Right.
08:31But if it's just possibly a roast chicken...
08:34Yeah.
08:35Maybe not.
08:36Yeah.
08:36Is that because, like, you think it's just not high-end enough to order out or is it
08:42not tasty enough when you get it out?
08:44Is it overcooked every time you eat it when you...
08:45No, I think it's because I would probably would do it the same or better at home.
08:51Like, I'd rather something that I cannot eat at home.
08:54Like, if I'm going to go out and experience, like, you know, yesterday I had a beautiful
08:59creme caramel with...
09:01Yeah, I could do it at home.
09:02But the texture of the restaurant that I had it, they've been perfectioning it for
09:07the two years that they've opened for, you know.
09:09So, they're going to beat me to it.
09:11And I had two, you know.
09:14Come on, Carol.
09:15Yeah, I think, like, the impression of chicken is one that people tend to eat at home.
09:22And then when you go out, you want something a bit different.
09:25I'm getting quite close to plating my popcorn chicken here.
09:29Bit of a trick.
09:30I just think it looks nice when you crumple up a bit of baking paper and put that in
09:34the bottom.
09:35This is looking lovely.
09:37Ooh.
09:40And I think crucially important whenever you're deep frying anything is to make sure that you're
09:45seasoning it when it comes out of the fryer.
09:49Because even though we've seasoned inside that mix there, a lot of that flavour does come
09:55off.
09:56So, a few lemon wedges.
10:00And we will sit down and watch the football with a bit of popcorn chicken.
10:11You know, instead of squeezing lemon on it, I actually feel like you just dip it into an
10:15actual piece of lemon.
10:16I love that starch texture.
10:21You just have all these nice little...
10:22And you can see, because it's a potato starch, it has no gluten in it, so there's no colour.
10:26So, you can kind of see those white parts where it's going to be extra crispy.
10:31Reminds me of a Peruvian version.
10:33It just needs the five spice.
10:34Peruvian Chinese.
10:36It's actually pretty good.
10:38After the break, it's Matthias and Ping's turn to snack, crackle and pop.
10:40Welcome back to The Cook-Up.
10:52Tonight, I've asked Matthias Sionis from Rafi and Ping Ping Po from Nobu to make snacks with
10:57a bit of crackle and a bit of pop.
11:00Ping, what's your dish?
11:01My dish today will be a Korean pancake.
11:04Beautiful.
11:05And Matthias?
11:06An eggplant tempura with honey and spices.
11:09Whoa.
11:10Matthias, tempura eggplant, but with honey and spices.
11:22Yeah, this is a dish that we have at Rafi right now.
11:24Yes.
11:25So, at Rafi, we brine the eggplant a little bit, but at home, I don't want to do that.
11:32And this is my easiest version of it.
11:35Um, so yeah, it's just, uh, tempura fried, like, crunchy, um, salty, um, fried eggplant.
11:46And you're making the tempura batter with, like, a packaged tempura flour.
11:51We do that at the restaurant.
11:53We just save some time.
11:55Look, I think it's, honestly, you go to Japanese restaurants, that's what they're doing.
11:59Yeah.
12:00Restaurants in Japan, that's what they're doing, too.
12:01And if you ask any Japanese person what they're doing at home, they're doing that, too.
12:05Yeah.
12:05Like, honestly, like, it's...
12:06Why, why to complicate myself when there's already amazing products?
12:09Thank you for making, like, giving people permission to do that.
12:13So...
12:13Yeah.
12:14The tempura batter, uh, it, it, it just makes life easier when you're trying to crisp up a batter.
12:20And sometimes you might be wondering, oh, why isn't this working?
12:22Well, if you're a tempura chef, you're probably not doing that.
12:24Yeah.
12:26Yeah.
12:26And, um, we, we love to toss it in honey and spices at the end.
12:32Wow, interesting.
12:34Um, some black pepper, some cloves, some fennel seeds, some coriander seeds, some cumin.
12:41Uh, we've lightly tossed this.
12:44I, I really like to toast my spices at a low meat temperature.
12:49Great.
12:49Um, and we're going to blitz it all up and then toss after frying.
12:54I, I love that you have a mixture of, you know, there's no, like, hard or fast rule for this.
13:00But some spices I consider to be quite sweet and some that I consider to be quite savoury.
13:04Like, cumin is a savoury spice to me.
13:05Things like fennel and clove, uh, I, I consider to be quite sweet.
13:09Chilli, of course, being quite, I guess, savoury or hot, almost in the category of its own.
13:13But I like that, that you've got that mixture there that when it goes with the sweetness of the honey,
13:18it's actually going to be really kind of, I don't know.
13:21So just like the dish, surprising as to whether it's sweet or savoury.
13:25And I like that every dish on, on the platings on, on my dishes, I like surprises.
13:31I want, oh, sorry.
13:32I want a little, uh, mint and a little basil in each bite.
13:36I, I, I want surprises, as you can go.
13:40I want it, of course.
13:43And that's it.
13:44Okay.
13:45Smell that.
13:46That's beautiful.
13:47And I, I love the texture of it too.
13:48That's a great looking texture for a spice mix like this.
13:53Ping.
13:54Korean pancake.
13:56Yes.
13:57So you've got plain flour?
13:59Yes, that's correct.
14:00I've got plain flour here.
14:01You could use a pre-prepared Korean pancake flour if you wanted.
14:04You could, you could.
14:05That's what my husband says.
14:06My husband's Korean.
14:07Okay.
14:07So he, he says that too, but you know.
14:10So you're Malaysian, uh, original, by extraction.
14:14Yes.
14:15I have the same thing about bakutei, right?
14:18Like every bakutei that I ever had when I was growing up was always made from the packet.
14:22But I always make it myself now from scratch.
14:25Do you?
14:26Yeah, yeah.
14:26Um, but I, there's also, there's almost a nostalgic taste to me to the, the, you know,
14:32the A1 packet or whatever, whatever it was.
14:34Yes, yes, that's the one.
14:35That's the one.
14:35I use that too.
14:36But the, the mix of it, it's just so hard to, to get it right.
14:40I guess it's up to your preference.
14:42You know what I think it is?
14:43I think one, one day I said, I, you know, it's one of my favorite dishes.
14:46I'm going to work out how to make it.
14:47And so I worked out how to make it.
14:48And I ended up realizing that the spices that you need for the herbs, the medicinal herbs,
14:53like are actually quite easy to get.
14:55So now they're things that I keep at home all the time because I make herbal soups and
14:59things.
15:00So I've got that there.
15:01It's actually less effort for me to make it from scratch at home.
15:04And I just throw them all into like a little bag.
15:07Yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:08Oh, that's really good.
15:09So this vegetable, uh, pancake, you've got, I can see onion, zucchini, carrot, uh, spring
15:18onion.
15:18Yeah.
15:19Well, basically you can use any vegetables.
15:21And I like this recipe because you could, you know, at the end of the week, you have
15:25all these half carrots, half onions.
15:28So all these little vegetables that you have left over, just put it in together.
15:32And I think, you know, this is, if you're not used to making this, it seems like a special
15:37occasion thing.
15:39Like it seems like something that you would have to go to, oh, we're making Korean pancakes
15:42for dinner tonight kind of thing.
15:43But within Korean cuisine, it's kind of like an everyday food.
15:49It's like a snack.
15:50Yeah.
15:50It's a, it's a very popular pub, um, drinking snack where you share around with friends.
15:55And I think that's why I like this first that it, you get to use up all your vegetables
15:59that you have, no wastage.
16:01And you also get to share it.
16:03And it's crispy.
16:04Lovely.
16:04So that goes into the batter?
16:06Yeah.
16:06I'm just going to add a little bit more salt.
16:08Okay.
16:09Just for flavouring, I guess the flour doesn't have any taste.
16:13Lovely.
16:14With that one there.
16:15And we're just going to add one more stir and the vegetables in.
16:20So we do the carrots.
16:22We do a bit of zucchini as well.
16:24Just basically anything that you like.
16:26Lovely.
16:27Spring onions last.
16:29This really is something that people should make more often.
16:31Not essentially even to make it Korean food or anything, but just a way to use up all
16:35those little bits and pieces.
16:36Yeah.
16:36You can even put prawns and meat.
16:38And sometimes you've got bits and pieces, like, you know, you've got only one pack, one
16:43piece of something.
16:44Yeah.
16:44And it's, it's just the best way to do it, I guess.
16:46Fantastic.
16:49Matthias.
16:49Okay.
16:51Eggplant going into the tempura batter and then straight into the oil.
16:56A little, uh, tossed in some more tempura batter.
17:00Oh, the dry flour.
17:03Yeah.
17:03That's actually a really important point because it does help to stick it to the outside,
17:06right?
17:06Yeah.
17:07Otherwise you have it particular on something like eggplant and you have it just coming
17:10away from the outside.
17:11And I don't want it that coated.
17:13Like I just want to, so I kind of do that before it goes in and I'm going to do it only
17:19a bit at a time.
17:21It's a cool way to cut the eggplant.
17:22I have to say, like those long kind of like, almost like chips.
17:26Oh, I'm dribbling a little bit more of the batter.
17:28A little bit of the crunch on the sides.
17:31Yeah.
17:31They're just going to line with the theme of today.
17:36This is, you're literally, just through that little drizzle of extra batter that's going
17:40to stick to the outside, you're creating extra crunch.
17:42Yes, we want, we want that crispy bits.
17:47And I can't wait to see how this all comes together.
17:49Fried eggplant, honey, beautiful smelling spices, exciting times.
17:56All right, Ping.
17:57The frying time.
17:59Mm-hmm.
17:59How much oil do you need?
18:01Because this is like, some people are like, you don't need a lot of oil.
18:05For me, I think you need more than a little.
18:08Sorry, you need a lot of oil.
18:09Okay.
18:11You do need a lot of oil with this one in order to make it crispy.
18:13But that's how you get those crispy edges.
18:15Yes, exactly.
18:16And if, because this is all mainly flour as well.
18:19And if you have that little oil, you're not, you're not able to sort of cook the flour.
18:26Beautiful.
18:27Just put, so what we do is just flatten it out.
18:31You don't need that much better for now.
18:34Because we want to cook the vegetable by steaming.
18:36And we're going to just press it down.
18:37And we're going to add more oil later as well.
18:39Oh, really?
18:40Okay.
18:41Once we flip it over.
18:42So this, this isn't eaten just as is.
18:45It's with a dipping sauce as well.
18:47How do we make that?
18:48It's very simple.
18:50We just basically have these three ingredients.
18:52So we have the soy sauce.
18:54I usually do one to three.
18:58No, I'm just keeping it moving.
19:01So we just do, let's say, two soy.
19:04And we've got vinegar, just to cut through.
19:07Yeah, okay.
19:08Just cut through a little bit.
19:10So usually I do one portion to three.
19:12Okay.
19:12That one's fine.
19:13Sesame oil for a little bit of fragrant and that nuttiness.
19:17Beautiful.
19:17Oh, that one there.
19:21And very simply, sesame seeds.
19:24Lovely.
19:25And little kochukaru, which is the Korean chili flakes.
19:30That's right.
19:31It's such a simple sauce.
19:33But when you put it together with this, it is like a match made in heaven.
19:36I can't wait to snack, crackle and pop some food on my plate when we return.
19:41And I'll show you how to make chicken crackling.
19:42Welcome back to the cook-up, where top chefs Matthias Siones and Ping Ping Poe are finishing up some snacks that say crackle and pop.
19:58Ping, how's it looking?
19:59Nearly there.
20:00Amazing.
20:01Matthias, this looks fantastic.
20:03You've just drizzled all of that with honey.
20:05A little bit of honey.
20:06I can hear how crispy it is.
20:08And that spice mix.
20:11Oh, my word.
20:11Can you smell that?
20:12I can.
20:13Yes, I can.
20:14Mmm.
20:16And you've got some fresh herbs as well.
20:17That all goes together?
20:19Yes.
20:19And there's a little dipping sauce there.
20:22What's that made from?
20:22I've made a little fish sauce and lemon, garlic or ginger or chilli if you want.
20:29Amazing.
20:31So this is an interesting dish.
20:33I don't think I've ever tasted anything quite like it before.
20:36Looking forward to seeing how it tastes.
20:39Ping.
20:40Look at this.
20:42That looks phenomenal.
20:44That's it.
20:45That's all we have.
20:46It's such a straightforward dish too.
20:48Like, you know, it came together very quickly.
20:51The dipping sauce is there and it's kind of five minutes and you're ready to go.
20:54Yeah.
20:55And you can actually do this, put it in a batter, put it in a fridge.
20:59Yeah.
20:59And then do whatever you need.
21:00And then when you're ready to eat, you do it.
21:03It can last for days too.
21:04Tempura eggplant with honey and spices and a Korean vegetable pancake.
21:07Ping, I love the texture of this.
21:19How it's so thin and crispy on both sides.
21:22It's a good snack.
21:23Even for kids.
21:25I would eat this at any moment of the day.
21:28It's so good, isn't it?
21:30And what were the flowers in there?
21:31It was cornstarch and plain flour.
21:33Yeah, pantry staples.
21:36Amazing.
21:36It's very simple, yeah.
21:38Beautiful texture.
21:40Matthias, okay, I cannot wait to try.
21:42Grab a little herb with each bite.
21:46That's delicious.
21:50Crunchy and sweet and sour because of the dressing and the spices and herbs.
21:55The honey is a perfect match for all of it.
21:59That spice mix is dangerous.
22:01You could put that on anything.
22:04It's so good.
22:05It's so addictive.
22:07Can I have your pancakes?
22:11So, another way that you can get crunch.
22:14In Peru, Matthias, ticheron is quite a big thing, right?
22:20Yes.
22:20So, I have a way that you can make ticheron from some chicken skin.
22:28So, this is just chicken skin from Chicken Maryland.
22:32I've taken out, I've spread it out onto some baking paper, put it in the fridge overnight.
22:38So, that's just dried out.
22:39You can see the kind of texture of it.
22:40Now, very, very simply, salt, pepper, and the secret, a bit of baking soda.
22:53So, the baking soda that gets rubbed into the skin actually helps this to, I guess it creates air pockets.
23:01It's in the same way that if you have a ticheron, the way that the crackling is created is you have a little bit of liquid inside the pork skin.
23:10And that vaporizes under heat and pops out and gives you that kind of pop of crackling.
23:16So, these go into the air fryer 200 for about 12 minutes.
23:21What you end up with, and I'm not kidding, like we didn't separately deep fry these or anything.
23:28Whoa.
23:29But that is what you get.
23:30The crunchiest chicken skin ticheron, essentially, in 12 minutes in the air fryer.
23:39Oh.
23:39The taste of this actually reminds me a little bit of, you know, when I make Hananese chicken rice at home when I was a kid,
23:48my grandma would make that and she'd fry the chicken's fat and the chicken's skin to get the chicken oil to fry the rice.
23:53And then there were leftover little bits of chicken skin that crisped up just like this.
23:59Yeah.
24:00Beautiful crunch.
24:04Mmm.
24:05All this done in the air fryer.
24:07Air fryer, chicken skin ticheron.
24:10Hassle-free.
24:11Mmm.
24:12Yum.
24:13Mmm.
24:13A lot of crackle, a lot of crunch.
24:14Mmm.
24:17Ping, Matthias, thank you so much for joining me.
24:18This has been snappy, crackly and poppy.
24:21Thank you for having us.
24:22Thanks for coming.
24:24With a bit of crackle and a bit of pop, you'll never be sad at snack time again.
24:28If you want more of The Cook Up and more delicious food ideas, head to SBS On Demand.
24:30I'm Adam Lear.
24:31Thanks for watching The Cook Up.
24:53You
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