Poh's Kitchen

Poh starts her culinary adventure in one of the country’s premium seafood regions, Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. Arriving in Pt Lincoln, Poh gets her first NEW experience – swimming with tuna and this inspires her to celebrate this internationally-prized fish by preparing her elegant Tuna Carpaccio. Next it’s up the coast to meet brothers Bob and Tony Ford – a diver and a chef. These guys are a couple of cowboys of the sea who collect and cook some of the best crayfish and succulent abalone you’ll ever see. To cap this incredible journey Poh finally arrives in Coffin Bay – another location with a big reputation - this time for oysters. After a trip to Lester Marshall’s oyster farm and eating the biggest oyster you’ve ever seen, Poh is back in her kitchen cooking Deep-Fried Oysters with Lime and Wasabi Mayo – a dish she specially creates to share with all oyster lovers.

Poh’s on the road in central Tasmania to discover the secrets of flour. At a beautifully restored flour mill in Oatlands, Poh meets baker Graham Prichard and discovers the delights of stone ground Tasmanian flour. After grinding her grain at the windmill, and then baking her very first loaf of sour-dough bread, Poh takes more of her freshly milled flour to Gordon Ramsay’s former pastry chef, Tasmanian Alistair Wise. Alistair uses Poh’s flour to create his rich and delicate dessert of Puff Pastry with Goat Milk Ice-cream and Peaches. Always willing to get her hands dirty, Poh gets the job of milking the goat!

Poh’s on the road and this week she’s in Singapore, one of the great international food capitals of the world. With its modern and cosmopolitan style, Singapore is a place where chefs from all over the world (including Australia’s Tetsya Wakuda) ply their trade and Poh gets in amongst it meeting food loving ex-pat Antonia Kidman and food stars Andre Chiang and Janice Wong.

This week Poh’s on the road to South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsular, an area with a rich food and wine culture. She is off to Port Willunga to attend the ‘One Magic Bowl’, an event where 11 local chefs are creating 11 seafood dishes to be served in one bespoke bowl on the beach.

Poh's on the road to the Australian Alps. Recently Poh has been using beer as an ingredient instead of wine to give an extra bit of sweetness and complexity to a dish. So she's off to the Alps to visit a charming little boutique brewery near Bright. Keen to find out more she talks to some local brewers and meets local chef Anthony Simone, a chef who is fascinated with beer and cooking. Anthony also represents the other thread that drew Poh to the Aussie Alps and that's the local Italian community. Italians here still keep up fantastic traditions like salumi (Italian smallgoods making). Originally from Umbria, Anthony's family run a local restaurant which combines the best of Italian tradition with a love of the region and its bounty. As well as talking beer and cooking, Anthony teaches Poh the finer points of making salami and pancetta. Poh's last alpine adventure is to go on a wild mushroom hunt. She's been invited to lunch with the Simone family and wants to take something. She decides to use the local, wild mushrooms to create a mushroom spring roll. The spring rolls go down a treat at lunch and there's even time for Poh to take a toboggan ride in the freshly fallen snow.

Poh’s on the road to the sheep country of the Flinders Ranges in northern South Australia and it’s a trip of firsts - her first night sleeping under the stars in a swag and her first attempt at shearing a sheep. Sheep have always meant two things in Australia - meat and wool - so first up Poh tries her hand at shearing with Jamie McTaggart, a former shearer and fifth generation sheep farmer. After her success with shearing, Poh follows the mustering of Jamie’s Dorper sheep, animals that have been specifically bred for arid country, not for their wool, but for their meat. With their diet of saltbush and native grasses these sheep produce a slightly seasoned and very clean tasting meat. In her first ever attempt to cook on a campfire, Poh uses the lamb minced to create an easy spiced lamb sausage and egg breakfast for Jamie. In turn Jamie shows Poh how to cook tandoori style lamb in a camp oven. Travelling further north into the picturesque Flinders Ranges (country that Hans Heysen made so famous in his paintings) Poh arrives in Blinman which is situated in the highest part of the Flinders. The only pub in town has an Italian owner, Tony Cutri, who uses lamb on his Greek style pizza that he serves to the locals every Friday night. After a great night with the locals (the entire town came) Poh gets a few pizza tips from Tony and then shares her love of lamb with her favourite moussaka recipe.

Alfresco dining has become a real mark of the way Australians enjoy eating and Poh’s in Sydney on the hunt for the great outdoors. After a refreshing swim in the famous Bondi sea pool and a healthy breakfast at a local eatery right on the beach, Poh meets surfing nutritionist and cook Sarah Glover who shares her recipe for the great muesli that Poh’s just tried. Chock full of healthy ingredients, Sarah’s muesli includes some truly Aussie ingredients such as wattle seeds. Sarah’s muesli inspires Poh to make her twist on the iconic Anzac biscuit which she takes back to the beach to feed the local lifesavers. All agree the biscuits are the perfect snack for a big day at the beach. Then, with a nod to her Asian roots, Poh travels across Sydney’s beautiful Harbour to the Opera House to experience some Vietnamese style Sydney street food with Nahji Chu. Miss Chu, as she’s known, has been winning over locals in Sydney for a couple of years. Her Vietnamese inspired food is known for bringing together traditional techniques and contemporary flavours. With the backdrop of the Harbour Bridge, Nahji shares her secrets to creating the perfect rice paper rolls. She then allows Poh to road test a new recipe with her customers. And Poh’s dumplings prove to be real winners with Nahji’s customers – young and old.

Having always been fascinated with Thai food, Poh starts her Thailand road trip in the northern city of Chiang Mai where tradition is revered and celebrated. It’s here that Poh learns about the basics of northern Thai cooking including how to prepare Khao Soi, the most famous of this region’s dishes. Poh’s version of the dish, her first attempt, gets the thumbs up from the locals and Poh is delighted. Next it’s Bangkok where food writer Chawadee Nualkhair also concentrates on the traditional by taking Poh to the famous canals of Bangkok to meet women of a Muslim community who produce Nam Prik. This chilli based condiment is in every Thai household and is the basis for many of their dishes. The women that Poh visits even supply their Nam Prik to the Royal Palace. In a twist on tradition, Poh then meets Australian chef Dylan Jones. Dylan and his Thai partner Bo are fast making a name for themselves in Bangkok. Their food is deeply indebted to the traditions of Thai cuisine. Bo is a keen student of traditional recipes but Dylan describes it as ‘simply our interpretation of Thai food’. That ‘interpretation’ has won rave reviews both locally and internationally. From the restaurant to the street and Poh’s last stop in Bangkok is to the famous street stalls of the capital. There are literally thousands of these food stalls and as Poh discovers the traditions of Thai food are kept as strong and delicious as ever.

This week Poh’s road trip takes her to King Island. Poh immerses herself in island life. First she visits a dairy farm owned by Philip and Kelly Lancaster, a third generation farming family and tries her hand at milking. Then it’s off to the famed King Island Dairy to talk to master cheese maker Ueli Berger about the island’s renowned cheeses. “They are like my babies” says Ueli. Next it’s a call into the local organic egg farm owned by Dave and Glenda Holloway where the chooks run free, and when the time comes retire to a paddock of their own. Poh’s King Island experience is distilled into her recipe for kefir, a fermented milk drink that she discovers on the island. She then uses the island’s wonderful cheddar cheese for a soufflé and an apple pie with a cheese crust to be topped off with a dollop of King Island cream.

On the road again and this week Poh is in Melbourne to find out why this city takes its coffee so seriously. So many factors have influenced the growth of Australia’s coffee culture and Poh finds its all on show here in Melbourne’s back streets. Poh is interested in seeing what the flavour of coffee has to offer her as a cook and meets barista Claude Sawaya who runs her through the do’s and don’ts of a good coffee. She goes to a coffee smack-down where young baristas vie for the right to call themselves champions and meets the Aussie who was the runner up in last year’s World Barista Championship. Then it’s a visit to a restaurant where food matching is all about the coffee and not the wine. To accompany all this coffee there’s a recipe for baklava, plus Poh makes an affogato and then, to top it all off, creates her lime and hazelnut coffee cupcake, the ultimate cake to have with your coffee.

While Poh loves to bake a cake what she loves even more is to decorate it, and tonight she's off to Perth to meet Rochelle Adonis, who's clients include the UK royal family.

On Poh's final road trip she's in Far North Queensland and luckily she has her friend Elton along with her as a guide. Elton's father's people are the Tablelands Yidinji.