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Sixteen years after she set foot in Hong Kong as a contestant on the first season of MasterChef Australia in 2009, Justine Schofield has returned to the busy harbour city. But where she was once a TV novice, now she is a master, filming her foodie travelogue series Hong Kong Gourmet with Justine Schofield in just 12 days while enduring early mornings, late nights, oppressive humidity and constant interruption from the roar of aeroplanes.
“Thank god we have an amazing team, and we all know when to just stop for a second,” says Schofield, who was talking from her parents’ property on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, where she is celebrating her 40th birthday. “It takes hours of preparation. And we push out as many recipes as we can.
Justine Schofield sampled everything from street food to Michelin-starred meals while filming in Hong Kong.
“But we do eat so well. You can spend 10 days just eating in Hong Kong and you’re not even touching the surface. One minute you’re dining in a Michelin-starred restaurant. The next you’re eating noodles from a restaurant that’s been on the corner for 50 years. It’s that mixture of intensities that I love about the place.”
And while Schofield noticed the dwindling number of hawker stalls (“dai pai dong”) on the streets – “I was sad that there’s not many left. It’s all about hygiene – getting restaurants off streets. But as a tourist, that’s where you want to eat. It’s fast, and it’s fresh food because it’s non-stop” – she also discovered a food culture that effortlessly mixed the old and the new.
“We met some incredible chefs, such as this man making beautiful noodles for a wonton noodle soup,” she says. “He’s just been doing that for 50 years. That’s his art. Then you go to these really cool bars. We went to one that did savoury cocktails, and I had a butter chicken-style cocktail. It was incredible, the perfume that came out of that cocktail.
Justine Schofield returned to Hong Kong to film her travelogue series, Hong Kong Gourmet with Justine Schofield.
“Sixteen years after MasterChef [on which she placed fourth, after Chris Badenoch, Poh Ling Yeow and Julie Goodwin], to go back to Hong Kong, and knowing I was there because of my experience on MasterChef, was quite surreal.”
For an outsider, Schofield says Chinese cuisine, specifically the East-meet-West dishes of Hong Kong, can be “quite complex”. “I definitely don’t master it. I have so much more to learn.”
Raised by her French mother, who once owned a bistro in the NSW Southern Highlands, Schofield cannot avoid adding a “Western twist” to many of the dishes. “I do a chilled Szechuan and sesame noodles, but I incorporate tahini, as opposed to crushing sesame seeds myself, because I know that’s something that most everyday cooks – like me – will have in their pantry.”
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At home in Sydney with her partner, former AFL player Brent Staker, and their four-year-old son, Louis, Schofield is the household cook. “We have an arrangement that I’m not doing the washing up any more. There’s not much anyway because I clean as I go.”
As much as she finds cooking “relaxing”, she is not immune to the drudgery of routine.
“Friday night is pizza night in our house, that’s for sure,” she says. “I’ve had enough by then … When I’m in crazy-busy mode, it can feel a bit too much, hence why my freezer’s always full of food. But cooking’s like brushing your teeth. It’s something that just needs to be done. I don’t feel comfortable on a Monday night getting takeaway. It just wouldn’t make sense to me, ever.”
Dinner as a family is a non-negotiable ritual and, in line with her French upbringing, snacking is out. “Louis eats quite well because I’m also an anti-snacker. Yes, he gets snacks if he’s hungry, but small snacks, so he’s hungry at lunch and he’s hungry at dinner.”
Hong Kong Gourmet With Justine Schofield premieres at 8pm on Sunday, November 9, on SBS Food.
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