Tony Tan is a Melbourne-based Malaysian-Chinese chef who often works in New Zealand. He confesses to three of the deadly sins.
GLUTTONY
As a chef, you are working with food all the time. Do you consider yourself gluttonous?
If you are going to be a chef, you are presenting yourself on a
plate. I am very gluttonous because I have this wonderful thing that I love -- that beautiful piece of meat or that beautiful piece of fish, that fantastic vegetable that just came into season -- and I want to turn this primary produce into something that everyone would love to eat. There are times when I wish I had a stomach like a cow, where you can have four stomachs so you can chomp all the way through everything.
What is your favourite thing to eat?
My perfect dish in the world is this fantastic chicken rice I grew up with. You have to have a free-range chicken; you have to have make sure that the chicken was grown responsibly with all the right feed, so you know you are eating a premium chicken. You have to make sure your rice is cooked in the stock that your chicken has been poached in and you have to make sure that you balance that rice with a broth. The sauce has to be made either with chilli and ginger and lime or lemon juice, or with spring onions and ginger. Then you combine either one of those sauces with a little bit of soya sauce. That is my ultimate comfort food. Culture, family and comfort are the key things we need.
GREED
What is your best New Zealand foodie find?
Oh my God, there are so many wonderful things I have found. I love puha; there are so many things you could possibly do with puha. I get excited by your black abalone (paua) which is such a luxury. I went to (Auckland restaurant) Pasture and I ate a fish which I thought was absolutely fantastic. Chef Ed Verner is a little bit mad like me and he was saying the fish had thorns or bones or something that are a bit poisonous.
You lead culinary tours and travel a lot. Are you greedy for experiences?
I love taking people to Hong Kong. I will walk into a shop that is a little hole in the wall and say, "What's that, could you please tell me what that is?" and they turn around and look at me and think what does that mad Chinaman want, barging in here with a bunch of people curious to know about that shrimp paste?
