‘You’ve got to cook with love.’ The motherly wisdom that influenced these famous cooks

Like many cooks, Nagi Maehashi’s formative food moments were with her mum. But the founder of the phenomenally popular cooking website RecipeTin Eats wasn’t in the kitchen chopping vegies or licking the spoon clean.

Her early memories are of catching fish in Sydney Harbour to prepare sashimi, and prying abalone off the rocks at Balmoral Beach to skewer with sticks she’d collected, then grill on a portable barbie – much to the intrigue of passersby.

“Strangers would walk past and smell the yakitori – Japanese food wasn’t big back then – and they’d be like, ‘What are you cooking? That smells amazing’,” says Maehashi. “We’d give them a taste and they were just amazed because they hadn’t had anything like that before.”

Decades later, the Good Food recipe writer is still introducing new and delicious foods to appreciative strangers. And it’s all thanks to her mum, Yumiko Maehashi, who instilled in her a love of good food (and who has her own blog, RecipeTin Japan)

When speaking to chefs, it’s a common refrain that their mums and grandmas taught them the building blocks of cooking, or kindled their passion for food and sharing it with others. So we’re paying homage to those mums and their dishes (good and bad) that left a lasting impression, as well as the top kitchen tips they imparted.

Nagi Maehashi and Yumiko Maehashi

Mum’s best piece of kitchen wisdom?

“You really need to lose some weight … Would you like some cake? ” I can’t think of an actual cooking saying but if you want to talk about the thing she says the most in the kitchen, it’s not about cleaning dishes properly or seasoning things properly. It’s harassing me to lose some weight and in the next breath offering me some food!

How has she influenced you the most when it comes to cooking?

The funny thing is, she didn’t really influence me in the kitchen because I was a total brat and never helped out. I’m appalled thinking about it. But because I grew up eating really good food, it was such a shock to the system when I moved out at 18. I had to learn how to cook – and to the standard of food I was eating as a kid. She ruined me for life by setting the bar too damn high.

Her best cooking hack?

Grilling fish on crumpled foil so it doesn’t sweat or stick. Genius! You get a sheet of foil and crumple it up, then unfold it flat but you’ve got all these ridges in it. When you put the fish on it, it’s not in full contact with the foil so the underside doesn’t get sweaty. It’s acting like a rack but you don’t have to clean. You just grill the fish on the foil, get the char grill on the top, then flip it. I do it all the time and it works for everything, not just fish – anything that’s glazed or spice-rubbed.

What was she good at (and not so good at) in the kitchen?

She’s a great cook and she was wonderful at Japanese food, always. But do not give the woman a steak. To be fair, she’s good at cooking it now (and nobody cooks wagyu like my mum), but back then if you stabbed it and blood came out, it went back on the stove. It was grey and the fat not seared and because we were so poor, she’d force us to eat every scrap on the plate. I shudder thinking about it. One thing I’m really fussy about now is steak because I’m scarred from it. So I never cook a steak without a thermometer.

The dish you most associate with your mum and what it’s taught you?

Gyoza is the one thing I would ask for the most. I’m always on the hunt for the best gyoza in Japan and I swear to you, not even the most famous or most expensive gyoza place in Tokyo makes it as well as my mum. I don’t actually cook much Japanese food because I’ve got it on tap. We have Sunday lunches and Mum will make us whatever we want. But the thing with the gyoza is: we don’t get it unless we wrap it with her! So it taught me that I have to work for my food.

Nagi Maehashi is the founder of website RecipeTin Eats and charity, RecipeTin Meals, and a best-selling cookbook author.

Danielle Alvarez and Rosa Alvarez

Mum’s best piece of kitchen wisdom?

“You’ve got to cook with love. You can’t look at it as a chore or a bother because it just doesn’t turn out well.” And I’ve tried to take that with me through life. Of course, cooking professionally is really different, but you can taste when there’s love in the food and when there isn’t.

How has she influenced you the most?

“In her generosity with how she served it. She was an excellent host, so people were always at our house when I was younger. She was the one who cooked for all the family gatherings because she was never stressed by it. Other family members would look frantic and frazzled and my mum just always seemed cool, calm, collected. She enjoyed it, and so I saw cooking as a very pleasurable thing, not something to be dreaded.”

What was she good at (and not so good at)?

My mum is a great cook at most things. I grew up in a Cuban household so black beans are as important as bread on a French table – it’s very much the centre of every meal, and her black beans were incredible, and still are. She also made the best chicken soup. To this day, I still don’t know what she does. I’ve watched her do it and I’ve tried to recreate it but there’s something that’s different. So those really warming, comforting dishes that feel like a giant hug.

The things she wasn’t very good at … growing up as a kid in the ’90s, everyone was on low-fat diets that we know now are such garbage. But back then, when she was trying to cook healthily, it really wasn’t her style. I can remember some pretty terrible chicken breasts. But if you’re cooking with pork fat and lard, then she was your girl.

How did she help make you the cook you are today?

My mum used to call me her little sous chef. I think that’s where the love of cooking started. I was always in charge of chopping the onions, the peppers, the garlic – basically, doing all her mise en place. And she would be the one to put it all together at the stove. If she was in the kitchen, that’s where I wanted to be, too.

I’ve worked a lot in professional kitchens and the thing I keep coming back to is that it should be enjoyable, otherwise why do it? You encounter many chefs and people who aren’t having fun in their job and it’s such a shame. To be cooking beautiful food for people to enjoy on a nice night out, it’s a special luxury and should be fun. And I take that from my mum. We always associate food with family and for me, food is a very positive thing.

Danielle Alvarez is a Sydney based chef, cookbook author and Good Weekend and Good Food columnist.

Alejandro Saravia and Zita Leon Lopez

What was your mum’s favourite cooking saying?

“It needs more salt!” She likes bold and big flavours, so everything, everywhere, is under-seasoned for her. I think subconsciously it’s so she has the last word.

What was her best piece of kitchen wisdom?

Being adventurous with food was an important lesson for me. My mother is well travelled and there was always a new ingredient that appeared in the pantry or fridge that we’d never seen before. I remember the first time I tried cardamom – which we don’t use in Peruvian cuisine – she infused it in milk, with honey and cloves. In Peru in the early ’90s, matcha and flavoured milks wasn’t a thing, and we didn’t have any Asian or Indian influence, so using those spices in that way was an eye-opener.

What’s the life-changing skill she passed on?

Teaching us to cook from an early age. I remember being 14 and being able to make some rice and cook some pasta – very basic cooking skills that later make you think, ‘Oh I can live by myself and survive’. It opens up your independence so much. She always said: “You will survive in life because you can cook yourself a meal. You don’t have to depend on anyone.”

In my house, there was a role for everyone in the kitchen. For my mother, it was important that it wasn’t a matter of gender. And that comes from my grandmother as well. I remember Sunday lunches at my grandmother’s house. Everybody had a chore. My grandfather was responsible for organising the drinks, my father was in charge of the salad, my uncle set the table, the kids were doing small chores in the kitchen. We all had a direct involvement in the organisation of the lunch.

What’s the dish you most associate with your mum, and what has it taught you?

My mum did this fish curry with white raisins and diced apples. It was spectacular, but it was all cooked in the microwave. In Peru, we don’t know much about curry leaves or the spices that go into a curry, but she got her hands on a microwave cookbook and she went to classes on how to cook in a microwave, and she came up with this fish curry. Everybody loved it and it became her signature dish.

It taught me about being adventurous, being bold, and giving it a go. I cook every day at home and my kids cook with me and I teach them not to be afraid of tasting and exploring different ingredients and different combinations. I’m a single dad, and it’s a way of connecting with them. It’s a way of sharing common ground. My kids are restaurant kids – they’ve started to say “behind” when they pass by someone in the kitchen. I like that I can show them the passion I have for cooking and tasting a beautiful sweet, ripe tomato during summer and that feeling of, ‘Oh, that’s delicious!’. Being expressive in that way is important to me.

Alejandro Saravia is the chef and owner of Farmer’s Daughters in Melbourne and Morena in Sydney.

Adam Liaw and Dr Joyce Hill AM

What are your earliest food memories?

We all used to cook quite a lot together. There were eight kids and each of us had to make dinner once a month. I did a lot of chicken tray bakes, so life has really come full circle, because these days I do a lot of chicken tray bakes – one of the first ones I made was with orange and honey and soy sauce.

What was your mum’s favourite cooking saying?

“Just to do it.” She was a full-time working mum and every night there would be dinner on the table. We got takeaway fish and chips maybe once every two months but other than that, there was always something cooked. In this day and age, that almost seems impossible. But she did it and never complained and not a single night was missed. The only way to be a good cook is to cook, and she taught me the importance of doing it.

What was she good at (and not so good at)?

She’s a really good cook. She did curried lamb chops, beef and oyster sauce – big pots on the stove or big trays in the oven because there were a lot of mouths to feed. She still makes amazing desserts like a creme caramel and a particular sour cream cheesecake that competes with my wife’s cheesecake for my favourite cheesecake of all time. I wrote a recipe for it and called it a Ruined Castle Cheesecake.

What’s the dish you most associate with your mum, and what has it taught you?

The curried lamb chops. It’s still one of my favourite things. I do different versions of it now, like I do lamb rendang instead of beef rendang because of my mum’s curried lamb chops. She grew up in Singapore and cooked really multiculturally, so we ate very traditional English food, Nyonya food, Indonesian food, Malaysian food, Chinese food and French food (because she’s partially French). There were quite often two main dishes and they would usually be the same meat or vegetable done two ways, like beef and oyster sauce down one end of the table and beef stroganoff down the other. There were many different influences in there and that’s how I cook today.

Adam Liaw is a TV food host, a best-selling cookbook author and Good Food and Sunday Life columnist.