Celeb chef Poh’s healthy, cheap cooking hacks

Hello friends, Vans listeners of this podcast and body in Soul called Healthyish. Of course, I am Felicity Harley. We are joined by the effervescent Poe today. I love chatting with her. She's, of course a judge on Master Chef, an artist and self talk cook, and today we are discussing how she stays healthy when surrounded by so much delicious food on the set of Master Chef, and she

Poe, nice to have you back on Healthy Ish. How are you.

I'm really well. Yeah.

I have to say, last time I spoke to you on your podcast it was my favorite interviews that I've ever done.

Well.

I have to say the feeling was mutual because every time we go to Adelaide, my kids go, oh, let's go looking for that person in the markets that.

You know that you really like talking to.

So there we go, but we've never found you there when we've been so yeah, I think he went.

To Central Market, which I used to be at Ah.

That's it.

I'm at the farmer's market on Sundays only.

Now okay, oh well there we go. Okay, Farmer's Market here we come in Adelaide. Yeah yeah, Now I want to talk to you about today about healthy cooking on the cheep. I suppose that's what we all want. But first of all, how do you stay healthy and how do you cook healthy? And especially when you're in the master chef kitchen.

Yeah, I keep it really simple, and luckily I have a bit of a superpower on my side, and that is that I was raised by my Auntie Kim, who ate a lot of vegetarian food, and I used to always think it was really fun. Too fast with her went because there are certain points in the lunar calendar where you have to eat very sort of austere Buddhist food and it's always vego.

And I think from.

That I learned to really appreciate really simple flavors. So it comes very naturally to me to eat things that some people might find really bland. But for me, if I go to the farmer's market, grab a whole bunch of seasonal ingredients, and they can be so common, like broccoli, cauliflower whatever, and I'm happy to just steam or roast that a bit of butter, olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper, and I am so happy.

So it just it's not.

And it's very holistic to me. I'm never ever conscious of being happy. I find that if I've eaten something that's a bit heavy and meaty the night before, I would just naturally gravitate towards a salad or like a steam veg the next day.

That makes sense.

What about when you're actually in the kitchen or mastership, I mean, you obviously have to try these different foods.

How does that get?

Yeah, I thought it was going to be really have to not put on weight doing that, but I didn't remember that the contestants are usually only serving one dish that we have to share between the four of us, and we're really tasting. You don't want to atrophy your palette because you're going through so many tastings, so you always take really tiny bits and sort of your thinking and trying to formulate words with and you know how.

To describe that flavor or texture or whatever.

So it's quite a sort of intellectual process as opposed to sometimes they're a soluious woo, scarf it down.

But you know what it is, it's the snacking off camera.

That's the Oh okay, yeah, what happens with that? How does that?

Oh?

You know, there's always like a trolley full of like they're.

Pretty good, they're pretty good. They really look after us. So there's like always nuts and stuff. But my I got this vice and it's those harvest peace snats. Oh.

I give those to my kids in their lunchbox and one hates them, don't give me these again, and one loves them.

Yeah, yeah, that's my little Are they mad?

Are they supposed to be healthy?

I don't know, they probably like a yeah, yeah, I mean it's better than you know, eating a bunch of other garbage.

But yeah yeah, so yeah that people.

Used to Andy and Sophia used to just laugh endlessly at how much every time they turn around. I was just like scarfing down a packet of those. So yeah, it's really just a snacking in between. Because there's all these little dead zones when we're not doing anything. It's just so easy just to wander off side stage and just.

Like fill your mouth up.

Yeah yeah, well, how talk to us a bit about saving money I mean, it's a lot of people are struggling at the moment, obviously the cost of living, and especially when it comes to healthy eating vegetables. You love vegetables because you go in and vegetables are more expensive than similar packaged food products. I mean, how do you save money when it comes to cooking at home?

I think you know what it is.

I did a little real of it recently, where I want if people can commit to two meals a week where it's a bit weird and body to use what's in the fridge. And I think where a lot of waste happens is when people have a planned meal and then they have all these leftovers from that cook and

So I constantly am.

Doing this chase with my fridge and I'm quite sort of I'm not.

Very prideful about what I cook. I'm just like, yeah, that's a.

Bit weird and probably tastes slightly not great, but I'm just going to use it up.

Yeah, and do you eat it anyway? Yeah, I still eat it. Yeah, Yeah, and I think a big one. Actually.

A few people have mentioned to me that eating leftovers for breakfast, even if they're meat based things like, it's funny how we've got in our head that we have to have a certain type of food. We have to have eggs, have cereal or you know. I have to get out of that headspace myself.

Yeah, that's a very Western European thing because with Asians, we you know, smash down us some luxo and not not some LUTs like a nasty lumunk for breakfast. It's really common. So yeah, we don't have that delineation. But that's one way to do it.

You know what.

The other thing is people often don't look after their vegetables.

Oh yes, okay, you know about like get.

Some just have like a couple of cloth bags and some wax wraps and stuff like that, and just.

Be really conscientious once you finished cooking the meal to.

Just look after those bits and pieces that are left over. And someone said this to me recently and it's so true. Compost is not not wasted. I think we like to comfort ourselves thinking, oh, you know, at least it's.

Going back to the land, but it's still wasted if it's like edible.

And little things like broccoli storks, they're so delicious stir fried like that's like a really prized bit in Asian culture.

So we just peel the skin off the side because.

It's a little bit witty sometimes and then we just slice it really thinly and stir fry and it's absolutely delicious. So little things like that, like try and use all the parts, things like beat the leaves. A lot of people will just chop this huge bunch of it that you can just use like shad. You know, it's you know, so little things like that I'll always use, even if

Just back to storing, So how do you go about storing your veggies? Can you just talk about that a bit more? Like just for example, I actually I had a caps come last night, and I often don't know how to store it, Like I actually just whacked it back in, and I'm like, no, no, I can't just whack it back in like that. I have to cover it in something. Is it just a matter of covering all your vegetables.

Yeah, yeah, just covering. Yeah. I usually just chuck it into it.

We use like an old plastic bag.

It's fine, like or if you don't have any plastic in your house, wax raps are really.

Good as well.

Yeah, but plastic bag.

Everyone will have one.

So yeah, I just always keep all any bags, any plastic that I have from packaging, I'll always keep it, even like carrot, you.

Know, carrot's coming in.

Yeah, I always like take the sticky tape off really it's really carefully, and then I'll.

Just use that to store veggies in as well.

When I hear myself speak, it's sort of like stuff that you hear old ladies keeping.

The plastics from carrot bags.

But I was talking to a friend about this the other day, how difficult it is to live.

Simply and holistically. It's so much easier to waste.

But it's like every part of the day, I'm like, oh, yes, okay, I'm going to watch those places.

The SnapLock bags I can use them again.

And it is hard and it's so tedious and it adds so much labor to the day. But I don't know if everyone thought like that, nothing would get done.

So you just have to believe that you're doing your little bit.

I think the money you save, you know, you could afford a holiday to Asia. Well that's what I think. Thank you for coming on healthy Ish.

Thank you so much for having me.

Of course, if you do want to catch Poe in action, Master Chef is on now on Channel ten or you can catch it on ten Play. I will also leave the links to pose last chat on Healthyish, where we