Q&A with Nadia Lim

What are your most memorable, heavenly and exciting food moments?

Most memorable: the many latenight hawker stall feasts of satay cooked on charcoal on the roadsides of Malaysia where I grew up. You’ll never forget the smell. Most heavenly: making kokoda on a deserted island in Fiji with fish we caught and coconut cream we made ourselves. Most exciting: Winning MasterChef 10 years ago. After three months of hard slog I was thankful it was finally over.

Who does most of the cooking in your household?

Me. Carlos will contribute occasionally. The kids will attempt to ‘‘help’’ occasionally, but just make a big mess.

Is food/plastic waste something you’re conscious of when you do your weekly shop and what are your strategies for dealing with it?

Very much so. I feel guilty every time I throw packaging out. It doesn’t feel good. You feel quite helpless in the situation, too. We are super lucky however that we probably don’t use as much packaging as most people considering we grow and hunt 80 per cent of our own food. The only items we really have to buy are oil, flour, milk, salt, bananas and avocados every week.

What is your go to/most versatile ingredient?

Fruit. Whatever is growing on the trees, which at the moment is a lot of apples. We are having them at breakfast and for dessert pretty much every day.

What is your most useful/ versatile appliance?

I don’t have many fancy appliances other than a food processor, which is very handy.

What is your biggest cooking disaster?

Almost burning down someone’s multi-million dollar waterfront house when I did a (short-lived) catering stint after MasterChef to try to earn some money after quitting my day job. I hid the chaos well though, I still don’t think the owners know to this day... shhhhh!