Chinese New Year Festival Melbourne Ambassador Elizabeth Chong

The Chinese New Year Melbourne Festival is honoured to have celebrity chef, teacher, author and television presenter, Elizabeth Chong, as an ambassador this year.

Since she opened her first cooking school in 1961, Elizabeth has become a Chinese-Australian legend, introducing her family’s Chinese recipes to the Australian public for decades. From Chinese culinary royalty, Elizabeth is the daughter of William Wing Young who commercialised the most widely used modern recipe of the dim sim in 1942 at his Melbourne food processing operation Wing Lee.

We caught up with Elizabeth ahead of her Festival cooking activations to discuss all things Chinese and Melbourne.

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Thank you for being part of the Chinese New Year Melbourne Festival 2017. What does the Festival mean to you?
It’s a formal celebration recognising my heritage and I see this as a wonderful acknowledgement of both my and the Chinese community’s contributions to Melbourne.

Where can we expect to see you during the Festival and what will you be doing?
You can catch me cooking at Queensbridge Square and Queen Victoria Market on various days throughout the Festival. Keep checking the Chinese New Year Melbourne Festival website –cnymelbourne.com.au – for updates.

What do you hope festival-goers will learn from you?
The importance of celebrating Chinese New Year and sharing my cultural heritage through food.

Which Festival events are you most looking forward to?
I really look forward to mixing in public places with people from all walks of life in my honoured position as Festival Ambassador.

Where should visitors go to sample the best Chinese food at the Festival?
They should certainly keep abreast of the program on the Chinese New Year Melbourne Festival website as Chinese food features throughout, particularly at Queen Victoria Market.

It is also worth noting that restaurants will organise special menus during the Chinese New Year period so whether you’re in Chinatown, the suburbs or in regional Victoria, keep your eyes peeled for special offerings from restaurants.

You are regarded as one of Australia’s leading teachers of Chinese cuisine and are a much loved personality of the Australian food industry scene, what do you enjoy most about your job?
I’m a natural teacher so I love the educational part of my work. I have taught 12-year-olds to 85-year- olds and have seen a variety of people attempt to cook Chinese food in their kitchens because of me. This gives me a terrific sense of purpose and job satisfaction.

Tell us a little about the beginning of your cooking school. For instance, when you started it in the early 1960s, did your students have much experience with Chinese cuisine and cooking?
Very little if not absolutely none! I remember holding up a wok in my first cooking class and no-one had seen one before. Despite this, there was always a thirst and a palpable excitement in my students; they were yearning to learn about something different and exotic. That I was from a Chinese background added a uniqueness to their experience.

What do you think of the Chinese food scene in Melbourne today compared to the 1960s?
It’s well and truly heading in the right direction. In the 60s, there were still some Chinese restaurants catering for the lowest common dominator, namely they were making cheap and cheerful food that was value for money. Now, Chinese chefs strive for high standards, authenticity and variety. You can find the regional nuances of Chinese cooking across Melbourne from Sichuan styles to Shanghai trends. This has all happened in the last 15 years.

Asian fusion cooking is also a wonderful extension of an ancient art. When chefs use fusion styles, they are so often grounded in classic Chinese cooking techniques which elevate their fusion creations to another level.

How authentic are western variants of Chinese dishes like the ones we find in Australia?
Melbourne restaurants used to concentrate on satisfying Western palates. Today, people are more willing to try dishes that are not familiar to them and are happy to accept ingredients such as offal and abalone. In so doing, they have accepted the food that the Chinese order.

I was surprised to see a celtuce (also known as asparagus lettuce) on the menu in a Chinese restaurant here in Australia. Celtuce is very popular in China but I haven’t seen it used here. Apparently it is now grown in the Blue Mountains, so Western palates are certainly changing.

What are the most important ingredients or elements in Chinese cooking?
• Freshness – everything needs to be 100% fresh.
• Attention to detail – Chinese cooking requires care and precision.
• Rice – it has to be perfectly cooked or the whole meal is ruined.
• The four heroes – chicken, duck, pig and fish.
• Seafood of all varieties– use in abundance!

Tell us a little about your Chinese- Australian heritage. For instance, when did you arrive in Melbourne?
I arrived in Melbourne when I was three-years-old with three of my siblings. We came here from a tiny village in China’s Southern province called Guangdong.

However, my grandfather originally settled in Australia in the 1850s and my father was born here. My father returned to China to marry my mother Jenny who he then brought to Australia. Due to the oppressive White Australia policy of the time however, my mother had to return to China so I was born over there. It took five years before both my mother and I were granted visas for us to return to Australia.

What was your and your family’s experience assimilating?
Our assimilation was centred on cooking. It was my father and then later his marketing manager my brother who were instrumental in commercialising the fast food dim sim which we were proud to know was a means of bridging cultures through food. In fact, the dim sim is a great integration analogy really. My father refashioned the delicate dim sum into something that was firstly more substantial, befitting of the Aussie appetite, and also ‘freezable’ so it could be transported around the country. Dim sims were both loved in their home state and elsewhere and the Four’N Twenty pie suddenly had a rival!

The fried version was created by my brother and his friend Joe. Joe owned a fish and chip shop and one day Joe decided to fry the dim sims my brother had dropped off to him. Sales of the fried and steamed dim sims just took off!

Was food and cooking an important aspect of integrating for you?
It was a fundamental part of my first experiences in Australia and something that has been with me throughout my life. My family’s involvement with the Australian food scene began on Franklin Street. My father and his brothers invested in banana and pineapple plantations in Queensland and went on to open one of the largest wholesale fruit businesses in Queen Victoria Market. Some of my earliest memories of that precinct, my playground, excite me to this day. My admiration for hard-working Chinese people developed from my early observations.

What do you think are the most important elements of the social integration process?
Tolerance is essential. We need to accept diversity and embrace difference. In the early days of Chinese settlement, differences in appearance where enough to instil hatred and fear. But we have come far and Australia ‘does’ social integration well. In Melbourne alone we have Little Bourke Street, Lygon Street, Lonsdale Street and more – all incubators of incredible diversity.

Another important aspect of social integration is mixing with people from different cultures. My father always encouraged us to mix with our Australian friends and because of this, I never felt there was a difference between us.

You are a marvelous spokesperson for multiculturalism, what does this concept mean to you?
I have shopped on Victoria Street, Richmond for decades and have seen multiculturalism in action with the changes in generations of store owners. The first generation found it hard to integrate with language barriers and marked cultural differences, the second generation had mastered English and now, the third generation wear Richmond football colours and have Aussie accents whilst still staying true to their cultural heritage.

How do you think Melbourne best demonstrates its multiculturalism?
Through food! Dim sims in a fish and chip shop, meat pies, Turkish bread and spaghetti bolognaise to name a few!

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You can catch me cooking at the Chinese New Year Melbourne Festival Ambassador Elizabeth Chong at:

Queensbridge Square and Queen Victoria market on 28 January
Queensbridge Square on 29 January
Queensbridge Square on 12 February