Simply Chinese: Recipes from a Chinese Home Kitchen

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Sadly Suzie’s mum died suddenly on February 8 2000 during a flight from Hong Kong to Heathrow and just six weeks earlier on the last Christmas they spent together, 16-year-old Suzie cooked a traditional turkey dinner, under the guiding eye of Celia. They absolutely love being in the kitchen with me. Our lives can be so busy, but cooking together is another way you can spend quality time with your children,” she says. While her father still runs the family takeaway, it’s her late mother Celia that Suzie credits as her “home cook hero” and for instilling in her a passion of cooking, "as well as a determination to succeed”.? Having been brought up eating all kinds of seafood and even tripe, Suzie was keen to encourage her own children, Zander (7) and Odelia (4), to be healthy and adventurous eaters. Suzie is also keen to showcase the uniqueness of Cantonese cuisine, compared to other regions in China.

Suzie first shot to fame after winning BBC national cookery competition, Best Home Cook (Image: BBC) She loved food and was so passionate about cooking," says Suzie about her mother, who passed away suddenly when she was just 16. Cantonese food is actually quite different from takeaways because we grew up on fresh vegetables and ingredients. I'm trying to drive people to their local food producers suppliers because, especially here in Northern Ireland, we have so many wonderful foods available in terms of fruit, vegetables, meat, fish. Annual travels home to family in Hong Kong, as well as experiencing the cuisine in Chinatowns around the world, from Sydney to New York, embedded her passion for Chinese food.Add the Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce and oyster sauce and mix, then add the peas and pineapple and mix well. Taste and season.

Ever since my mum passed away I do live my life to the full, and with no regrets, because you don't know what might happen tomorrow," Suzie says.Twenty years later, after having completed a degree in Economics and Management from Queen’s University Belfast and later completing her Chartered Accountancy exams, Suzie followed her passion for cooking in applying for and winning the BBC prime time show Best Home Cook. I also want to make the book less scary and more accessible to everybody because your local corner store has most of the ingredients as well as the bigger supermarkets, so you can say to yourself 'you know what I can make this'. Now Lee has dedicated her first cookbook to Cantonese food, with recipes in “broken down steps, so people won’t be scared of Chinese cooking”. We may think that Northern Ireland is famous for a good old cuppa, but in Hong Kong hot milk tea is an institution - so much so that in 2017 the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of Hong Kong declared their tea-making technique as an 'intangible cultural heritage'. She also wants to showcase the uniqueness of Cantonese cuisine, compared to other regions in China. “Cantonese food is another string to that whole Chinese story. Cantonese, it’s mainly Hong Kong, so it’s right by the seaside. So there’s fish, and it’s all about very fresh food,” she says.

Viewers can also discover a range of new cooking skills and ways of adding variety to mealtimes, including how to make homemade tortillas and rice noodles. Each episode features a local family, who road test one of Suzie’s recipes. All filming took place under Covid-19 restrictions, with the testers' self-shot footage providing a portrait of the fun and sometime chaotic nature of cooking as a family. Since becoming a TV sensation following her appearance on the national cookery competition, Suzie has been on a mission to help the people of Northern Ireland make the very best of whatever they have in their cupboards and create great meals from scratch on her two cooking shows for BBC NI. Suzie Lee’s Home Cook Heroes begins on August 6 at 7.30pm on BBC One Northern Ireland, also available on BBC iPlayer. For accompanying recipes visit Bbc.co.uk/suzielee It’s all about making use of all of those flavours – the sweet, the sharp, but also the fresh – and playing with those. I find there’s a much cleaner taste, compared to if you’re going to the north of China. Szechuan cooking is really obviously about spice, everything’s all very heavily spiced. That’s their culture, but with Hong Kong Cantonese cooking, because you were able to get fresh ingredients, they were making sure those ingredients sung on their own with a little bit of soy – if it’s fresh fish, some ginger, spring onion, and letting the dish do its thing.”Some of the ingredients might seem somewhat unconventional for Hong Kong cuisine – such as spam, corned beef, HP sauce, ketchup, condensed milk and Linton tea bags. Things might have exploded for Suzie Lee since winning Best Home Cook in 2020 – she’s presented two cooking shows on BBC Northern Ireland and is now releasing her debut cookbook – but that doesn’t mean she’s quit her day job. While before her success in Best Home Cook Suzie had dreamt of saving for a “retirement plan” which involved opening a little coffee shop or catering company that enabled her to “potter around” with her love of cooking. Suzie is keen to encourage everyone to have a go at cooking and her overriding message is “don’t be afraid”. Winning Best Home Cook opened many doors, but I always describe myself as a chartered accountant who cooks. Cooking is my relief. I haven't lost the fun of it yet and hope to continue both," adds the 38-year-old.