Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Some of the world's most creative people seem to have
no trouble staying creative. Well, the rest of us find
it a constant challenge. But what if there were simple
things you could be doing to lift the load and
make being creative fun again. This is why I've asked
creative powerhouse Ben Surrey to return to How I Work.
(00:22):
Ben is the head chef and owner of multi award
winning Melbourne restaurant Attica. I guess you're not aware of Attica.
It's been featured several times in the World's fifty Best
Restaurants list and has been named the best restaurant in Australia.
He's also won the Age Good Food Guides Restaurant of
the Year three times, Chef of the Year twice, has
(00:42):
earned three Michelin stars, being featured on the Netflix series
Chef's Table, and Well. I could go on for a
long time with his list of accolades. But what you
might not have known is that Ben is also a
brilliant writer. His latest book, Uses for Obsession, is a
memoir of his experiences in the hospitality industry, and boy
is it an amazing read. In this episode, Ben reveals
(01:07):
how he knows a creative idea won't work, Why you
shouldn't get angry even when people steal your ideas, and
how to stay passionate about your creativity even when success
brings new challenges. Oh and he also shares a few
tips for us novice chefs. Welcome to How I Work,
(01:31):
a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day.
I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. Obviously, a lot of
Ben's creativity centers around making new dishes at Attica, so
naturally I wanted to know what his process is for
creating each new dish.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I guess we're trying to reach for something that has
not been done before most of the time, or we're
trying to invent something that people know and present it
in a brand new way. So the development of those
ideas and those dishes can take anything from probably a
month of intense work to six months and sometimes even
(02:14):
a year, depending on how big the project is. And
that's really taking a kind of a three hundred and
sixty degree approach to all of the elements of a dish,
not only the food and the recipe and the creativity,
but the plate, the physical aspects of the dish and
how it interacts with the room and the customer, and
then of course the story of it sometimes and how
(02:38):
the front of house, how the waiters will articulate it
to our guests, and how it all fits into sort
of the cultural context. Does it feel like something that
comes from our restaurant? Does it feel like something new?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Wow? That is so much to think about. Whereas me,
as a mere diner, I'm just like, what are the
ingredients that go into it? And how's it prepared? So
where does that start? Where does that idea or process
for a new dish start.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Well, it often starts with an ingredient, but often the
quest to find the ingredient is a pretty big part
of the process of the procurement and the sourcing of
that ingredient. Is it an ingredient indigenous to Australia, what's
its history, what's its context? Can we get it in
a quantity that we can use in a commercial way?
(03:26):
We cook fifty people a night for five nights a week,
so we need enough to sustain for several months. And
then it's really like, for me, it's probably about having
tiny little snippets of ideas and just seeing them through So,
for example, I just come back from Bologna, the home
(03:47):
of Lasagna and Bolonnais in Italy, and there I brought
a incredible brass pasta press, an extruder, a hand extruder.
It's kind of like a cylindrical chee with a corkscrew
on the end, and it pushes the pasta dough through
the tube and then it comes out through a little
die made from brass. And I saw this beautiful handmade thing,
(04:08):
and I bought it from my home. But in my mind,
I'm thinking, well, you know, at the restaurant right now, Yas,
who's one of our sous chefs who is from Japan,
has been working in his own time at the restaurant
on a sober noodle which is made from a native
Australian grain. And so it's not quite landing though, because
(04:29):
it doesn't quite feel like the Attica context. That's because
right now this dish is a straight sober noodle and
it feels very Japanese and it needs to feel like
something from Attica, and perhaps by pushing it through the
extruder into a macaroni shape, it will start to feel
like something that we could serve. Right now, it's just
(04:49):
a kind of a great concept, not quite a dish
that we could put on the menu. This has probably
been going on already for three months, and I can
see it last at least another month. But there's every
chance that all of this work can be just a
complete dead end.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
How do you call it? When you're like, Okay, we've
got to a point and I think this is a failure.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I always know because there's a sort of euphoric moment
that comes at the end of this sort of journey
of discovery and of creativity, and it's this really peaked
moment in my life which is coming together of all
of our dreams and our hopes and our work. And
it's very much a team project with a lot of
people in the kitchen contributing, and we've been through potentially
(05:35):
one hundred iterations of a dish, but then with a
slight shift of the dynamic or a slight little change
in the recipe and the plating, it might come together.
And I always know that moment. I might be the
single person that knows that moment. That's maybe my job
to know that moment, and that moment is really where
the magic happens. I think for me is this feeling
(05:57):
of they're the dishes, it's everything. It's that your all
of your self into an item of food. It's delicious,
it looks beautiful, and the culmination of all of those
things is really a massive sort of moment. It's almost addictive,
and I just can't wait to kind of share that
(06:19):
with people. But I always kind of know when it's ready.
It's hard to put an exact line on why I
know it's ready. It's just my special skill. I suppose
it can never come on though, until I absolutely believe
that it's ready, because to do so would be the
service to the standard that we've built over nineteen years.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I think about all the work that goes into creating
a new dish, and that blew my mind. I had
literally no idea that was the process. And then I
think about, like something that your book opened my eyes
up to is just the amount of plagiarism that goes
on in your industry and all that work that goes
into something. And then you've got people potentially all around
(07:01):
the world just taking those ideas and claiming them as
their own. I want, don't know, because you feel like
the sort of person that doesn't hold on to this
stuff that doesn't hold on to potential anger. How do
you do that? Like, how do you let it go when?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Because I always feel like I have another idea coming so,
and I have a gill our Darling's policy of you know,
when a dish's life is done, whether that's three months
or six months, for a year, it will never come
back on with the menu. And what that does is
it just keeps us looking forward to the future constantly,
and it evolves the restaurant and the cooking in ways
(07:36):
that are not possible if you're sort of reciting your
repertoire of dishes that you keep coming back to each season,
which is kind of the classical way to run a
restaurant like house. But for me, I think when you're
young and you're starting out and you haven't made it,
perhaps whatever made it means, and people are copying your
ideas and any creative endeavor, I think it really hurts
(07:57):
and it's really hard to deal with. But I think
just by knowing that I will come up with another idea,
it eases the pain of seeing somebody you know, take
your really hard work frankly and pass it off as
if it was their own, which is a very different
thing than being honest with your inspiration and saying, you know,
I'm really inspired by this culture or this person and
(08:20):
their work, and that's a really honorable thing to do.
I'd probably argue that there should be a little bit
more of that and creative endeavors in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That would be nice. I guess, like earlier on in
your career, before you achieved the success that I think
you have objectively achieved now, was it harder to deal
with earlier on, when maybe you didn't have that belief
that there'll always be another great idea.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Absolutely. I remember happening on the first menu, and it
really stung because the person that borrowed that idea didn't
credit me with it, and they were really successful, and
we were really struggling financially and nobody cared about Attaka
on the brink of bankruptcy, and I was the sort
(09:04):
of solution to that, the potential solution, but I didn't
know that we were going to make it. It definitely
stung in those early years. So it's easier for me
to sit here now and say, you know, oh, like
I can kind of if I do see my work
and elsewhere, which I do. If I see it on Instagram,
I'm kind of like, well, you know, sale a V
and I know that I've got this other thing that
I'm working on. It's less easy to do that at
(09:26):
the beginning. For sure.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I would love to ask a bit more about your
creative process, because I feel like with anyone that is
in a creative field, there'll kind of be peaks and
troughs of creativity. And I'd love to know for you
what what if you observed around yourself and when you're
kind of at peak creativity and the ideas are just coming, like,
what are the things that you're doing or the I
(09:48):
don't know, the stimulus that you're inputting, what does that
look like?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I think for me it's essential, and I think this
is for any person that's had a small amount of
success in any kind of business or any walk of life,
and evocation is to keep continuing to return to that
original love and almost sort of in a way that
you know, the more successful you become, the more distracted
(10:13):
you can get. And we all know this, and the
more things that are demanding our attention but are actually
dragging us away from the thing that we did that
brought us the success in the first place. So for me,
it's about returning to cooking constantly and cookings what has
made me successful. And of course the demands on my
(10:33):
time are so many now, from podcasts like this, to
requirements of staff, to running a company with forty employees,
to all of the other things that I do in
my life a family. I need to keep returning to cooking.
So it's about finding new ways to return to cooking
and not just staying in the format, which was I
turn up at the restaurant nine am. By ten am,
(10:55):
I'm cooking. Now. Sometimes I can't cook at ten am.
Sometimes it's not till twelve. Sometimes that doesn't allow enough
time to see an idea through in the rest of
the day till five when the service starts in the restaurant.
So sometimes I need to work on the idea at home,
or the idea starts off in the home kitchen as
an idea for a dinner party, and then it eventually
(11:18):
makes its way onto the outer communue. So in the
last three years, that's sort of how I've evolved that process.
But I've realized fundamentally that thing that brings me the
most joy and the thing that I need to protect
is cooking and my ability to do it. And of
course I'm going to come back to that idea. The
more successful will you become, the harder it is to
do the thing that made you successful. So I always
(11:39):
remind myself of that, and I think it makes me
feel really good as well to be able to go
you know what.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I know.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
There's one hundred emails there, there's an Instagram post that
you've got to do, there's a meeting, somebody needs your
help in external of the restaurant. But I do need
to cook today and I need to make that time
and get organized to do it. Another thing that elks
me hugely is having a lot of interests and different
interests than your occupation or what your passion is, because
(12:06):
it opens you up to a different world. And so
whether it's travel or listening to music for me, or
skateboarding or art or whatever it might be, it doesn't
matter really, it's about having a different sort of experience
with a different group of people.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I love that. I don't know if you've heard the
theory around I shape versus T shaped people. It used
to be talking about quite a lot in innovation circles
where you've got your I shape people that are experts,
have deep expertise in one particular area, and then you've
got your T shaped people that have that deep expertise,
but then they've also got the top of the tea
where they've got that breadth of different interests outside of
(12:42):
that main interest. And when I was and you know,
the research would suggest that T shaped people are quite
a bit more creative than I shaped people, which kind
of makes sense. And when I was reading Uses for
Obsession and just learning about all these different areas that
you've gone so deep in, it's like, no one day,
(13:03):
you're so incredibly creative. I do want to ask about
music because that's clearly a passion and I love that
you actually created Spotify and playlists that go with the book.
That's awesome. How does music help with your creativity? And
what I mean by that, Like, you know, I've spoken
to various creative people around how they'll use music to
get in a certain mood for whatever it is they're
(13:26):
trying to create. How does it help, I guess, boost
your creativity when it comes to cooking.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Music's kind of everything. You know, It's the soundtrack for
my life and I'll soundtrack my life, and almost every
moment always to music in the kitchen as well. It's
a way that traditionally chefs have sort of lifted their
energy at the end of the day, right before service.
I write about that experience. It's almost like a sporting
team in the locker room before going out into the perch.
(13:54):
The last hour before the restaurant opens, we amplify ourselves
as we set up frantically for the first guest arriving
at six o'clock with music, sometimes quite intense music, very
loud music. It's something that happens with or without me,
you know, in fact, mostly without me. You know, I'm
mostly an observer to the kitchen using this as a
(14:15):
mechanism to get themselves in the right headspace. So at Ataka,
there's you know, a joke that it has the most
stereos of any restaurant in the world. Is pretty much
a stereo in every room, so every person in the
organization can be listening to music if they want to.
You know, I just can't imagine creating without it, really,
you know, I think it's such a useful tool, and
(14:37):
I always feel so indebted to artists. Another sort of
very cool kind of fact in restaurants is that, especially
creative restaurants, it attracts a lot of musicians, and so
we get to serve and cook for musicians and sometimes
become friends with them, especially touring musicians, and that's such
a beautiful thing. I would say that sometimes it creates
a bit of nervousness with the playlist in terms of
(15:00):
will they like it? And in fact, sometimes you know,
famous musicians come and their music might be on the playlist,
and I almost feel bad about that because I don't
want to make them feel uncomfortable. But it's the greatest pleasure,
you know. I think it's such a gift music.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Did you listen to a song on the way here
to prepare for this podcast in your jet lagged stage?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Actually, I've been all over the shop today, so I
wasn't very organized. I was listening to an interviewer with
a skateboarder. That was what I was doing.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
We will be back with Ben soon, and when we return,
we'll be discussing the ways he uses creativity to cultivate
adult friendships and why he being self doubt is a
tool and not a weakness. If you're looking for more
tips to improve the way you work can Live. I
write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered
(15:49):
that have helped me personally. You can sign up for
that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot com. I
want to talk about self doubt because you write about
that quite a lot, and you've had many moments of
self doubt, and you talk about them just very honestly
(16:10):
and with a lot of humility, and I would love
to know what if you learnt about how to overcome
that in moments where you really need to A very.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Quiet person, introverted and it wouldn't necessarily seem that way,
but especially in my earlier years, and always preferred to
let my physical work all of the talking. And I've
had to learn to find my own voice, you know,
which is part of overcoming self doubt for me to
learn to be a better communicator, to actually be able
to articulate how I feel about things and about the world.
(16:41):
But in terms of like self doubt, I find that
there's been quite a few moments in my career and
at Attica where it seemed to the outside world that
the idea is outlandish, you know, whatever creative idea it
might be, and a perfect one would be you know,
at the end of the Lockdown's Attica, we could only
open the restaurant to a very limited capacity and we
(17:02):
were going to go broke, so we had to open
a big outdoor restaurant in the arablly called Attica Summer Camp.
And when I sort of proposed that idea, nobody accept
My wife Kylie and our architect Eva thought that that
was a good idea. In fact, people were ringing to
tell me out of concern for me, that we would
probably fail if we did that, but there was just
(17:22):
something in me that I just had to do it.
I thought that it was the way I could see.
It turned out to be this amazing thing. But I
think sometimes when you if you're doing something different and
changing something, you know, people don't love change. And so
probably talking about more other people's doubt in this, but
also my own self doubt, which was fueled by well
intentioned friends suggesting that I not do it, But ultimately
(17:47):
I just felt like it was something that I had
to do. I think there's always a bit of internal
self doubt, and I think that's healthy. I think, you know,
reason questioning within yourself of your ideas and not just
sort of blindly going into things to change them is important.
So I don't necessarily see self doubt as a negative thing.
I think it needs to be controlled like anxiety does.
(18:09):
I would probably say to younger people listening or people
are starting off on a journey in a new direction,
that it gets easier as time goes on and you
can kind of build on its success or a failure
for the next time. And perhaps that for me, that
self doubt's got a little easier to beer, you know,
But sometimes you just have to back yourself, you know.
I think as well, like despite all of your fears,
(18:32):
And there's been defferentely in moments where that's been true.
And probably the peak one was going from being an
employee in a restaurant for being the first time owner.
I was filled with self doubt. I didn't think it
was my place to own a restaurant. And that moment
was like, I was thirty eight, thirty nine, are you
ever going to do this? You know, are you ever
going to do this? And I laid everything on the
(18:52):
line a bit, my house, on my capacity to run
a restaurant. I'm glad I did.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
I feel like that's a good segue in terms of
thinking about the courage that some of those decisions took
and something that struck me in terms of I imagine probably
what has received the most attention in your book is
your criticism of food critics and the awards industry. And
I don't want to talk about the content of that
chapter because people, quite frankly, can just read the book
(19:19):
or listen to other interviews that you've done. But I
want to talk about why now and how did you,
I guess, build up the courage. I don't know if
that's the right phrase to do it.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, Okay, it took a lot of courage. So why
I had a lot of fear? I think because to
continue to sort of tell a lie about it felt
worse than the risk of actually bringing it to light.
Does that make sense? You know that the idea that
I will pretend like everything is fine when really it's not.
(19:52):
You know, I've always tried to be honest about things,
you know, because I really feel like glossing over the
harder things, whether that be with me health, or whether
that be the way that the restaurant's run or a
creative process. I felt like glossing over that stuff is
not helpful to other people, especially people who follow you
and look up to you. And so I've felt a
sense of responsibility to a broader community into my industry.
(20:15):
And I also think that if you see something bad
happening and you walk pasted it, it's not good for
the victims of that bad thing that's happening, but it's
certainly not good for the person that walks past it.
You know. I actually in some ways that might affect
them even more. And so you know selfishly as well,
like if I don't say this, when will be my
(20:36):
next opportunity. It's funny because I never really had a
plan to say any of these things that I wrote about.
I actually wrote them at the beginning of it. I
wrote a mind map on the wall of maybe over
a hundred ideas, which I felt fabulous about it, and
then I didn't really write about any of them. And
I think there's just something about reacting to how you're
feeling and what's going on in writing that is really
(21:00):
sparent and really sort of this rule. I think, you know,
the point of writing for me is to tell the truth.
That's what writing deserves, and I wanted to honor that
truth in my writing, and I just several times in
the book, I just felt like, you know what, this
is not easy to write, This is scary, This scares
me what I've written, This scares my wife Kylie. But ultimately,
(21:22):
what I just kept coming back to was I can't
not say it.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
What feedback or advice did you get from Kylie on this?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
A fair bit of fear and then also Kylie's really determined,
Kylie is brave, but that changed across the time. So
it's probably like a year between writing some of these
meaty things and a year between them being published, or
even six months before I decided that I would allow
them to be published. And in that time, you know,
(21:49):
we were kind of like yo yo's, you know, like
we're really up and down on it. Some days, you know,
you'd be feeling yeah, you know, like really empowered and
bold and like yeah, you know, we need to say that,
and then other times you'd be like quite and be like, oh,
but what happens if we lose everything? What will people
do to us? You know? And so there's like there's
fair but ultimately, I guess kind of what I felt
(22:11):
really strongly at the end of it, and so did
Kylie were really aligned on this, and we had to
be because this is her future as well. She didn't
write this, but like it's her company too. Was that
if we couldn't say these things and run the restaurant,
then we'd find that the running the restaurant wasn't worth
it anymore.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
How does it feel now to be on the other
side that it's all out there, very public in terms
of your views and the award system.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, it's really interesting, you know. I guess it's as expected,
you know. For me, I could just come back to
people don't like change very much, you know, and critics
hate to be challenged. They see their workers. It's a
one way street. And the irony of it's not lost
on me of course either. But I would say that
the absolute help pouring of people from my industry and
(22:55):
from other creative industries, hundreds and hundreds of messages, has
just been incredibly humbling and also totally heartbreaking. You can't
believe the response. So I could never have seen this.
I knew my own experience, of the experience of my
own team, and the experience of many close friends in
our industry, and we were pretty aligned on it. Whether
(23:17):
or not we'll speak out about it publicly or not.
I didn't expect the reaction that it got like that
positive reaction was just staggering.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
I'm very happy to hear that, and I'm not surprised.
I want to talk about your role as a business owner,
and one of the things that struck me into in
terms of like how you see your role, you almost
don't see yourself as trying to be the best in
the restaurant industry. You're trying to be the best small
business owner in the world. And I love that distinction,
and I would love to know what are some of
(23:46):
the most important things that other small business owners or
business owners in any industry could take from how you
do things at Attica.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I think like most of the time, when I see
somebody going wrong in business, it's because they've taken their
focus off the people. You know, it's always about the people,
and at every part of it is about the people.
Whether or not you make a profit or not, or
whether or not you have high levels of customer satisfaction
or not, or whether you have high levels of employee satisfaction,
(24:19):
it's all going to come back to the people and
how the people feel about the work and how they
feel about the way that you treat them in the
culture that you've built, and also, most importantly, how the
leader is behaving and the standard that they're setting, not
just the standard they're asking for, but the standard that
they're laying out for themselves first and foremost. And there's
(24:40):
that old classic saying the fish rots from the head.
It could not be more true when applied to business.
And so everything starts from there, you know, really it does.
And so I think we have a tendency in business
and small business and all kinds of businesses to over
complicate everything. And what I've experienced is it's much simpler
than that. Often managing people is much simpler than that.
(25:03):
You know, it comes down to some basic fundamentals of
common decency and fairness. And I guess you know, I'm
really speaking on the side of owners here. You know
that it needs to be an equitable agreement where both
the business and the employee are winning. And I think
if you can't kind of get to that in business,
(25:24):
then you have to really question your reasons for doing it.
For me, my reason for doing it is for people.
It's not for profit. It needs to be profitable, but
I think that I feel pretty strongly that by doing
things the right way or trying to do them the
right way, that the profit side of it, as long
as you have good fundamentals and business and by that
(25:44):
I mean good accounting, good bookkeeping, that the profits will
generally take care of themselves. But the thing that's often
missed is the sort of human element of an organization.
And you see this in all different types of businesses.
But there's just something about a team that is well
(26:05):
cared for, that is respected, that respects the company, that
it's the sort of fourth dimension that is not really
about money. It's hard to put a sort of a
finger on exactly that. You just go into a business
and you feel it, and it's genuine engagement with the work.
(26:26):
It's real care and pride in the establishment that the
people are working for. I can always see it. I
just had it in Paris at a tiny little crapery
restaurant called Crapery Little Raise in Paris. It's the most amazing,
tiny little restaurant where the crape was ten dollars and
it was so beautiful. But it wasn't just the crape.
(26:47):
It was the energy, the humility, the kindness of the
people behind it. It's the most successful crape restaurant in Paris,
but it doesn't carry itself like it. It carries itself
with dig and grace, and it made it so much
more magical. It transformed it from a crepe to something extra.
(27:08):
And I'm still thinking about it, and I suppose that's
what I'm getting at, is that there's a lot of
crape restaurants in Paris and they cook very good crapes,
but Little Brays does something else as well as make
a crape, you know, And I believe, I don't know
the business, but I believe it's connected to the leadership
and that it seemed like a really great place to work.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
You're describing that reminds me of one of your comments
around food critics and the ones that come into a
restaurant and all they do is look at their food.
They don't look at the environment, the atmosphere, the people
around them, and just how they're missing so much of
what has been curated for them.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
That's very common. Unfortunately. Yeah, they feel like they can't
engage with it because on a real deep level, because
a deep customer engages an enthusiasts, they don't like withhold
their excitement, and that is how you get more as
a customer too, because especially from a front of house team,
(28:09):
because you know, waiters are there to serve you and
they really rely on the exchange of human energy, and
so when that's not happening, it's harder for a weater
to do their job. And it's of course incredibly emotionally
draining undertaking, and the weight is constantly asking is the
customer happy? What can I do to make the customer happier?
(28:32):
If the customer is happier, and it sort of is
expressing that it becomes much easier for the waiter if
somebody's cold. The weights trying to change tack and trying
to you know, it's a really intellectual undertaking being a
great waiter, and so if you don't get anything, you
don't know if the persons enjoying it, and so you're
trying to maybe improve the experience or tailor it. And
(28:52):
we have to do this table by table anyway regardless,
but ultimately you're just shooting yourself in the foot because
you know, as I right, the waiter is your personal
hedonistic agent for the evening, and who would do anything
to compromise the waiter. You know, waters are awesome.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I do want to ask about cooking, but first before
I do that, I want to ask about friendship. Something
that really shone through in your book and in interviews
where i've heard you is that you take friendships really,
really seriously. And you're forty seven now. I think, and
often what happens with adults, and particularly male adults, is
(29:29):
that the older thing you get, the less friends you have,
and the less friendships you cultivate. And I feel like
it seems like in reading the book, in the very
long list, in the acknowledgment, that you've kind of done
the opposite. And I imagine it's probably quite unconscious, but
I was wondering if you could consciously unpack that, what
do you do ben to cultivate friendships as an adult.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I've always tried to be a good friend. I don't
think I've always succeeded in that, especially as a younger person,
because maybe my expectationtions were too high of people, or
I was choosing friendships where I was it wasn't equitable,
where I was putting too much into it. And as
I've gotten older, I've gotten much better at choosing friends
(30:14):
who want to be friends. I'm definitely drawn to people
who are a little I don't know if mad's the
right word, but are a little different, you know, who
turn stones. You know. I'm definitely drawn to people who
are unusual. But also I'm really drawn to people who
are kind and people who communicate. And I love friendships
(30:35):
where I'm not the only one who is the one
to keep in touch. One thing I really believe in
friendships is if I say that I'll do something, I
will do it. I will always do it. And I
think my friends know that. But I think one of
the things I love most about friendship is the ability
to be generous to people, and something that I really adore.
(30:55):
As a child, I always loved giving gifts. It was
much more than received them, and we didn't have a
lot of money, but I would save up my pocket
money or earn money by doing odd jobs and spend
it almost all of it at Christmas time and I
would go into the town that we lived by and
spend just all this time choosing presents for my sisters
and my mum and dad. And in a lot of ways,
(31:18):
that's how I am with friends, not with gifts, but
with experiences. So maybe a month ago, I went on
this boat trip up to the Arrow. It's just like
a little higher boat that you hire for like sixty
bucks with my daughter and my wife, and we had
a lovely day. And I thought, oh, you know, I
would have written boats in the raw off of something
tackier tourist thing. But then when I was seeing the
city for the first time from a boat, it's like,
(31:39):
this is cool, and so in that moment I had
but what if I got one of these boats and
I packed it. I think there's eleven people can fill
in this boat. And then I did a tasting menu
on the boat, ten courses that are all preprepared kind
of and I could just take this big chili bin
and serve them. But what if I got this group
of friends together and I just told them to meet
me at the room a bank. They had no idea
(32:01):
what was going to happen. And so that's what I did,
like two or three weeks ago. And it's just so silly.
It's effefesent. And I think that in friendship, but in life,
silliness is really underrated. Have such serious lives, you know,
and our professions are so serious and so important. To us.
But a bit of silliness I think goes a long
way because it just sort of lightens everything.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I love that. Let's talk cooking. I feel like I'm
not one of those podcasters that does the whole rapid
fire questions, but I've got quite a few.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Okay, okay, I'll try to limit them.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
To try to limit it, okay, in no particular order.
Kids lunches, what are your hacks?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Always healthy? I mean, I think you know, if you're
under the pump, we'll go and buy a rice paper
roll for the kids. That's maybe one hack. Always ask
them what they want. I'm onto my last kid. Two
kids have progressed out of school lunches, so I'm onto
my last. She's also our best eating so kind of
she's easy. Anything goes. Always a piece of fruit, always
(33:00):
a vegetable.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
If we're not getting rice paper rolls. What's a good, quick,
healthy lunch.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Well, fortunately, this child like salad a lot, so some
lettuce in the garden, maybe some left avorast chicken. I
like to make a caesar salad dressing from not based
on mayonnaise, but based on yogurt, which is much healthier
than mayonnaise. So it's essentially just like making a seas
salad dressing, but with no mayonnaise. And I've encouraged my
(33:28):
children to make their own school lunches. I'll say, hey,
this is kind of what's there, what's to use? And
they've always made a really great decisions. So I think
just engaging kids with school lunches is important. It's what
you want it. You want them to eat it. You
don't want to throw it out, but teen like they
ate it nice.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
What simple thing could the average person do that would
make a big difference to their results in the kitchen?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
I would say having better quality pots and hands. Everything
cooks better in a better pan, and not everybody can
afford that, So my advice would be to build up
your collection of pots and pans slowly. I've built up
my pots pans in my kitchen across a decade and
they do make a real difference to cooking. Other than that,
I would say a sharp knife, a block of good
(34:13):
quality Italian parmesan. What else? Always garlic, Always have garlic,
Just some simple staples. A lemon is always essential, both
for the zest and the juice. Coffee. I can't live
without coffee, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Okay, pots and pans, let's just focus in on that.
If I were going to start tomorrow, what would be
the first pot or pan that you recommend that I buy?
And this isn't fi. I've got a fry pan that
we use a lot, and my partner and I are
just a bit worried about the fact that it's nonstick.
Yeah no good, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
No tearflong. You don't want a tearflong pan. That's for
sure that that's going to end up in your system.
It's microplastics and that's that's terrible for the environment. But
there are good alternatives. I have a ceramic stick pan,
which is a permanent coating that doesn't come off. It's
a German made pan. It's amazing. Actually it's been quite
life changing.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
What brand is it.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
I'm not ambassador for it or anything, but at WO
L L VOLE I think it's called it's very very good.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I've got a couple of well pans.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Let you go, okay, well, you're on the wrong right track.
Don't overheat them. They can't take the same kind of
heat that is stainless or a cast iron pan can take.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
What is the most underrated cooking utensil.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
A flat bladed wooden spoon would be my go to
kind of proper utensil. Around edged wooden spoon is a
hopeless device. You should get rid of that. Finding a
flat bladed wooden spoon. It just gives you much more
surface contact than the pan. Whatever you're making, whether it
be a bolonnaise or a cheese sauce or a curry.
(35:53):
When you're braising something in a pot, you need to
stir it as little as you can, and so a
flat bladed wooden spoon has you know, maybe twenty times
a surface contact of around bladed wooden spoon. So a
good flat bladed wooden spoon is a good tool. And
microplane greater is also a very useful thing. But a
decent box grader is a really great tool. So you
can do a variety of different jobs on a box grader.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Awesome. What's the best thing to make in an air fryer?
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Chicken?
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, tell me about that, Like, how do you prep
the chicken?
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Okay, so I think chicken thigh is best. Boneless chicken thigh.
And my wife is the queen of the air fryer,
and she's converted me to it and gained no affiliation.
But we have a Phillips one. I like it very much.
I thought that their frys were absolutely rubbish, and this
is always how it goes in our house. Kylie suggests
an appliance, so I go, oh my god, no, we've
(36:43):
got an oven. What do we need in the air
fry for? But there's just an intensity to the air
fry that I like. And chicken thigh, which is kind
of a robust cut of chicken. You know, she marinates
in a bit of olive oil, a bit of garlic,
maybe a bit of Dijon mustard, maybe a bit of
lemon salt and black pepper, and then she just lays
it on the rack and air fry and cooks it
hard and it gets really caramelized and really tasty. So
(37:05):
I think that's the best thing I've had in the
air fry. But I also like to sort of do
I hate the word meal prep. I think that's such
a disgusting term for like cooking food. But let's say
that I'm going to use it in this context. If
I'm making I like to maybe chop up some sweet
potatoes and cope them with a little bit of olive
oil eight very healthy and some salt pepper and lay
(37:25):
them in a single layer on the air fry and
then it's about twelve minutes in the air fry on
the hottest temperature, and then that's great for the base
of a salad the next day. So I think it's
a really helpful tool.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I just want to say your observation that you that
you shared in the book around the bottom of the
apple tasting better than the top of the apple. I
don't have a question around it. I just thought that
is very interesting.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Do you agree with it?
Speaker 1 (37:45):
I'm not a big apple eater.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Would Okay, Well, the next time you do it, an
apple long and you to pay attention and see if
you if you agree on that.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
It's on my to do list.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, great, Life's greatest questions.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Okay, my partner Neo, loves cooking. If if you were
to suggest a Christmas gift for someone that loves cooking,
what would you suggest.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I mean, I've got to say that a solid brass
hand cranked pasta excruder from Bologna would be a pretty
great present for somebody. A really good pepper mial I
like the ones with the French internal mechanisms like Burschow
or Marlowe.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
You're right about how sourcing good ingredients is really I
guess the number one it is brul, isn't it. How
do you know where to get good ingredients from?
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Well, I think that's a learned skill, you know. I
think that that comes from repetition and from experience and
just from like really simple like from eating, from buying.
Sometimes side by side comparisons are very powerful, and that's
something that professionals like I do. But I think if
something tastes delicious, it's good, you know. I think if
you buy it from somebody that you can have a
conversation with, it's essential, like going to a butcher in
(38:49):
a market. If you have that ability and be able
to talk about where that food comes from and how
it was produced, that's almost going to guarantee that it's good,
you know. I guess I have like a repertoire of
ingredients that I trust, farmers that I trust, and I've
just built that up from experimenting a little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Amazing. This is great. I'm going to do some shopping
after this interview. Ben, thank you so much for your time.
I've so loved this chat. And I got to say
I loved researching for this interview so much. It's been
great to have you back on How I Work. So
thank you for coming in jet lag and all really
much and on again.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
It's real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I hope you loved this chat with Ben as much
as I did, and as well as leaving this interview
personally feeling very inspired. I also can't wait to try
some of his cooking tips at home. If you want
to learn more about Ben, I highly recommend reading his
latest book, Uses for Obsession, which we'll link to in
the show notes, or dining at Attica the next time
you're in Melbourne. If you like today's show, make sure
(39:46):
you get follow on your podcast app to be alerted
when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on
the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of the
cool And Nation