Five minutes with... Jeremy Pang

The chef talks to Emma Henderson about why being a chef had to be his fallback career, the Chinese food revolution in the UK and what to eat for Chinese New Year

The founder of the School of Wok cookery school has made making bao buns at home as easy as one, two, three...

You come from three generations of chefs, so who taught you to cook?

Weirdly, I'm still kind of “self-taught”... my dad taught me through tasting more than cooking! The game when we were kids was that at every dinner time, we would have to guess what ingredients went into each dish on the table. It's a great way to train your palate! When I was in my teens however, my Dad started to teach me about “Wok Hei” (the height of the fire or how to move the “woks air”), which is really what taught me all about heat control, which is crucial to cooking. My mum was the “discipline” in our household and made sure that whenever I used a knife, I knew how to keep my fingers intact.

After graduating as an engineer, you went to Le Cordon Blue School – why didn’t you do this first?

I'm Chinese! My parents, like most Chinese parents, dreamed of three kids who would become a lawyer, a doctor and an accountant. I have two sisters; my eldest sister is a very successful lawyer, my middle sister is an oncologist and I'm erm... a chef. The deal was, so long as I graduated with a good degree that I could fall back on, I could then do what I wanted, so I took that very literally.

His bao kits teach people to make these buns in just eight steps (Kris Kirkham)

You’ve just been creating some YouTube videos and using #WokWednesdays, can you explain what we’ve got to look forward to?

Yes! Every Wednesday, we upload a new Wok Wednesday video or Wok (less) Wednesday, if we aren't using a wok in the recipe. They are all fun, educational videos based around Asian cuisine – essentially, whatever my team and I fancy eating each week. We hope that we make the audience drool enough that they then feel an obligation to cook what we are teaching through the videos!

Your first cookbook, Chinese Unchopped, was about breaking down the techniques of Chinese cooking – why did you decide to focus on this?

I wanted to explain to the world how to cook real home-cooked Chinese food, but also why Chinese restaurants and takeaways manage to have so many recipes on their menus. I didn't think there were many Chinese cookbooks available that really went into depth about the techniques that we are used to in a Chinese kitchen, and felt that I had a different way of explaining things that perhaps readers might enjoy. Over the years of teaching, I have developed a specific way of getting a message across when showing people how to cook, and I felt that “demystifying” the cuisine through the recipes and writing would help with that. In my view, Chinese food can be broken down into 6-7 core techniques, that when pieced together, can form a table full of delicious food. That's what Chinese Unchopped is all about.

Jeremy began his School of Wok business by teaching people how to cook in their own homes

Your new bao kits follow on from this and help people make bao buns easily at home – how long did it take to perfect these?

About three years of product development! But if you include the time it has taken me to come up with a well written bao dough recipe, then perhaps 7-8 years! What I'm most proud of with the bao kits is that we have taken something that a lot people wouldn't dare to cook at home, to a simple 8-step recipe (all illustrated within the slim-line pack) that can be made in 30 minutes. It's a very proud achievement to have created it, and now I just hope enough people pick it up from the supermarkets to keep the production going!

Where did the idea of your own cooking school, School of Wok, come from?

When my father passed away in Hong Kong, I lost my job at Samsung Electronics, and after spending time in Hong Kong with my mum, I came home jobless. My wife asked me what I was going to do, and I had no idea.... she knew I had always wanted to start my own food business, but just not taken the big step yet (to be fair, I was only 25, so thought I had plenty of time!)... and she suggested that I teach cooking. I ignored the idea for a few weeks, but then thought it might actually work. If I were to teach people in their own homes, it wouldn't cost too much to start the business. So two months later, I launched the first ever School of Wok website. In those days, all classes were three hours long, in your own home kitchen; you could pick three of your favourite Chinese dishes to learn, and I would then turn up with all the ingredients and teach you how to cook your dinner.

Could you pick three of your favourite Chinese dishes?

Haha... it's like you knew what I was going to say in the last question... well... Whole steamed fish (grouper if available), slow braised belly pork in red fermented tofu with boiled eggs (one of my dad's favourites), ginger and spring onion crab.

This year is the year of the pig in the Chinese calendar, so what’s your favourite food to eat on Chinese New Year?

Suckling pig or crispy pork!

What are you most proud of in your career so far?

The resilience and determination of my School of Wok team (that includes my business partner Nev, when he's not being grumpy).

Do you think Chinese food culture has evolved recently in Britain?

Yes I think it has evolved somewhat, perhaps more that it's evolvING as we speak. There are some fantastic new restaurants popping up, and although I'm more involved with the London scene, and cannot necessarily speak for the whole country, my favourite Chinese restaurant is up north, Yu @ Alderley Edge run by two brothers: Victor and Vinny Yu, and of course Andrew Wong and his restaurants in London, along with places like Xu and Bao London, there are many fine examples of the evolution. Also the fact that restaurant giants such as Din Tai Fung have finally made it to London add to the Chinese food movement and can only mean there are more exciting things to come.

Is there one utensil you can’t live without?

A wok!

What’s your go-to comfort food?

Home-cooked: claypot chicken rice. Out? steak and chips or Cantonese roast meat and rice

What have you got planned for 2019?

All our focus at the moment is on launching our meal kits into the big supermarkets. Tesco and Waitrose have backed us, and we are super confident that we have created some fantastic tasting products. In fact, we are launching a Kickstarter campaign on Chinese New Year day (5th February) as we really think that "It's A'Bao Time to go Global" with our kits... well, that's the name of the campaign. We hope that our existing following and anyone who is as excited about our bao kits as we are will help to support the project on kickstarter (schoolofwok.co.uk/kickstarter).