“What was difficult for me was learning how to cook, smile to camera, have a bit of a laugh and not cut my fingers off. That was hard.” So says – with trademark Australian humour and candidness – Justine Schofield, a television personality enduringly popular enough to have just wrapped yet another season of Everyday Gourmet , a studio-based show garnished with an international-travel element.
“We’ve been doing it for 14 years,” she says by Zoom from her home in Sydney, “and the last eight or so we have added an international trip, not only to put into Everyday Gourme t but to make up [a separate] eight-part series.” In 2019, Macau – “incredible food and heritage!” – supplied the grand stage on which Schofield created her versions of Macanese and Chinese dishes. This time, the destination is Malaysia, to which Schofield had been keen to return – and to an extent, still is.
“Many years ago I went to Kuala Lumpur and then to a small fishing village on the east coast,” she says. “I was dipping my toe [in Malaysia]; that was in my 20s, almost 20 years ago. But Penang had always been on my bucket list.
“It’s hard work making a travel show: you’re up sunrise to sunset and sometimes even further into the night to film – and sometimes it’s disappointing. You don’t want to put a dampener on it, but you want to see more of Penang, or Sabah or Sarawak and you don’t get to, because you’ve got to get on a plane and go to the next beautiful .