Jeremy Pang doesn’t have a classic chef origin story: he “hated” food as a child. Before he turned 10, the chef, teacher and owner of the School of Wok in London admits: “I hated eating – I honestly did not like food. “Up to the age of, like, nine, it would take my mum two, three hours to get my dinner down me. I just didn’t want to eat – I wanted to go out and play football with my mates. I wanted to go and do stuff and play – I also wanted to eat fish fingers and all the stuff my friends were eating at home.” Pang grew up in a Chinese household and is a third-generation chef. When he was 10 years old, his family moved from the UK to Singapore for two years. Now aged 39 and based in southwest London, Pang says upon making the move, his “life completely changed”. He says: “When you go into hawker centres [open-air food markets] in Singapore, it’s a different world. Every single stall is a specialist in one type of food – not even cuisine. So you might have one uncle who has cooked chicken rice for his whole life, or another person who has cooked Hokkien Mee [a stir-fried noodle dish] for 40 years. “When people are as specialist as that, you cannot not want to eat it. And you see everyone digging into their food with no real etiquette – but the etiquette is the enjoyment of that bowl of food.” From there, Pang says Singapore “opened mine and my sister’s horizons” and he fell in love with food. With Singapore’s proximity to other Southeast Asian countries, he was exposed to a variety of cuisines – from Indonesian to Malaysian – many of which are taught at the School of Wok, along with the Chinese food Pang grew up with. With two kids of his own, aged six and two, Pang says: “I now feel so sorry for my mum.” Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the chef says of his oldest: “It was really difficult to get him to enjoy anything that wasn’t raw carrot or cucumber – which actually is healthy at least, but every day? That’s hard.” The pandemic shifted his son’s eating habits. Pang took a couple of months off and “cooked with him – we started making homemade pizzas, flapjacks – anything he wanted to make. He definitely at that point thought he had more of a Western palate, but I’ve known since he was really young and started eating that he does love Chinese food. “He likes the slightly lighter palate, and home-cooked Chinese food can be quite light – steamed fish, flash-fried vegetables, things like that.” One constant from Pang’s childhood to his family life now is the concept of feasting – serving multiple dishes for one meal. “This is how Asian cuisine is eaten, and should be eaten,” he says simply. “My style of cooking is 100 per cent home cooking anyway, and I’ve grown up with it. If you are Asian, that’s just a way of life. But if you’re not, it’s hard to compute how to get four or five dishes on the table, all hot or in the right state at the right time.” He continues: “Even if when we’re doing midweek meals at home, if I’m cooking Chinese or Southeast Asian just for the four of us, I’ll quite often cook two or three dishes. Those two or three dishes are there to be shared – that absolutely is our way of cooking and eating.” Pang’s latest book, Simple Family Feasts, is all about demystifying this concept for home cooks who haven’t grown up with it. Each chapter is dedicated to a different cuisine – including Chinese, Vietnamese, Singaporean and Indonesian – and shows you how to build a feast, guiding you through which dishes to make and in what order. Balance is crucial to pulling off a feast. “If, for example, you just ate crispy, deep-fried stuff – which is terribly bad for you, but we all love it – yes, you want to eat lots of it at the beginning. But five minutes later, you might get lost in that deep fried, crispy, greasy world, and so you’re likely to stop eating it at some point quite quickly. “But if you had something crispy, you have something opposite that melts in the mouth, you had something soft with a gentle bite, you had crunchy – usually from fresh vegetables or flash-fried vegetables, salads, anything like that – and you had a perfect balance of those textures. Honestly, I think you could just keep eating.” Growing up with this style of cooking must make Pang a brilliant multitasker – something he says is “a great skill to have”, but “sometimes it’s my worst enemy”. “I’m constantly multitasking – I get to the end of the day and I don’t know what’s happened, I sometimes can’t tell you what I’ve done in a day. I might have done a million different things… So in some ways, I’m very good at multitasking – but when I get home, my wife probably wouldn’t agree with that.” Like all of Pang’s cookbooks, this is an “ode to my father”, who passed away in 2009. “He’s the one who instilled that love of cooking and cuisine – especially Asian food. He never really taught me how to cook, he just said, ‘Stand and watch’, or, ‘Taste this and tell me what’s in it’. That was his style of teaching.” ‘Jeremy Pang’s School Of Wok: Simple Family Feasts’ (published by Hamlyn; £22). Read More Marina O’Loughlin is wrong – there’s joy in solo dining Budget Bites: Three recipes to keep food bills down before pay day Meal plan: Romesco chicken and other recipes to fall in love with Who knew a simple flan could be so well-travelled? Midweek comfort food: Singaporean curry sauce and rice How to make Thai favourite lemongrass chicken stir-fry

David Beckham has revealed he still cannot forgive himself for the abuse his family suffered amid the fallout from his red card at the 1998 World Cup, which left him a “mess”. A new Netflix documentary series titled ‘Beckham’ is set for release on Wednesday, looking back on the former Manchester United and Real Madrid midfielder’s career as well as his marriage to Spice Girls singer and fashion designer Victoria. In episode two, titled ‘Seeing Red’, Beckham, now 48, reflected on the “stupid mistake” which changed his life after he was sent off for kicking the back of Diego Simeone’s leg during the last-16 clash against Argentina in Saint-Etienne. England went on to lose after a penalty shootout and Beckham found himself centre of a backlash – including a pub hanging up an effigy of the midfielder, who received a hostile reception from rival fans around the country when he returned to action for United the following season. In the documentary, Victoria Beckham said the continued abuse left her husband “absolutely clinically depressed” as the then 23-year-old tried to deal with the fallout alongside becoming a father for the first time in March 1999. Beckham admitted the saga “took a toll on me that I never knew myself”. He said: “I wish there was a pill you could take which could erase certain memories. I made a stupid mistake. It changed my life. “We were in America (on holiday after the World Cup), just about to have our first baby, and I thought, ‘we will be fine. In a day or two people will have forgotten’.” Beckham added: “I don’t think I have ever talked about it, just because I can’t. I find it hard to talk through what I went through because it was so extreme. “Wherever I went, I got abused every single day – to walk down the street and to see people look at you in a certain way, spit at you, abuse you, come up to your face and say some of the things they said, that is difficult. “I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping. I was a mess. I didn’t know what to do.” When I have gone through difficult moments, I was able to block it out, but inside it killed me David Beckham Beckham added: “It brought a lot of attention that I would never wish on anyone, let alone my parents, and I can’t forgive myself for that. “That is the tough part of what happened, because I was the one that made the mistake. “It is only now that I am 47 years old, it is now that I beat myself up about it (still). “When I have gone through difficult moments, I was able to block it out, but inside it killed me.” Beckham spoke of the support he received from then Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and the club as he looked to focus on his football. “That was the only thing I could control – once I was on the pitch, then I felt safe,” Beckham said. “Anytime I was kicked during that season, it was like the (opposition team) had got two goals.” Beckham added: “As horrible as it was to look up to Victoria in the stand (getting that abuse), it was the one thing which spurred me on.” The Netflix documentary also charts Beckham’s triumphant end to the 1998-99 season, which culminated with United having won the Premier League, FA Cup and a memorable Champions League final against Bayern Munich in Barcelona. With Paul Scholes and Roy Keane suspended, Beckham played an integral role in United’s comeback win, which was secured by two goals in stoppage time. Reflecting on the match, Ferguson said: “With David, that night there was something inside him saying, ‘I am not going to let this happen’. It was a personal thing that he had in him, that stubbornness and determination.” Beckham’s former United and England team-mate Gary Neville was an executive producer of the Netflix documentary. Neville recalled the way he and Beckham were “absolutely destroying teams” down the right flank for United. “He was with his crossing. I was supporting him in a way which was to be fair, I would say I was a side dish really. Not the beef. I was the mustard on the side,” Neville said. “I was subservient because I needed David to go and do something magical. He was practicing free-kicks and I was practicing throw-ins.” Neville added: “It was telepathic on the pitch. Off the pitch as well, I knew where he was in his mind – it was not enough for him, he wanted to be more than a football player.”

Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and his wife Batia are quitting a Harvard executive board in protest of how university leaders have responded to Hamas' terror attacks on Israel.

An Indianapolis police officer who pleaded guilty to kicking a handcuffed man in the face during a 2021 arrest has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison

Ethiopian Airlines successfully weathered the Covid pandemic by shifting its strategy, but Africa's only profitable carrier still faces "real challenges" in sourcing parts and staying competitive at a time...

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 9, 2023--

The Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves off to a sluggish start following a 30-7 loss to San Francisco

If Quordle is a little too challenging today, you've come to the right place for

Catalent will delay its quarterly filing with the U.S. securities regulator due to a goodwill impairment charge of

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers isn't too happy with Jihad Ward, as this new rivalry continues to grow by the minute.

As Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan inches closer to securing the speaker's gavel, he has been working to allay concerns from the more establishment wing of the GOP about how his speakership could hinder their ability to raise campaign cash and keep the House majority next year.

Maxim magazine in Australia recently ranked Danielle Laidley, a transgender woman at the 92nd position on its list of the hottest women