🦞Fuzz Ali, (bite-sized) 🌶️

On Fijian food guru Fuzz Ali's menu: cooking with Mum and Grandma, lobster curry for Nigella, and Fiji Pantry chilli oil. 

If you liked this - be sure to listen in to the full episode out tomorrow! (and tell your friends who you think would like it too!) 

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TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Your first food memory. This is a wonderful one. This is a foundation food memory. This tells us where it all began for you. This is cooking with your mother and your grandmother. Tell us about this.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

My mum's always been incredibly busy. She's a she's an incredibly successful businesswoman in her own right. She comes from a family of successful business people, and she just she was always incredibly busy. So my entire life, even now, uh, I don't think that she has any plans to slow down. She's she's just always been busy. But I am an only child, and she wanted to be involved in my raising.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

I know that having me, and I When you say that she wanted to be involved in your child raising, it just w what parents but there were grandparents.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

My grandparents are but I think that also and and and often within our culture, it's not uncommon that if somebody is is very, very busy, uh particularly a mother, that the child will be passed on to a sibl- My mum has 13 siblings. Oh, right. A child will be passed on to a sibling, or that they would grow up with a grand-a lot of my cousins grow up that way as well. Um and there's nothing wrong with it. It's very much like a village. Yes. It is a village to raise a child. Um, and also in mum's particular case, it would not be uncommon for somebody to be hired to raise the child as well. So um, a nanny who would then, you know, and I and I had a nanny, Mara, who uh unfortunately has now passed away, but she was my nanny for my entire life. And so and she was very, very important to me. She was like a second mum to me. But mom wanted, she wanted to be there and she wanted to be present, and it seemed to be very, very important to her. And for whatever reason, she decided that food was the most important thing in the entire world. So she decided from when I was a when I was an infant that she would make all of my meals for me. So she would, in the midst of all of her busyness, and this is beyond my memories or before my memories, she would uh stew and blend fruit, and she would prepare all my meals and she'd make sure that all the bottles were done and blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, there's all these stories about how insistent she was. She also didn't allow me to eat salt or sugar for a very, very long period in my life. I think the first time that I had salt, I was um, I might have been like four or five. And the first time I had sugar, I might have been ten. So it was, it was a very, very long period of time. She just, she she was very insistent on that. From when I can remember, though, it's like she wanted me to know that food was the way that we were going to connect, or food was the way that we could stay connected to the people that we come from. Because of course I come from a descendant of slaves, so people who were transported to the islands to work in sugarcane fields. And so she wanted to, she wanted to ensure that I was aware of that. So in the making of food, in the making of Fijian food, in the making of Fijian identity through food, it's how she sort of like taught me about who I was. And it was also the way that she could just have a conversation with me. She'd come home from work, she'd get started on something, and I'd be there with her. She'd she'd ask me to help. I've that it's probably why I'm so comfortable with knives. I mean, a lot of people who watch my content notice that I I uh I don't really use chopping boards, I use my fingers to cut everything. And I always use a pairing knife, and she just she just put me into this environment.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

This next memory is about cooking for Nigella Lawson.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Oh, I'm obsessed with her. I can't even tell you. I am obsessed with her. My favorite thing in the entire world is that we follow each other on Instagram. And I'm just like, oh my god. And then she comments on things sometimes, and I'm like, oh, I still die. She's fantastic. I have been obsessed with her since like I can't even tell you when, like, forever. Like I remember when I um when I first moved back to Sydney permanently for university when I was like uh, how old was I? I can't remember, 17, I think. And um, I remember watching Nigella Kitchen. I just turned it on because you know you used to watch the TV back then, you didn't have the Netflix and things. Um, it was on Foxtale. And I watched on the Food Network, and um, I think it was the Food Network, and she made this French toast with this like plum jam situation, and I made it over and over and over again. I am absolutely obsessed with her. She's fantastic. So when we did end up on the on the show, and she was the judge, and I got to spend like every three days. The show being My Kitchen Rules. Yeah. So I was on My Kitchen Rules a couple of years ago, and oh my god. She was just like, it was like honestly, I didn't care about anything else. The fact that I got to spend time with her, speak to her, connect with her, the fact that she enjoyed the food. I was very fortunate that the food that um that we made for her were my family recipes and that she enjoyed them.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Like I was uh What did you make for her?

SPEAKER_01 4:59

I made for her for our restaurant around uh Coconda, which is a Fijian, they call it a Fijian ceviche, but it's it's a cured fish in um coconut milk. So I made my own coconut milk. I scraped the coconuts and squeezed it myself. And the main, which is really special, was a lobster curry. So a lobster curry is my mother's favorite thing to eat. And you don't get to pick what you cook for them. You submit a bunch of recipes, and then the production crew comes back and tells you what it is that you make. And uh, I mean, they ask you for like 5,000 recipes. I can't remember how many it was. It was like 15 recipes each or something for each course, and then they tell you the day before what it is that you you're going to cook the day after. And it was just, I mean, I was in heaven.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

It's an enormous amount of pressure.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Oh, yeah, it was wild. Like, but yeah, again, thankfully I'm Fijian, so I was like, You're that Fijian woman who slaps them down.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Yeah. So, how did you find out you were going to be cooking for Nigella?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

It was initially a surprise because my kitchen rules my kitchen rules was just coming back onto television. Hang on, hang on. Did you lose your mind when you found out?

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Oh my god, I like I died. Did you do a dance?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Was there a dance or I I honestly I think I went into shock. So when I found out we auditioned, um, and it's it's a very long, arduous process, and you know, they they come to see you, they talk to you on the phone, you cook for the producers, blah, blah, blah, there's all this stuff. And then, and then at the end of it, it was like, who are the judges? And all I heard was Nigella. Manu was there as well. But all I heard was Nigella. And like I felt really bad because when you when you do the confessionals afterwards and you're talking to camera, and when the producer when the producer would ask questions, all I would talk about was Nigella. The entire time. Like full-time fan girling. Like it was like a whole thing. But she is just so lovely and supportive and kind. And one of the things that I will say, because I say it all the time, I think it's really important. Because these shows are shows, they're the reality TV shows, that they're designed to have some level of drama, whatever, and you know, they've got earpieces in and they're listening. The number of times she said to the producers, I won't say that. It was like I had a lot of respect for that.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

And I I was like, This is really you're you're a good one. Which actually was that was one question I was going to ask you. What was Nigella like when the cameras weren't rolling?

SPEAKER_01 7:27

She was supportive, she was kind, she um she she was really, she was very encouraging. She really wanted to taste what it meant for something to come out of our kitchen if we weren't in that circumstance. Like the kitchen of our minds. Like she was she wanted to understand what our flavors were. She was curious. She wasn't just a judge on a show, she was she was curious, she was genuinely curious. And I and I know that you know that might sound like whatever, but it was my genuine experience.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

The lobster curry tells a story about how food preserves memory. This last memory shows us how food creates a future. Your blood's worth bottling, fuzz. The day Fiji Pantry was born. How was it bonded?

SPEAKER_01 8:20

My partner, Eli. Um, I I this is this is uh you know, you it's interesting. It's all sort of like coming around and connecting, but you asked about my grandmother, my mum, the two things coming together. I think in many ways now, and I'll think about it now because I never thought about this before, but this interview has has done that for me.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

You're welcome. When I I I really do appreciate it. What an asshole.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

I'm so sorry. I'll take it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Um Eli was asking me, so my my paternal grandmother, uh, my my dad's mum, so she, when we were living in Fiji again, as so I've been back and forth a couple of times, but I I went back to live there for about five years, I think from the age of 28 or something. And so when Eli and I lived in Fiji, he and I have been together for 19 years, so it's been a very, very long life. Um, we we would get like bottles of this chili chutney, which is quite common. And you know, we just eat it because it's so delicious. You add it to anything eggs, toast, curry, stew, a roast, whatever. It's so delicious. And then we were here, and Eli was like, There's no way to bring it over. And I was like, no, biosecurity. Um, and then he was like, Can you make it? And then I was like, I can try. So I messaged um my aunt, uh, who lives with my grandmother in Sembiato, in Fiji, and I asked her, I said, you know, how do you make it? So she gave me some. There's never a recipe, you know. It's it's like uh a little bit of this, a little bit of that, whatever. So I started experimenting with making it, and then eventually I did it. And then I was like, try this. I was like, I think that I think this is right. And I'd added elements to it that aren't in the original, but for some reason they work. Like I added citron peppercorns, which are not a part of that recipe at all. But for some reason it just worked. And he was like, Oh my god, this is amazing, we should bottle it. And then I was like, we could bottle it. But in that it's important for us to be able to communicate what this thing is to people who might not understand what chili chutney is because chili chutney sounds like it's gonna burn your mouth. So, and and most people would be like, Absolutely not. So then we made a chili oil because it was a way that we could communicate with people, it was a way that we could tell people you can introduce these Fijian flavors into your pantry, and all you have to do is just uh scoop the chutney out the bottom, or you can use the oil as you would any other chili oil.