With her cooking and baking shows displaying beautiful desserts and dishes on the television screen, it’s hard to grasp that Anna Olson was in the banking industry at first. “It took actually for me being miserable at my job to realize I have to do what makes me happy,” she shares with me one afternoon at Sage restaurant at Makati Shangri-La. The restaurant is where later that evening, the celebrity chef along with her husband Chef Michael Olson treated special guests to a five-course dinner featuring dishes inspired by her travels in the upcoming AFC series “Inspired with Anna Olson.” The series premieres with the Philippines in its first episode, with Chef Rob Pengson demonstrating three local recipes, and Anna drawing inspiration from Chef Rob’s cooking techniques to create a dish of her own. Two more episodes will feature the Philippines, including two of our own chefs, Margarita Fores and Claude Tayag.
Aside from her cooking shows and the new series premiering this week, Olson is also an accomplished cookbook author and is involved in different culinary businesses. Right now, keeping her busy is her two-week-long tour around Asia to promote her new show ‘Inspired with Anna Olson’ which premieres exclusively on Asian Food Channel (AFC) on July 29, Friday. We sit with Anna Olson, the renowned baking savant and television host, for an exclusive Q&A — discover more about the pastry chef, the new show which brings her around Southeast Asia, her ‘gourmet goo,’ and her ultimate food weakness in this interview.
Question: What made you decide to pursue cooking? There was a shift in your career, what made you decide to do that?
Anna Olson: I don’t think I’m alone in sometimes, you’re down a path, and sometimes you’re just doing it because people tell you, you should do it or you could be good at it. I grew up loving cooking, it was always a part of my life, but it was so there that I didn’t even see it… You know that expression, you can’t see the forest through the trees? So it took actually for me being miserable at my job to realize I have to do what makes me happy. And once I realized that, it was a quick turnaround and full commitment. I was a mature student when I went into cooking, I was already working full time. I had to figure out how to work and go to school at the same time–I couldn’t just quit and just be a student again. With that commitment, it help make me the decisions I needed to make.
How young were you when you started cooking and baking in the kitchen?
Oh, [since we were] little kids. Cooking with my grandmother, baking especially, I was really curious as to what she was doing and also grandma was always in the kitchen. So if you wanted to visit her, then it meant you were in the kitchen and she would automatically start handing off tasks then we would cook together.
What is your earliest food memory of cooking with your grandmother?
Well, I used to play with food as a toy. My grandmother would give me leftover odds and ends and that was my entertainment, and I would make her bake whatever garbage — it was horrible! And then I would make her eat it. I think she caught on and then added some nice ingredients in there [laughs] since she had to taste it. And she would call that ‘gourmet goo,’ whatever it was I made. So that was my earliest active cooking memory. I would have to be four [years old]? Really quite young.
How was it studying culinary, coming from a completely different field [political studies and sociology]?
It was an exciting time going to cooking school because all of a sudden it was a new world to me. And I thought I love food and I knew about food, and I realized, there’s this whole world of technique and taste that I haven’t even explored. And what I’ve learned is that you keep doing that your whole life. To go to cooking school and then getting the skill set–going to cooking school is learning a language. You learn the grammar, you learn the spelling, you learn how to compose a sentence. But, you don’t write a novel until you become a chef, that your menus and what’s on your plate is your actual creation. But you need to learn the language to express yourself. There’s this constant learning, and now that I’m in Southeast Asia in this new show, this is my expression, I’m learning a new language here. And that’s what’s so exciting. I feel like I’m back in cooking school. It’s all new to me.
With your new show, you traveled around Southeast Asia to discover new flavors and dishes. Has there been any interesting food or cooking techniques, or dishes you’ve tried that are the most memorable to you?
Oh, there are so many! I was challenged to think very differently about food. Say, here in the Philippines, the use of fruits as such a fundamental ingredient outside of dessert — that was new to me. And using vegetables as part of dessert, that was new to me, beyond the usual carrot cake world. Learning techniques, like learning a simple Chinese bao when I was in Hong Kong. It’s simple ingredients, but the technique is over the top! Cool, and complicated, but not complex. And once I got a handle on that I realized, wow, this is a whole new skill set for me. Cooking by steaming is something I never really did, it just isn’t part of a western kitchen. And now, I steam a whole lot more than I used to. So now there’s a whole lot more.
Being on television for many years now, what do you think is the most common misconception about cooking for the camera?
I don’t know.. Well, it’s not glamorous, I’ll tell you that. The actual taping portion is the least glamorous part, because it’s really long days. You take twelve to fifteen hour days. I have to speak to a camera lens as if there’s a person there, and it’s really hard when you’re speaking to a room full of people who, each person in that room is doing their job, but really only one or two people are paying attention to you. It makes you insecure at first and you have to get past the fact that you are talking to a dead camera lens, but yet I have to see you–I have to see a real person in my mind to stay engaged. And then you have to be ready for any number of issues. As soon as I finished taping Inspired with Anna Olson, I went into a new season of Baked, tons of new episodes to come out of that too. But we had so many sound disasters! From garbage trucks to helicopters to airplanes flying over. At one point we had a banjo playing outside the studio. Really, a banjo? I’m baking a cake. [laughs] And it was someone in their office in the studio next door. Then we have bagpipes, it was the day after. I was like, really? We had banjos yesterday, we have bagpipes today. Because we taped at a studio that was tied to a college, and it was their graduation, and so, the bagpipes. For two days, we knew that at ten, two, and four p.m. we just wait for the bagpipes. And then I go back to baking my cake. [laughs] You just got to be ready for anything.
Do you often connect with your viewers and fans?
Oh yes, social media allows me to do that so well, and that’s where I get a lot of my inspiration in terms of what people are excited about, the questions they ask me, and you know–that’s how this show really came about. Not necessarily social media, but my Southeast Asian fans from Asian Food Channel asking me what I thought about flavors here, or what I thought about ingredients and technique. That got me thinking, okay, I’m going to find out and let you know what I think! My level of engagement amazes me. People are paying attention, and they’re not just watching the show–they’re making the recipes. I wanna help them through that–having a recipe issue or if they can’t find an ingredient and need an equivalent here. I’m always happy to help out that way.
Are you already at a point where you can bake without a recipe? Is that even possible?
Well, there’s always a recipe. Even if it’s not written on paper, there are ratios you have to respect and abide by in the baking world. I am at a point, though, that when I know what I want my end result to be, like the texture I want in this cake, that I know this amount of butter to this amount of sugar to this amount of eggs. Or, I need to whip my eggs, put this amount of sugar in, then add an amount of flour. I know for a basic 9-inch sponge cake, I need 6 whole eggs, I need 200 grams of sugar, I need 350 grams of flour–and then the rest is my creative variables.
If you can take someone to your hometown and tour them around the city, where would you take them to eat?
My house!
Of course! [laughs]
No, I would seriously have to. I live in a smaller town. There’s only 50,000 people. But what I do and when I have guests especially from outside of Canada that visit, I take them to our farmer’s market to buy fresh ingredients, then we go to our little local butcher shop, buy our meats, and then we come back to my house and cook. Quite often I will have weekend guests and we just spend the time cooking and eating.
Do you have a favorite ingredient to use when you’re cooking or baking?
Oh, I’m a moody cook so it depends on what I’m in the mood to bake or what I have available. At home we have seasonality to our produce, so quite often whatever’s in season. When I get home from this trip, peaches are in season, and we only have peaches for about five or six weeks. So I will eat and cook with peaches for five weeks straight, and then I know I have to wait another year till they’re fresh again.
How about when eating out, what’s your favorite cuisine?
Same. Again, I’m very moody.
How about now?
Anything Filipino. [laughs] Well I’m not going to go and have a cheeseburger here, right? I’m in the Philippines, I can have a cheeseburger at home! Wherever I am, I love to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Whenever I’m in Southeast Asia, I don’t eat western.
So far here in the Philippines, what have you been eating?
We had a delicious dinner at Locavore in BGC, and I really liked the chef’s version of the sisig. It’s with fried oysters, little pork crackling on top, and chicken liver sauce. It was so good!
What can you never give up eating?
Cheese! Cheese is my weakness. So I have to say–cause I do–I eat Asian whenever I’m in Asia, but then I go home and what’s the first thing I want? Ohhh, I want cheese! [laughs]
If a restaurant were to name a dish after you, like “A Slice of Anna” for example, what would it be? A dessert?
Yes! It would be a dessert, and it would probably be a tart. I love the complexity of tarts, and it would be a fruit tart. So you can have the crispy shell, a creamy filling, fruit on top, and some sort of decor or garnish. So you have all these layers, because I’m a little more complicated person.
Okay, last question: if you can eat only one kind of dessert starting today—
You’re mean! [laughs] Only one?!
[Laughs] If you can eat only one kind starting now. What would it be?
Hmm. Well, then I’m gonna be sneaky, and say ice cream. Because you can do so many things with ice cream! So I can make ice cream and turn it into a thousand different things. [laughs]
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Inspired with Anna Olson premieres exclusively on AFC on Friday, 29 July at 9pm. In line with the program premiere, AFC will also stream ‘live’ the pilot episode of Inspired with Anna Olson on its website. Inspired with Anna Olson has a total of 10 episodes, taking viewers along on her journey across Southeast Asia–Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. Viewers can tune into AFC on SkyCable Ch 22 (Analog)/Ch 248 (HD), Dream Satellite TV Ch 27, Cignal Ch 26, Destiny Cable Ch 71 (Analog)/Ch 22 (Digital) to watch the series.
