How do our food experts cook and eat? This week, Sydney-based Lankan food blogger @chefme_up, Dasuni takes our Q&A!

1.    What’s your favourite memory of cooking?  
-    I’d say Awurudu back in Lanka with my family is a special one! My sister and I would hang out in the kitchen with our mother chatting & laughing away, occasionally fighting for the last bits of a cake batter or the funny-looking kokis that won’t make it to the final spread. Happy days!  

2.    How did ChefmeUp come about?  
-    The page was really a spontaneous decision during the COVID-19 lockdown. Back then, I was able to cook and learn from my mother as my parents were also with us in Melbourne and we did quite a lot of cooking together. I was posting a lot of food on my social media – and one day the foodie in me thought, why not have an IG profile just for food? I drove to Kmart with my father, grabbed a $6 tripod & the rest is history.  Since day 1, I wanted to keep it fun, vibrant and share food content that represents me. A couple of months in, I got my 1st brand collab with Araliya Foods, and this made me consider shifting my hobby into a fun little venture.  Super humbled that today I get to work with some amazing Australian brands.  

3.    When did you really get into cooking?  
-    Both, my mother & grandmother were amazing cooks, and so growing up naturally I learnt a thing or two from them. I committed myself to start cooking properly or to cook a lot only after moving out.  
 
4.    What was your favourite childhood meal?
-    Tough picking favourites because my mother’s such a champ! Her Sunday lunch menu is super nostalgic to me, it’s something I still try to put together every now and then too – Yellow rice, chicken curry, eggplant pickle, cucumber salad, devilled prawn and fish cutlets.  

5.    What’s a comfort dish you love to make all the time?  
-    I’m 100% a rice baby when it comes to comfort food. Warm rice, dhal curry or white fish curry with some veggies, and if I have extra time - throw a coconut sambol into the mix, and that’s an ultimate comfort meal.  
  
6.    Dead or alive, who would be your dream dinner-party guests to cook for?
-  Without being cliché and picking my family, also considering that I am still an amateur cook, my guest list here is truly a ‘dream’– I’d love to cook for at least a few of the chefs that I look up to, including, Peter Kuruvita, Jamie Oliver, Curtis Stone and Peter Gilmore. It’ll be one heck of a dinner party! I’d serve a Sri  Lankan fusion menu that will surely feature seafood, eggplant and cabbage!  

7.    What’s your favourite cuisine to make? 
- I love variety in my food, and I enjoy cooking a bit of everything – so hard to pick one. 

8.    If you are picking a place to eat out – what’s your go-to?  
-    It depends on my mood and craving on the day, really. I enjoy going to Totti’s or  Pellegrini’s for Italian, and Manpuku for Ramen. If it’s Sri Lankan food, Kandy Bites in  Glebe is our family favourite (Lankan Sydney-siders would vouch for me on that one).  

9.    What is an underrated ingredient you love to use?  
- Garlic – 100%! It adds a rich umami note to any dish. I also feel that salt is super underrated, an extra pinch goes a long way.  

10.    From your food page – what recipe would you recommend for a first-time watcher?  
-    It really depends on what they are after. If it’s a Sri Lankan food enthusiast, I would suggest the chicken/squid curry, or even the air-fryer isso vade recipe. Otherwise, the Teriyaki chicken would also be a great start– this was also my first viral video.  
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11.    Your proudest food invention/ recipe you’ve made your own?  
- I play around with a lot of fusion food at home. I’d say my pickled eggplant with chicken pastry and kochchi chicken stuffed flatbread (roti) are two of my proudest food inventions.  

12.    What’s a dish you’d love to relive for the first time again?  
- My grandmother’s crab curry is something I would love to go back to - if only she was still with us. 

13.    Your favourite recipe that has been passed down to you from family?  
-     Hands down – the Sri Lankan Chicken Biryani recipe and chocolate biscuit pudding. I can never pick one, can I? (haha)

14.    When I’m back in Sri Lanka, the first thing I want to eat is ______ from  _________? 
-     I want to eat the kottu, hoppers, rice and curry (everything really) from the Thuna Paha buffet at Water’s Edge, their food is incredibly delicious.  

15.    You’ve travelled a lot – which country had the best food?  
- I’m yet to be adventurous with strange and exotic kinds of food, but I would say that some of the best food I’ve had so far was in Paris. Even their simple ham and cheese sandwich (Croque Madame) tastes so good. If you have a sweet tooth, be sure to take a stroll along Rue du Bac (a popular pastry street).  

16.    If you had to choose one flavour for the rest of your life – savoury or sweet? 
- As much as I love sweets – I will have to pick savoury on this one.