My Saturday with Eva Pau: We have a very busy week, so weekends are for family time
During the week, we all have a very busy schedule. Saturday and Sunday are spending time with the family.
We have about 200 employees in the company — the two supermarkets and a delivery wing that delivers to the 26 counties. I have my role as managing director of the Asia Market business to attend to as well as the creative side, including the TV show and the marketing activities which I love.
I will often find myself working until 10pm or 11pm during the week so, at weekends, I try to spend quality time with the kids and the rest of my family.
My husband Tom usually makes breakfast. He’ll make “egg in a cup”, which came from my mother-in-law.
In Singapore, they have a soft-boiled egg seasoned with soy sauce and white pepper. That’s how I like to eat mine with toasted sourdough from OakSmoke Bakery in Harold’s Cross.
Tom also makes really good American-style pancakes. He’s on a mission to find the very freshest eggs. We get ours in the Hopsack in Rathmines, and my mother-in-law brings us Early Bird eggs from the Ardkeen Quality Food Store in Waterford.
We’ll take the kids out for a bike ride.
They’ll invariably drag us to the ice cream van, and then we’ll cycle along the Dodder to Milltown and have a pitstop at Wilde & Green or Morelles.
We’ll stop at Lawlor’s butchers in Rathmines to pick up something to cook on the barbecue.
We’ll arrive home and the kids will run off to play. It’s quite special because our house backs onto my parents’ house, so they can go directly into their house from ours. We are a close-knit family.
If I wasn’t at home on a Saturday, I would love to be in Singapore, Hong Kong, or Thailand. Those places are food heaven. I go travelling a lot with one particular friend in Singapore — we can eat quite a lot in a day!
She does her research well, and so do I, and we share everything so we get to try it all. What I love about Asia is the local delicacies, the night markets… I’m always trying to discover new flavour combinations.
I love to bake scones. I might add pandan flavour, black sesame, or yuzu citrus to give them a little twist. I’m a huge fan of afternoon tea, so I’ll make scones and little sandwiches and invite my parents over. I love tablescaping, so it’s a great excuse to use my tablecloths, my vintage china, and to arrange some flowers.
My husband got a Kamado Joe barbecue for his 40th birthday. He will look after the meat while I’ll prepare the sides — a warm salad, an Asian-style slaw, some quick flat breads...
We might have jazz on in the background or I’ll play the piano. I find classical music very soothing — I’m not really thinking about anything else when I’m playing it or listening to it. One of my favourite pieces is River Flows in You by Yiruma.
Saturday nights are about family movies. I’ll make a movie mix — popcorn with large chocolate buttons, mini chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, Poppy sticks … it’s a sweet and salty delight.
Asians are big into snacks. I’m never without snacks in my handbag.
If my husband and I are on a date night, we love to go to Forest Avenue and were thrilled to see them getting a Michelin star. We love China Sichuan and Dax, and recently enjoyed Note.
We like going for a cocktail in Peruke & Periwig or The Vintage Cocktail Club.
The kids will usually be in bed by about 9pm. Myself and my husband might have a night cap and a chat. I like to catch up with foodie things online and to talk recipe ideas with my husband. He is operations director with the business so we might talk a bit about work or plan our next getaway.
I travel a lot to Asia to food exhibitions, and make decisions about what products will do well in the Irish market. It can be a matter of timing — we might look at something for two or three years before deciding to bring it in. It’s interesting to see changes in people’s tastes over time. In the past six or seven years, the demand for Korean food has really grown in Ireland. We have a whole range of fresh kimchi from Korea now — cabbage, white radish, spinach kimchi.
My bedside table is full of cookbooks. I might put on a Korean mask and eye patches while I’m reading.
- Eva Pau’s Asian Kitchen returns to RTÉ One and RTÉ Player on March 4, sponsored by Lee Kum Kee
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