ABC’s brand new heart-warming show, Recipe of the Year, is about to hit our screens.
Hosted by beloved cook Adam Liaw and actress Pia Miranda, the show sees home cooks compete for the ultimate title of Australia’s Recipe of the Year.
Featuring a range of recipes from ones passed down through family generations to simple worknight dinners, this show is set to get your tummy rumbling.
Sitting down with New Idea during filming on a picturesque country farm in Sydney, Adam and Pia tell us they are having a blast on set.
“I love this show; it’s amazing…we’re having such a great time!” Pia says with a big grin.
“That sounds like she’s making it up, but she isn’t!” Adam assures us, laughing.
“We feel like we’re making something really wonderful,” Pia adds, saying “there’s a real appetite for recipes at the moment,” Pia tells us.
At the centre of the show is the Country Women’s Association (CWA), sharing their generations of cooking wisdom.
Pia tells us that watching the CWA ladies judge the challenges they’ve set is the “best hour” of her week.
“It is so much fun and it’s real,” Pia says, adding “outside of TV, very few cooking competitions exist – and the CWA does the real ones!”
“This is not someone that we’re pretending is a judge – that is her job. She has the badge and she carries her accreditations around so that she knows what she’s judging and people know that she’s a judge,” Adam says.
“Most people haven’t seen a cake competition be judged and when you do see it, how it happens for real rather than made for TV, it is not what you expect,” Adam adds.
Adam tells us he’s “obviously done quite a few cooking competitions” but assures us that “this is something that’s really quite different.”
He tells us that this show is not so much about cooking, but recipes.
“Recipes obviously go hand in hand with cooking, but the big difference to me is cooking is always something that you do yourself – whereas a recipe by its definition is going to somebody else – it’s that sharing aspect of cooking,” Adam says.
“That sharing aspect of recipes that I think people are very familiar with is at the heart of what makes Recipe of the Year what it is,” he adds.
“There’s a real joy, a community, with all of the contestants and with us,” Pia reveals.
“The ‘recipe of the week’ is chosen and who wins is done by the contestants themselves,” Adam says, adding “they’re really just trying to pick what recipe they want to cook themselves and we all taste the food together and that feels completely different to any other competition show that I’ve seen.”
“We wanted it to feel like a really nice dinner party that you’re at and that’s honestly how it feels when we’re filming it,” Adam tells us with a smile.
“I think it’s a really underrated thing to put a little bit of happiness and joy into the world, and I think this show is definitely going to do that,” Pia adds.
Recipe of the Year premieres Sunday 11 October at 7.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
