Recipe: Serve Adam Liaw’s Big-Flavour Ssamjang Chicken Wrapped in Lettuce Leaves With Nori and a Little Rice

In Adam Liaw’s seventh cookbook, Tonight’s Dinner 2, the affable chef argues that even though our lives are made increasingly convenient thanks to things like food-delivery apps and supermarket ready-made meals, there’s a consequence to making cooking feel “optional”.

“Food is wonderful in the same way life is wonderful, and our experiences of food and people are inextricably linked. Through cooking we learn about life,” he writes in the book’s intro. “... We need to be aware that giving away the responsibility for our food in favour of convenience directly reduces the role we have in the food we eat. After all, we still only eat three meals a day. The thing is I want to be responsible for the food my family and I eat. I think it’s important and I’m willing to work for it.”

But, he says, you don't have to work too hard for it - it doesn’t need to be a grind. Instead he wants to help people “make magic in the kitchen” with clever, stress-free recipes that capture what Australia