It was Poh Ling Yeow’s best friend Sarah who encouraged her to first audition for MasterChef Australia back in 2009, telling her, “I don’t know really what it is, but I think you’ll be great at it. And I think you’re gonna be there till the end.”

Now, 17 years later, the 52-year-old is reflecting on her journey and what it’s given her.

During a chat on The Moment With Myf Warhurst, Poh recalls she had gotten to the point in her art career where she was “making a decent living” – when MasterChef came up.

“Before that it was just a scramble of borrowing money from my in-laws,” says Poh of her first husband Matt’s parents.

“They would fund my artistic endeavours and I would find myself in all these cash flow problems… I was finally in a position where I wasn’t scrambling and then MasterChef came up and I was like, am I about to flush this all down the toilet?”

Luckily, she took a chance.

And for Poh, a migrant from Malaysia who moved to Australia at age nine, it has brought about a sort of self-acceptance.

“We hide our chaos… but my chaos worked in that kitchen, I felt like it was being acknowledged and celebrated. It kind of changed my relationship with my parents, because I think they were always worried about my chaos, and for the first time ever they saw me turn it into something. For them such a public validation of my success meant a lot.”

LOSS & LOVE

Grieving the loss of her mum Christina in 2022 – who died while Poh was on a work trip in Europe, robbing her of the chance to say a proper goodbye – has had the upside of bringing her closer to her father, Steven.

“One of the most profound things about the hollow left behind by someone you love… they can become spaces where calcified relationship dynamics can catch new breath and be reimagined,” she says.

“If Mum hadn’t left us I wouldn’t have seen this tender side of Dad so often. I felt like Mum was creating this space for me to have this new relationship with him,” she shared to Instagram last year.

“Even in the deepest sorrow you have to find the silver linings. This is how loss turns to courage, how our skins become thick, making room for wisdom to arrive… dare to feel madly, deeply and tell the people you adore, ‘I love u’.”