RecipeTin Eats Nagi Maehashi on the secret to her cult like success as she headlines Good Food and Wine Show

RecipeTin Eats’ Nagi Maehashi isn’t a chef, and has never worked a restaurant. Meet the finance auditor-turned food blogger set to headline the Good Food and Wine Show.

Nagi Maehashi, from the popular Recipe Tin Eats website headlines the national Good Food and Wine Show. Picture: Tim Hunter. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Popular food blog creator Nagi Maehashi, from RecipeTin Eats, is not a chef. She’s never worked in a restaurant and she’s never had any formal chef training.

However, when the Northern Beaches local’s debut cookbook Dinner was released last year in its first week it became the highest selling title ever by a debut Australian author and the highest-selling nonfiction book in the country.

Maehashi has gone from unknown finance auditor turned unknown food blogger to headlining this year’s national Good Food and Wine Show and doing cooking demonstrations alongside the likes of celebrity chefs Miguel Maestre and Justine Schofield.

Maehashi’s puts her success down to the fact she appeals to a mainstream Australians and she knows what she wants because she’s one of them.

“I’m not in the restaurant world. I’m in a normal people world. I’m not that calibre of Neil Perry. I cannot run a restaurant and I don’t use the quality of quality of produce. I’m not a chef, I’m a home cook,” said Maehashi.

Nagi Maehashi who published RecipeTin Eats: Dinner: 150 Recipes from Australia's Favourite Cook. Picture: Rob Palmer

As she describes it, “My book is like Maccas.”

Despite not having any formal cooking training, she believes her work in the finance sector has helped in the food sector.

“I used to try to make finance sound really sexy, take a complicated corporate transaction and break down so everyone could understand,” she said.

“That’s translated to what I do with recipes. I break it down. I used try to convince banks to lend me millions of dollars now I convince you to make shepherd’s pie.”

One way she does that is by changing the names of her recipes so they aren’t intimidating, like saying a fish in a white wine sauce rather than a beurre blanc

“People wonder why my Yorkshire pudding recipe is so good, but it’s actually because it’s using techniques used in restaurants, but made accessible. In a really crass way I trick people into making restaurant-quality food.”

Maehashi said meeting her fans in person has been “life changing”. Picture: Tim Hunter.

The success of Dinner meant Maehashi has had to step away from her kitchen and keyboard and spend more time meeting her fans – there are currently 43,000 of them on Facebook Group RecipeTin Eats Appreciation – which she said has been “life changing.”

“Meeting people and sharing stories about cooking has been so amazing. Experiencing that human connection,” she said.

“If anything, after my book tour, I’ve told my team we have to lift our game even more. Even if it means I have to test a new recipe more than 20 times so we get it right, then I will,” she said.

The Good Food and Wine will take place in Sydney at the ICC from June 23 to June 25.