Brown - Eat up New Zealand: recipes and stories

Introduction

So Far, So Good

I am often asked what the cuisine of our country is, and I still dont really have a succinct answer. What I do know is that, having made cooking my career, I feel very fortunate to have been part of New Zealands extraordinary culinary adventure for the last 30 years, during which our food culture has evolved dramatically with the influence of cuisines from all over the world.

Im sure that our strong desire to travel, and our adventurous spirit and keenness to explore every corner of the globe, have played a substantial part in shaping where we are today, food-wise. So many young people in our country go on an OE (overseas experience) and I have always felt this must be partly responsible for the remarkable change that has occurred in a very short space of time. Travel opens our minds and exposes us to so many possibilitiesweve learned a lot along the way. If we can grow grapes, surely we can grow olives? Tick. If we can grow olives, what about pine nuts? Tick. Saffron? Tick. Truffles? Tick. Wasabi? Tick. Oysters? Tick. Light bulb moments. If it crosses our minds, there is a better than average chance that it can probably be realised. The riches that we now produce in this little country of ours at the bottom of the world are becoming almost embarrassing.

Travel, the internet and all the other platforms available have opened up every conceivable style of cooking, old and new, for our talented cooks and chefs to explore. Because of this, I doubt we will ever have a New Zealand cuisine as suchand I dont actually think thats a bad thing. Old World countries created their own styles of food and cuisine because for centuries people didnt have the ability to travel and explore, and they were relatively closed off from the rest of the world. Being a New World country, and not bound by tradition, gives us a real sense of freedom with our cooking. We can essentially magpie from everywhere. I think our trump card in the worlds culinary deck has to be our proximity to an abundance of products and produce. The fact that we are a small country is a massive advantage with regard to the volume of flavour we can get into our cooking, because it takes very little time to get fresh produce from the land or sea into our pans and pots and on to our plates.

It has never been lost on me how fortunate I am to have grown up in New Zealand and also to have chosen to cook for a career. I grew up on a sheep and cattle farm north-east of Masterton in rural Wairarapa. Although I would describe my mother as a pretty bog-standard cook, I still have a bunch of terrific food memories truly etched into my eating DNA. My love of well cooked lamb with dark, rich gravy made from dripping, flour, pan scrapings and second-hand water from the boiled vege, along with roasted root vegetables, homemade mint sauce and crabapple jelly is still as vividly strong today as it was when I was a child. Mums baking repertoire was not that varied or expansive, but she could make a half-decent banana cake, and her ginger crunch is still the best Ive ever tasted. Mum also produced her share of preserves each year. Her pickled beetroot was spot on, and I remember her stewed peaches, which we ate like a summer treat in winter. The memory of Mums peach chutney, slathered on quarter-inch-thick slices of cold mutton and stuck between slices of white bread, will be with me forever.

I think I have a duty here to touch on the subject of pavlova, because it seems that, over the generations, home cooks up and down the country have been judged on their ability to make the perfect example of New Zealands favourite and most famous celebratory dessert. I will confess that Mums pav was a fingers crossed affair from year to year: some were magnificent examples of exactly what a pavlova should be, while others needed quite a lot of whipped cream and fruit to give them the pass mark. Looking back, I learned a lot from each of Mums pav attempts, and those cooking lessons are still relevant todaysometimes (maybe often) food doesnt turn out how you want it to, or how you thought it was meant to.

My interest in cooking started when I was probably seven or eight years old. I was hardly obsessed, but certainly it was a hobby for me, and I gave it a nudge every couple of weeks. I am still not certain whether it was the creative process that I was drawn to, or the fact that I had a sweet tooth. Ive always had that sweet tooth and, with no dairy or sweet store down the road, my sugar fix became a DIY situation via the Edmonds Cookery Book , New Zealands most iconic and bestselling recipe book. I always thought I was a bit of a dab hand at pikelets, pancakes and the like, but the pages that had the most spills on them were from the Sweets section at the back. Chocolate Fudge, Toffee, Coconut Ice and Hokey Pokey were all good friends of mine.

I have previously described New Zealands food scene of the pastsay, 40-odd years agoas a bit of a culinary wasteland. There is some truth in that, but on reflection I think I was being a bit harsh. From the mid-nineteenth century, European food culture arrived with the first European settlers. Im pretty sure the British would be the first to admit that their culinary heritage of the last couple of centuries has not garnered much of an international reputationto be brutally honest, it has been the subject of ridicule for as long as I can remember. (Unfairly so these days, I might add, with serious hero chefs of mine such as Marco Pierre White, Fergus and Margot Henderson, Rick Stein, Jamie Oliver and, of course, food magician Heston Blumenthal well and truly burying those myths and mistruths decades ago.) Here in New Zealand, whether we enjoyed them or not, the following were staples for most of us: shepherds pie and cottage pie, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, devilled kidneys, beef olives and onion gravy, Scotch eggs, bubble and squeak, toad-in-the-hole, and puddings like spotted dick, tapioca, and stuffed baked apples with custard.