When I was growing up my parents often had friends over for dinner. The vegetarian 80s classics always came into play: there would be brown rice salad with curry-powder dressing, a big green salad using vegetables from our garden, if I was lucky Mum’s famous kumara and carrot slice would also be on the menu and dessert was often crumble or cake with whipped cream.
The barbecue has been the centrepiece of the Kiwi summer routine for decades – and for good reason. Every country has their own version of barbecue, where smoke and fire are the transformative elements and, traditionally at least, these cooking methods have been accompanied by a strong social element. There’s something about the sound and smell of something cooking over fire that draws people in.
There’s a touch of nostalgia about this collection of favourite recipes from cuisine food writers past and present.
I love the lead up to Christmas and summer. As the weather improves and the days lengthen, everything seems somehow easier and more festive. I often like to gather 10-12 people together for relaxed drinks followed by a help-yourself dinner like this one.
A perfect piece of cheese is a simple pleasure and NZ cheesemakers work tremendously hard, with passion and dedication, to give us that.
It would be fair to say that I enjoy a good cocktail and, of course, I love food – so I jumped at the chance to create some racione-style dishes to pair with the exciting cocktails created by Peter Lowry and Laura Walker of Wellington’s Forresters Lane.
Nothing Signal Spring more than the bright pink stalks of rhubarb. For me it wasn’t love at first sight, though; as a kid I didn’t like the boiled- to-death way my mum prepared those stalks from the garden that were more green than pink. It wasn’t until much later in life that I came to love rhubarb.