book reviews
NEW ZEALAND CAFÉ COOKBOOK Anna King Shahab
After a thorough exploration of New Zealand’s café scene, British food writer and editor Anna King Shahab selected 50 popular coffee shops from around the country, scoured their menus and stuffed their bestloved recipes in her new one-of-akind recipe book. Whether ‘Café Cookbook’ is used as a niche travel guide or kept close at hand in the kitchen, at least one thing is certain: the Kiwi coffee culture has never been so strong and varied. “A lot of the café owners in the book have spent years living overseas and travel regularly, and have garnered some pretty amazing experience. Many of them have fascinating backgrounds, which they don’t tend to boast about, but this international sophistication informs what they do and this has lifted the game with café dining,” said Shahab. What they all have in common, she added, is their passion, and true passion is also what makes the book so inspiring. Chefs, cooks and coffee lovers are encouraged to flip through its pages and experiment with their favourite café dishes.
LASTword
LA LATINA
Grace Ramirez
Born in Miami to Venezuelan parents, Grace Ramirez moved to New Zealand with her advertising executive husband four years ago. It was just the most recent step on her path towards world foodie domination, which actually started with her being rejected by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay on the first season of US Masterchef. Much water has flown under the bridge since then; she studied hard in New York, scored an internship at Mario Batali’s food emporium Eataly and eventually ended up in New Zealand, where she became a TV personality. Despite being a milestone for any rising star chef, her appearance as a judge on My Kitchen Rules is meant to be just the tip of the iceberg. Ramirez now aims at representing not just Venezuela, but the whole South American food culture. Her first cookbook, ‘La Latina’, celebrates traditional recipes from throughout the continent, recreated using locally available ingredients and exciting flavour combinations. The book also gives a fascinating insight into each country’s culinary history. With a new TV show and more cookbooks in the pipeline, it is safe to say that Grace Ramirez is here to stay.
MASU
Nic Watt
In Japanese culture, a ‘masu’ is a small wooden box used for drinking sake out of, in a ritual that symbolises abundance and goodwill, but to most New Zealanders, and Aucklanders in particular, Masu is the name of an award-winning Japanese robota restaurant, launched two years ago at Skycity. Thanks to a new cookbook that combines amazing photography with clever cooking and tips, its successful story and stunning recipes are now available for everyone to enjoy. Masu is a brainchild of its leading chef, Nic Watt, who honed his skills in Michelin-starred establishments in Tokyo and London before returning to New Zealand, finally realising the long-held dream to launch his own ‘creature’ in Auckland. “I’ve opened a few restaurants now, but the first night at Masu was by far the most nerve-wracking. It’s one thing to open a restaurant overseas, but bringing everything back home is something else,” Watt said. Those worries belong to the past, and the chef is keen to show how easy Japanese food can be, once you understand its key ingredients and their uses.
NOPI
Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully
Named after Ottolenghi’s innovative Soho-based restaurant, NOPI features signature dishes that long-time fans will be familiar with, such as Beef brisket croquettes and Persian love rice. Just like ‘Jerusalem’, another sensational cookbook filled with Ottolenghi’s personal take on Middle Eastern cooking, NOPI contains over 120 recipes for modern, unexpected and smart dishes, written with head chef Ramael Scully. Home cooks needn’t feel inadequate about their skills, because all recipes have been adapted and made possible to recreate, ranging in all degrees of complexity. Yotam Ottolenghi’s cooking style blends his Israeli upbringing with a western touch and a wider range of Mediterranean and Asian flavours. It comes to no surprise that all of his four books were New York Times bestsellers. Before turning to food and cooking, he studied philosophy and literature, and pursued a career in journalism that led him to become a sub-editor at Haaretz, Israel’s oldest newspaper. Yet his future was to unfold quite differently. He opened his first deli in Notting Hill in 2002, and three more had been launched before his first formal restaurant, NOPI, came into operation.
Peter Mitchell
OUR restaurant industry will soon run out of things to cook with if the health witchdoctors continue to have their say. The latest is heating vegetable oils in our kitchens has health risks linked to cancer. Apparently they release toxins and the scientists say we should switch to olive oil, coconut oil, butter and even lard. It wasn’t so long ago we were told to use oils rich in polyunsaturated fats. The research, amongst other things, has shown that a meal of fish and chips fried in vegetable oil contains up to 200 times more toxic aldehydes than the safe daily limit set by the World Health Organisation. I’m getting too scared to eat – and bacon is definitely off the list.
you died, you got reincarnated - but you had to come back as a different creature. His wife jumped in and said she would like to come back as a cow. He said she was obviously not listening.
I WAS at dinner the other night with some golfing friends and one was explaining to his wife that when
WHEN I was young, I decided I wanted to be a doctor so I went to Dunedin and took the entrance
SOME chap with the same name as me died in Auckland last month and by midday of the paper coming out, I’d had half a dozen phone calls asking if it was me – and mainly from people I’d had run-ins with over the years. The driving factor of the calls was clearly they were pleased I’d toppled off this mortal coil. I told them they couldn’t get rid of me that easily because I’m from a family of long livers. My father died at 95 and still didn’t need glasses – he drank straight out of the bottle.
exam for Medical School. One of the questions they asked was for us young guys to rearrange the letters PNEIS into the name of an important human body part that was most useful when erect. Those who answered spine are now doctors and the rest of us are still sending jokes via email.
OUR restaurant and café industry is amongst others that are working towards cutting back on waste and perhaps we need to start back at the Best Before labeling of many of our ingredients. Certainly by eliminating the BB dating and relying on the Use By criteria, we could save millions of dollars and improve our bottom line. We all know that the BB date means very little on many products that are good for many months beyond that timing. A single date determination on whether food is either worthy or not would seem logical, save huge
levels of throw-outs and be more practical.
THE shift in consumerism towards health and wellness in eating habits has not yet become a universal issue in this country although it is creeping into our everyday lives. The target at present is the supermarket where some consumers want “healthy” on every shelf although the great majority have just not taken this issue on board. Still it hasn’t seemed to affect the restaurant business where kitchens are coming around to some healthy additions. Strangely though, when eating out, most consumers are there for a good time and not for a particularly healthy time, loving our traditional foods and desserts. Perhaps our properties will be the last bastion of well cooked, old fashioned food that might add a pound or two, but make for an enjoyable lunch or dinner that we are denying ourselves at home. November 2015
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