Eat Up New Zealand: The Bach Edition by Al Brown Photo: Supplied / Josh Griggs
Renowned chef Al Brown has just released Eat Up New Zealand: The Bach Edition, a paperback collection of nostalgic recipes that celebrate seasonal ingredients, kaimoana, and the occasional sweet treat, inspired by cooking at a traditional Kiwi bach, crib or campground.
Brown speaks with Susie Ferguson, and shares a recipe for fried kina on toast.
Cooking at the bach is liberating
I think there's a sense of freedom when you're at a bach or a crib or campground. You make do with what you've got. This book isn't about long ingredient lists or special vinegars from the other side of the world. It's more about celebrating food that we can probably pick up at the Four Square.
The classic Kiwi bach in traditional mint green. Photo: 123RF
‘People can drop in any time’
My whole thing is informality. It’s all about informality, I think, and anonymity reigns supreme [at the bach]. It's a kind of lawless place as well, people can drop in any time. All your routines have been left behind hopefully. And there's something just wonderful about it. You know, people dropping by with half a fruitcake or a smoked kahawai. It’s that informality, where lunch is later, then drinks start in the evening and then it gets later and then eventually you're still up at one o'clock in the morning, with a bottle of whiskey and half a packet of chocolate biscuits playing euchre. It’s a place where I think we can relax and eat simply and be very, very generous.
New Zealanders make and eat relishes with relish, Brown says. Photo: Supplied
Relishes and chutneys are part of our eating DNA
The idea is to show where we've come as a country with our food, really, beginning with the Edmonds cookbook, and then suddenly where we are now. I think our growth curve is simply been extraordinary. To me, there's a lot of relishes and chutneys and things like that, which I think is part of our eating DNA. If you do those in the year, when there's an abundance of fruits, to be able to take those to the bach or to the campground, then you've got this lovely little condiment that's going to raise the level of anything that you eat.
Just take what you need for a feed when fishing, Brown says. Photo:
I absolutely love fishing
I absolutely love fishing in any form, it can be off a wharf for sprats with kids, or diving, or I do a lot of soft baiting out of a kayak. There is so much to be celebrated on our coasts still, we just need to look after it a bit better and only take what we need for a feed.
The great thing about New Zealand fishing or being able to catch your own fish, even if it's a kahawai, which I simply adore, is that you can eat these fish raw and they eat so beautifully. I think it's a big part of our national cuisine now, definitely when people are entertaining. It’s something we have embraced, and it's wonderful to eat fish that way.
Kina, also known as sea urchins, are found around New Zealand's coastline. Photo: EnviroStrat_ Kinamonics
Kina are an absolute delicacy
Of course, Māori have always loved kina. All around the coast in New Zealand, you've got kina. I think people look at it, when they open it up, and it's got a sort of a black membrane over it that doesn't look particularly appetising. If you turn the kina upside down once you've opened it, and leave it for a couple of minutes, then you can just sort of shake the kina and that black membrane will basically fall off and then you're at the gold, the kina tongues. When you’ve been diving, you've obviously had salt in your mouth from the salt water, so sitting on a rock eating a kina tongue, when the kina tongue is beautiful and sweet, that's a lovely way to come out of the water.
I keep trying to introduce kina into a few different recipes. Quite often I'll whip some into some scrambled eggs that I'm cooking for people and they don't know it's in there. And they say, ‘Oh my lord, these are beautiful scrambled eggs. Have you gotten scallops in there? I say, ‘no, it’s just a few kina tongues’.
Mmmm, lamingtons! Photo: 123rf.com
Our baking is wonderful
We’re great bakers. Every cafe that you go to in the country, in an urban situation or in a rural situation, will always have a good deal of great baking. Our baking is wonderful. It shouldn’t be compared with a macaroon or macaron from France or anything like that. What we have made is wonderful. We should be very proud of it.
I like to write about things
[Writing recipe books] is very creative, and there's so many different styles of food out there now. Actually, writing a recipe list is relatively easy. The writing of the actual recipes is pretty mundane… you have to really spell out a lot of things in very fine detail. But I like to do some writing, I like to write about things and do decent headings for all the recipes, where they came from or why I like them. So I enjoy that part of it. And you know, when you when you finish it, you say you're never going to do another one and then a book arrives like a baby in the post four months later and you go ‘oh, it’s so beautiful, I might do another one’.
