NZ Listener - July 7-13 issue - the good life - books & culture, food & wine

I subscribe to the NZ Listener, have done all my adult life, and I reckon page for page it is the best weekly around for those who enjoy books and culture, wine and food ,and who take a general interest in the people and politics that make up this country of ours.

I always read the generously allocated books and culture section first,(12 pages this week), followed by Lauraine Jacobs' Food column, Michael Cooper on Wine, then Paul Thomas' Sport and The Black Page before going to the beginning and reading from cover to cover. 
This week, outside of the Books & Culture pages, there is a four page story on The Torchlight List author Jim Flynn (his office is even untidier than mine!), while Lauraine Jacobs devotes a fair chunk of her pages to books. I contacted The Listener who kindly agreed to letting me post a section from her Food column:

I’ve been dipping into a brilliant  book called A History of Food in 100 Recipes, by William Sitwell (HarperCollins $49.99).

Filled with well-told, witty stories that take the reader on a fascinating journey through the history of Western food, starting with Egyptian bread-making 4000 years ago and

progressing to today’s food scene,with tales of Jamie Oliver, the chef with the common touch, and Heston Blumenthal, with his almost magical rendition of food at his new Dinner restaurant in London.

The editor of Waitrose Kitchen magazine, Sitwell has enjoyed a lifelong passion for cooking and cookbooks, and this new book displays his expert research and knowledge. The mostly brief recipes provide starting blocks for 100 insightful and entertaining stories about British and American food history.

Besides the historical cooks, including La Varenne and Mrs Beeton, are such stars as Delia Smith, Elizabeth David, Julia Child and, of course, the vivacious Nigella Lawson. Several chapters also explore such foods as brussels sprouts, rhubarb and

the sandwich.

Such fascinating reading made me think: does New Zealand have an evolving food culture with historical influences? You bet we do. Since the first British adventurers arrived, we’ve been gradually building an interesting style of food that’s very much our own. Colonial goose and steamed puddings may have been the fare of early settlers who didn’t take to traditional Maori cuisine, but now we rightfully claim some of the world’s most flavoursome 

fresh food. Fish and chips, pavlova, whitebait fritters, meat pies, the big block of cheese, and backyard bangers on the barbecue have become our own.

With our proximity to Asia, we’ve also incorporated a lot of the herbs, spices and cooking techniques, such as stir-frying, from Asian countries.

Successive waves of immigrants from the Balkans, China, the Middle East, India and northern Europe have added curry and rice dishes, yoghurt, pita bread, coconut, noodles and more to our diet. There’s nowhere else in the world tourists can order hangi food,and New Zealand’s Pasifika population bring their unique flavours to our food. It’s great to be a Kiwi.

Lauraine then goes on to provide recipes that are a twist on Kiwi classics from two recent (superb) New Zealand cookbooks - PIE by Dean Brettschneider (more of which I'll be writing about in the next couple of days) and The Food Truck Cookbook about which I wrote recently.

Don't miss The Listener this week !! In fact don't miss it any week.......


And for more foodie writing check out Lauraine Jacob's blog.