Foodie festivities

They spend most of their life thinking about and cooking food, but what are local chefs planning for Christmas Day? Kate Monahan finds out.

Jason Scott

chef/co-owner of Scotts Epicurean (winner of best Waikato Cafe in this year's Tempo readers' choice awards)

"My wife is Swedish so usually we do something on Christmas Eve. We usually have akvavit (a flavoured spirit produced in Scandinavia), pickled herrings and new potatoes, like Jersey Bennes, out of the garden. We'll have a gravlax salmon. We have ham and stuff like that as well.

We keep the akvavit in the freezer, it's nice, kind of like vodka but a bit unusual. It's hard to find in New Zealand.

I met Jenny in Austria when I was working in an Austrian kitchen. She usually does all the cooking. She does these hard-boiled eggs with caviar. She makes pepparkakor, a traditional Swedish gingerbread, and caramel pralines.

As a chef you are always working up to the day and by Christmas Day you always want to collapse. Before I was a chef during the silly season, at hotels and ski resorts and all the punters are there, and usually those in the hospitality industry are working split shifts (over the Christmas holidays).

It's nice to have the day off.

Now we have a young family. Our boy Enzo is 2 1/2 and it's the first Christmas he will really be into. He is just working out who Santa is."

 

Annette Taylor

Tempo food writer

"Christmas is low-key in the Taylor-Riddell household this year. Possibly because were still getting over an extended second Christmas in June.

The day will start with breakfast sausages cooked in champagne with coriander and seedless green grapes, a tradition in our family. With maybe a stray pancake or two with free-range bacon and maple syrup.

Morning tea will be handfuls of scorched almonds and cherries, and then it's Christmas lunch. This year we are having one of our own roosters, and will be experimenting with some of UK chef Heston Blumenthal's techniques for slow roasting from his series In Search of Perfection.

The garden is full of veges, which will be an excellent accompaniment, along with the Christmas ham from Soggy Bottom Holdings.

The evening meal will be a case of grazing on the remains, which will probably last until New Year."

 

David Kerr

co-owner/chef at Pumice

"We are big on Christmas barbecues, and all the family comes over - both (wife) Lisa's side and my side of the family - so that's pretty cool. There will be about 12 adults and five kids.

It's a brunch thing. We always have salmon on the barbecue, which is yum and festive and feels a bit special. Even the kids (Tyler, 11 and Jackson, 8) and their three cousins like it.

It's a very foodie day for us. My brother (Fraser Kerr) is head chef at Montana Catering and Lisa's sister, Jo Wilcox, is a food stylist in Auckland - she does shoots for NZ House & Garden magazine.

(Christmas) is a very busy time of year for us, so it's a day when we want to relax and enjoy family and kids. Fraser is off the next day because he is catering for Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne.

We usually have a nice lunch, nothing over the top, just quite simple. We do a nice simple salad and yummy fresh berries, and have my mum's Christmas mince tarts. They are good, really great.

Lisa's mum comes over and she's a bit of a pav maker. Put in the paper that Nana Joy is coming with her meringues, because that means she's going to have to bring them!

It's a great fun day and that's what's really cool about having Christmas in summer time; kids running around with their new gifts and adults catching up during a busy time."

 

Rowan Bishop

Tempo food writer

"It's a real mixture for me because we have both vegetarian and meat eaters. It's turkey with stuffing and gravy for my traditionalist husband, ham for easy meals for the meat eaters, a salmon gravlax for a fish fix. I also do mushrooms en croute, new potatoes with mint and olive oil and lots of vegetable dishes and salads including lentil salad, roast mixed vegetables, roast beetroot with nuts and feta, herb sauce/mayonnaise and lots of pestos.

Fresh cherries are always a must, preferably from Central Otago, and berries of course, with a fig and nut meringue and whipped cream. Yum."

 

Michael Daly

food writer and chef at Hamilton's Kingsgate Hotel

"My Christmas Day will start off with family arriving around 8am for a light continental breakfast. Offerings will be cured smoked meats and fish, Dutch gouda cheese on freshly baked German and Italian bread along with homemade pickles and chutneys.

As for the main Christmas meal, eating normally begins around 2pm.

What will I serve? Slow pot-roasted wild boar and snap-roasted venison loin. My vegetable garden is starting to look really good, so sweet peas, broad beans, baby courgettes and new season potatoes will make an appearance.

As for dessert, coconut pavlova topped with freshly picked strawberries from the garden.

To finish, Irish coffees with rum chocolate truffles."

 

Kerryn Merriman

manager of Hamilton & Cambridge Farmers' Markets

"We alternate between our families: this year it's my family and next year it will be (husband) Craig's.

We do breakfast, lunch and dinner, a full-on day of eating.

We have a champagne breakfast with bacon and eggs and lunch is our big meal, with ham and turkey and fresh salad. For dinner we usually have left-overs and sandwiches.

One family food tradition we have - and it's one I don't even like (Mum and my brother Paul love it) - though, is mussels wrapped in bacon with little toothpicks holding them together. They cook them on the barbecue and we always have to do it, but I don't see the joy in it.

My Nana makes a wonderful potato curry, that is something I always look forward to.

Because I'm with the Farmers' Markets I'm really into fresh, local produce. I decided I wanted to do a vegie garden a couple of years ago, so we now have tomatoes, peas, zucchini, celery. We generally try just to eat out of our garden or fresh from the Farmers' Market.

There is going to be a big combined Hamilton and Cambridge Farmers' Market (tonight) on Wednesday, December 23, from 3.30pm to 6.30pm in Victoria Square, which is just off State Highway 1 when you are coming into Cambridge.

There are lots of different things, lots of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries which are good for the Christmas table. There are Jersey Bennes for those who want new potatoes, and all those fresh vegetables and salad ingredients. We have apricots and plums.

The Farmers' Markets are going to continue over summer every week, we never close. If people are keen to find out which vendors are going to be they can jump on our website, I keep that updated week-to-week. It's hamiltonfarmersmarket.co.nz. The Hamilton Farmers' Market is always on Sundays, from 8am to 12 noon, in the River Rd carpark (cnr of River Rd and O'Neil St). Cambridge Farmers' Market is on Saturdays, in Victoria Square, from 8am to 12 noon."

 

Peter Shaw

Tempo wine writer

"Christmas Day is usually a family affair but this year's gathering will be relatively small with only seven. Traditions seem to have passed us by and we are now more casual than in past years. Food will be easy and light with plenty of salads and chocolate brownies with fruit, cream and a sticky wine to follow. The form will be a long lunch starting with an exchange of presents and a glass or two of bubbly. I will be on the barbecue if it's fine and we'll eat and relax under the umbrella or around the table if wet."

 

Kerry Wilson

executive chef at Furnace (winner of Best Waikato Restaurant in this year's Tempo Readers' Choice Awards)

"This year I'm doing a bit of a relaxed approach and, weather permitting, I'll be on the barbie. We'll do the classic Kiwi barbecue with salads, everything made by myself. I'm going to do baked whole snapper, put it with lemon, herbs and sea salt. I like to use dill, chop up some fennel and flat leaf parsley and some red onions, which give nice flavour.

I cook it on the barbecue, using tin foil to create a sealed parcel, with some olive oil.

With it I have a leafy green salad with fresh vegetables, a potato salad and a roast vegetable salad.

My parents are British so I grew up having roast beef and Yorkshire puds. I'm trying to go more Kiwi, and I think New Zealanders have their own little touches - with Christmas food fresh is best. We are 45 minutes away from the water in Hamilton, and we have the best seafood, vegetables and meat. Most of the best stuff gets exported, of course, but supermarkets are getting better. The fruit you can get now compared to 10 years ago is terrific. We will probably have a fruit salad. I haven't thought too much about dessert but will keep it simple.

It'll just be close family: my wife Niki and our six-year-old daughter Chloie-Tayne , and my mum and dad and brother and sister-in-law and their kids, all running around and creating havoc.

My mum likes to do trifle. She has a classic recipe and is pretty reluctant to give it to me . . . maybe I'll get it in her will.

I'd like to wish everyone in the hospitality industry a good Christmas and hope they have a break. It's usually all hands on deck and making hay while the sun shines. This time of year is really hectic so I hope no-one burns out."

 

Mat Mclean

co-owner/chef at Palate

"We are going to my mum's place in Hamilton and it will be the first time in some time we've been together, with my sister back from overseas.

I'll only be cooking what I'm allowed to cook. My mum is very particular about the food, but generally I muck in. I might make a leg of lamb.

We always have the same sorts of things, and have for as far back as I can remember.

It's comforting to have a familiar meal, it jogs a lot of memories.

There are new season potatoes, pavlova and trifle. I tried to get involved with the trifle a few years back. I made my suggestions but my family put me in my place. However, my time will come.

I like to get food from the Hamilton Farmers' Market. Most Sundays I'm down there, when the weather is good, with my two young daughters (Ruby, 3, and Gemma, 2) having blueberry icecreams at 9am.

At Christmas, you can't have a table without strawberries on it.

It's cool to sit down to lunch together, it brings back fond memories of people no longer here.

I don't usually drink much on Christmas Day. At that time of year I'm extremely exhausted, but I do put a bottle of French champagne aside for drinking on Christmas Day. One glass and I'm done. I have a big lunch and lie on the couch and try to avoid the dishes.

I probably won't get much of a sleep, I'll be poked and prodded by the kids. It's funny how Christmas takes on new meaning with the children. You are no longer the centre of attention, it's about them, which is really nice."

 

Angelique van Camp

Tempo food writer and co-owner of Wild Country

"I'm planning on it being very stress-free as I am not the hostess this year. We have a turn-about routine among both of our families and this year it's their turn to cater for the lunch and dinner.

For breakfast I'll get a few frozen croissants from the supermarket, prove them overnight and bake them in the morning. We'll have those with bacon, tomato and cheese or our lemon passion curd and black raspberry and vanilla jam while we open pressies with the kids. Nothing too filling as we've got to pace ourselves for the day ahead.

For lunch we tend to have a bit of a feast as my Nana is 92 and just a little bit particular now. I tend to do the turkey or chicken and a ham with loads of different salads and blanched vegetable dishes with (husband) Stephen's freshly dug new potatoes, which are the stand-out feature of the Christmas lunch.

We could easily do without half of the food (particularly the desserts which range from profiteroles with boozy custard fillings to a stuffed panetone with candied fruits and boozy custard).

Not a lot gets done after all that has been consumed.

Dinner time would be nibbles and a few more drinks before we head to bed for an early night.

If we have dinner with Stephen's parents, his mother Barbara does the best pork roast with lashings of crackle. There's always a lot of whistling going on from the kitchen to conceal the crunching as the carver has first taste of this particularly popular part of the meal.

If we have dinner at my mum's she always does a turkey as that's one of my brothers' favourites.

We always do a ham as we don't seem to have any problems with concocting different ways of using it up over the following week (see page 11 for suggestions).

Seafood is always a favourite with the occasional crayfish or scallops but mainly a few prawns and oysters.

It's great to share the hostessing around a bit and still be able to be together at parts of the day with both of the families. I think this is a great way of dealing with what can culminate into a very stressful, tiring and challenging time of the year."

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