A new kind of cooking show
Instagram cookery duo The Eggplant Boys talk cast iron pans, grief and weaving te reo Māori into their cooking shows.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter produced in partnership with Boring Oat Milk. Written by me, Charlotte Muru-Lanning. It’s lovely to have you here!
Since television first arrived in Aotearoa in 1960, cooking shows have played an intrinsic role in how we eat as a country, and how we think about food. Names like Graham Kerr, Hudson and Hall, Jo Seagar, Alison Holst, Peter Peeti, Annabel Langbein and Anne Thorp come to mind. But like almost every other nook of our lives, social media has transformed the cooking show from something that existed on the telly to something we’re able to watch in a minute or two on our smartphones.
Auckland food Instagrammers Charlie Farrelly-Gruar and John Seymore (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Sāmoa) are part of that wave of change. Just after New Zealand’s first lockdown, the pair began posting their light-hearted cooking videos on their page called The Eggplant Boys.
Their characteristically laid-back videos which guide viewers through the steps to create dishes like a rustic beef short rib pasta or crayfish bánh mì, are used as vessels to discuss mental health, and as an opportunity to teach some kupu Māori while they’re at it. They’re also having a go at traditional food media, with their contribution of two recipes to Lodge Cast Iron’s new locally produced cookbook which accompanies purchases made in September and October.
Unlike traditional cooking show hosts, they’re enthusiasts rather than formally trained. “We love the ability that food gives us to interact with people. We don't really know shit, but we're doing it because we love it,” says Seymore. “There's a space for fine dining and all of that, but for us, and the way we were brought up, food is a lot more about bringing people together.”
I had a chat to the pair about cast iron pans, grief and weaving te reo Māori into their cooking.
What sparked your love for food and cooking?
John Seymore: I wasn't very serious with food before I met Charlie. I was DJing in the city and I was going through some things. I'm gonna be honest, I felt old DJing in town – I'm not even that old. It just wasn't appealing to me anymore. So I said, “OK, what can I do that would be great for my soul, for the people I hang around with?”. Cooking was the answer for me. I started filming myself cooking. Then one of our mutual friends was like, “you should link up with my bro Charlie. he's way better than you at cooking but I reckon you could bring your camera skills”.
Charlie Farrelly-Gruar: My cooking all comes from my mum. She was an amazing cook, and she had this magical way of cooking like six different dishes at once and having them all ready at the same time, and it would be really amazing, healthy home cooking. I'm a big dude and I just love to eat. So I was like, if I want to keep eating this way I need to be able to create these things for myself. So it started being a creative outlet for me. There are things that you can and can't do in cooking, but even the rules that are within cooking, you can bend those rules. I found a lot of joy in pushing the limits and just playing around with standard recipes that I grew up with. At the end of 2019, my mum passed away. And it was obviously a massive, massive blow to me. She was my rock. And it was really hard to get back to cooking after that. But I did eventually start cooking again. And around that time, I started reinvigorating my love for cooking and that creative passion that it gave me was around the same time our mutual friend introduced us.
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You’ve recently contributed to the Lodge Cast Iron cookbook, how long have you been cooking on cast iron?
JS: I've always been into them, but I never had one myself until I started cooking with Charlie. He would always bring his cast irons over with him, and I'd always just lose my shit.
CFG: I've always cooked with cast iron, because my mum cooked with cast iron. I still have her cast iron pans. The cool thing about cast iron is if you treat them right, they will last you for lifetimes. And hopefully, I'll have my mum’s ones for the rest of my life. And then I can pass them on. Away from all the cool cooking things you can do, just the fact that it's this big, heavy object that's been around for maybe 100 years, and is still going strong – it’s buzzy. It's a bit earthy, a bit primal. It’s going back to the way we used to cook, you can take that cast iron pan to an open fire, crack some eggs into it. It's been really cool to be able to use a lot of my mum’s cooking equipment – keeping her energy alive with us. Unfortunately, Seymour never got to meet my mum but he's cooked in her kitchen a lot, and he's cooked with her utensils. I'm guessing he can see her energy through that.
JS: I can definitely feel her around when I'm around Charlie, especially when we're cooking in her kitchen. I feel her presence when we're cooking, it's very warm, it's been welcoming and I think this is probably why we get along so well.
Your cooking videos often incorporate te reo Māori – was that a deliberate decision?
JS: We liked the thought of adding te reo because we get to teach ourselves these little things. We’re not really trying to force it, but whatever we learn from friends and family, that feels comfortable, we'd like to share that. I’m really excited about the progressiveness of what's happening with te reo Māori. Anyone that lives here, it helps them understand the identity of the whenua that they're on.
CFG: It’s so important. The more we built our voice, we had to think about what kind of a voice we wanted to have. I’m Pākehā but I just think that te reo Māori and te ao Māori is the way forward. If we can be a voice that pushes that narrative in a small way, even if there's obviously a lot we don't know, and a lot of reo that we don't know, we want to add in as much as we can. For our audience that doesn't have any understanding or knowledge, they can hopefully start dropping little kupu in there. It might change their perspective too. Hopefully, most of our audiences are receptive to that, and if they're not, I don't really want them watching us.
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Weekly bites
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If you keep Worcestershire sauce, Maldon salt, Angostura bitters, Twinings tea or Tabasco in your pantry you may have noticed a tiny regal looking coat of arms on the packaging. That’s the royal warrant, which is a recognition given "to people or companies who regularly supply goods or services" to the royal family. Since Queen Elizabeth’s death last week, and because of how the warrants work, companies with royal warrants granted by her – which includes 100 food and drink brands – will have two years to either sort out a new appointment with the new grantors or to stop advertising their royal warrant. I, for one, think the searchable list which includes everything from hosiery makers to cleaning product suppliers is a fascinating look into the “everyday life” of the English monarchy and am intrigued to see what impact a new monarch might have on the royal shopping list.
Talk next week!
Hei kōnā mai, Charlotte
