Kettle's on

On ending meals, memory lane and the most delicious kind of food.

Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to the last edition of The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s food newsletter. I hope you’re hungry!

Dessert — almost the end, but not quite.

I have started and restarted this final Boil Up too many times now, each new version a little more twee than the last. I’m not sure I’m very good at endings. I hate goodbyes, but I’ve never mastered the art of simply leaving without them either.

The easiest endings are those that follow a structure, and the best example of this is dinner. As a child, I was taught to say “may I be excused” before leaving the table, and what followed was either permission or not, no grey areas. At a restaurant or a friend’s place for dinner, the rules are unspoken. We eat, we drink, we laugh. Course follows course, if it’s that kind of meal. Someone suggests another bottle, indicating they’re keen to stay a while longer. Dessert arrives, signalling the end of the meal, but not too soon. There might be a nightcap, a change of location. Once cups of tea have been offered, the meal is truly over and by then you are so sleepy and replete, a perfect goodbye simply happens.

So, in the hopes of leaving you all similarly satiated, I am serving a meal of smash hits, revisiting some of the best Boil Ups past:

• The cosmic swirl that saw Charlotte Muru-Lanning revisiting a 2005 write-up of an evening with the then-60-year-old Winston Peters as he prepares an absurdly spicy seafood-filled tom yum soup for guests in the very same week that the NZ First party leader’s notoriously favourite restaurant, The Green Parrot, went up for sale.

• A stream-of-consciousness style dispatch on how to use every single thing in your fridge, especially all the beautiful fresh produce you bought from the most wonderful place on earth, the markets (any markets, the ones you love!).

• Charlotte’s delve into the increasingly outraged responses at mere mentions of kai Māori back in September last year, right before the general election that delivered us the current assault on Te Tiriti. Worth a revisit in these trying times, and an excellent reminder to eat and celebrate kai Māori – maybe by visiting George’s in Moturoa, reading more about it, or buying from Māori winemakers, oyster farmers and bakers of rēwena. (sorry, I know I’m cheating by hyperlinking so many articles, but Charlotte was doing the mahi in highlighting the abundance and excellence of kai Māori in this newsletter – never forget its namesake!)

• My own dispatch from Ōtautahi, which I thought would be about dinner in a DOC hut but ended up as a love letter to two perfect breakfasts at two unassuming local cafes – thanks, uncle Andrew. This newsletter helped me realise the kind of “reviewing” I can get on board with – of places that aren’t new and fancy but are serving kai that’s way better than it needs to be, places you’d be stoked to live down the road from.

• The editions I end up liking the best are always the ones I didn’t really plan, and this practical guide to glowing up your crappy rental kitchen is chief among them. If you are living with kitset cabinets and horror lighting, please, let me help you to help yourself.

• And for dessert, Charlotte’s tender musings on the intangible something that makes a dairy beautiful.

Candles burning low…

There’s a part in Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking – a lovely book, if you can get your hands on it – where she dreads the fussy food she expects to be served at a fancy dinner party. “When the food appeared at the party, I could scarcely contain my delight,” Colwin writes. “It was home food! The most delicious kind: a savoury beef stew with olives and buttered noodles, a plain green salad with a wonderful dressing, and some runny cheese and chocolate mousse for dessert. Heaven!”

Reading so many past editions as I write this last one, I think of this passage because it does one of the things I hoped I could do via The Boil Up: convey the joy of normal food, not just as something we enjoy because we can’t afford fancy food, but as something that is special because it is humble, comfortable. After all, aren’t chefs always trying to conjure memories of precisely this kind of food? I think of a favourite episode of MasterChef New Zealand, when the contestants are paired up to cook complex dishes from the menu at Amisfield. Alice and Hana are given the unenviable task of baking the prize-winning pāua pie, which they manage to pull off with finesse – but chef Vaughan Mabee still has a note: the pastry is cooked too perfectly, he says. Mabee likes to undercook his brisée so it evokes the memory of a petrol station pie with a slightly soggy top.

The kettle’s on, it’s almost time to go, but not without a thank you for coming, for enjoying this meal, for reading these words. Ka kite anō au i a koutou!

Lucinda x

PS — you can find me on Instagram and Substack (where perhaps I’ll reinvigorate my old, short-lived food newsletter).

Join The Spinoff Members

"I value the Spinoff analysis, in-depth coverage and sheer fun even more this year" - Jacqueline, Spinoff member

If you value our work and want to support us, please consider becoming a member today. Already a member? Thank you!

Weekly bites

In recent years, seed oils have been demonised by many pundits across the web, most recently by RFK Jr., Trump’s pick to head the US Health and Human Services Department. Given how much misinformation is out there, I appreciated this read via The Conversation, which explains what seed oils are, why people are concerned, and whether they should be.

There are only about 1311 residents in the tiny coastal town of Maketū, so the potential closure of the Maketū pie factory is causing a lot of anxiety with one local describing it as a “backbone” to the town. Not only will dozens of pie-makers lose their jobs, but it will mean the loss of an iconic brand that’s been going since 1982 with many of its workers having been there since the get-go. With the business placed in voluntary solvent liquidation last week, locals are hoping someone will swoop in and buy the brand – as happened back in 2019 during a receivership process. If any wealthy pie lovers are reading this, now is your time to shine!

And finally, we are blessed to have Jean Teng (erstwhile food editor at Metro) writing about kai again, this time about how to do yum cha right, even if you’re a total rookie. Jean’s guide includes tips on how to behave, how to order and what to order – although I would warn you not to proceed to this portion of the piece if you’re hungry: the pictures and descriptions (“fluffy and cloud-like, with a sweet, sticky pork filling that is impossible to hate”) will make your stomach gurgle.

Support longform journalism in New Zealand at The Spinoff

As homelessness hits an all-time high, The Spinoff's Joel MacManus has published a longform investigation into the urgent race to solve homelessness in Aotearoa. This kind of vital journalism is funded entirely by Spinoff members and donors. If it matters to you, and you're able to, please donate or become a member today.

Snack Review

Real Fruit Ice Cream, around $6 to $8 per cone from purveyors across the motu

I thought long and hard about my final snack review, but in the end, it’s about the season. As I found out the hard way when I showed up to a pick-your-own farm in January, strawberries are a spring-to-early-summer fruit – so now is the time to eat plenty, to go picking (is there any strawberry more delicious than the sun-warmed ones you eat straight from the bush?), and to eat Real Fruit Ice Cream.

Not that strawberry is the only – or even the best – flavour. I once had one made with cherries at a greengrocer in the Wairarapa, and a dark chocolate banana one from a tiny roadside van in Whananaki – both memorable, delectable, heavenly, but these are all words I would use to describe even a bog-standard mixed berry from the van at the night markets, because Real Fruit Ice Cream is always good. It’s the right amount of sweet (and if you want even less sweet, heaps of places do a frozen yoghurt version) and fresh, the perfect smooth soft texture, sometimes with pleasant nubbly bits of berry to provide interest. This is less of a review, more of a reminder to treat yourself to the best summer snack available, ASAP and often, all summer long. 10/10