18 STYLE | interview You haven’t always been a chef – what did you do before you started in the kitchen? Well, I grew up in England, where I was actually training to be a teacher until my parents moved to New Zealand when I was 19. I stayed at university a year, then came here to see what they were up to, and I enrolled in a cooking course so I could make some friends here. I found I quite enjoyed it, and I’ve been in the kitchen for about 12 years now. I trained and I worked in kitchens around the country, but it was working for Jeremy Rameka at Pacifica in Napier where I really learned how to be expressive through food. I was very inspired by him. I actually always said when I was really young that I wanted to be a chef, but I sort of forgot about it until then. Is your training as a teacher ever useful in the kitchen? I think where I’m at now it comes in handy, because I’m teaching people. I think it’s a really good skill to be able to convey what you’re trying to show through a dish, and not be a ‘big yelly chef’ like you see on television. You get better out of people when you’re talking to them properly, as opposed to being an angry chef, ranting around. I’ve seen that all too often, and it’s not very pleasant. Before you opened Gatherings, you worked for a year on an organic vegetable farm in Swannanoa. We tend to romanticise farming – but what was the most unpleasant part of the job? The hardest thing was weeding onions, definitely. Farming organically is about not spraying anything, so we had to crawl on our hands and knees for hours, pulling tiny weeds, which were millimetres long, by hand. It made me really appreciate the work that goes in to growing them well and sustainably, but that also lead to wanting to showcase the work farmers do. The best part of the job was harvesting the food and eating it. We’d sit down for lunch every day and the farmer or his wife would prepare something for us, and eating something so fresh, the flavours were amazing. You started your businesses in Christchurch at a time, after the earthquakes, when many people in the hospitality industry were leaving. Why? Well, actually I did leave straight after the quakes and went back to the UK, because I wanted to experience work as a chef over there. But I returned to Christchurch after nine or 10 months because I wanted to be involved in what was happening here. That was when we started the Local Food Project in The Commons. There wasn’t much in the central city at that point, it was about a year after the quakes and the city was very quiet. So to have the big pizza oven fired up there, it drew people in. And it helped me a lot with confidence. I guess it was the first time I had taken my ideas to the general public, and shown them my art, I suppose – without sounding pretentious. If you could have anyone in the world come through the door at Gatherings for a meal, who would you choose? It’s got to be my partner, Bryony, and my family, because I love them and I like spending time with them. We’re actually about to have a baby, so I’m really looking forward to sitting at dinner with them in the future. To cook and eat with this person whose palate hasn’t developed yet, and to experience food with them, I’m really excited about that. That’s all I can think about at the moment, so I don’t have time to think about famous people. You’re hosting a chef session at the South Island Wine & Food Festival at Hagley Park in December. What do you plan to talk about there? I’m just going to talk about working seasonally, and making plants the highlight of a dish, as opposed to just a bit of an afterthought. So how you can make them a centrepiece of a dish, and have fun doing it. And if you could give just one piece of advice to people cooking at home, what would it be? Get the best produce you possibly can, and then don’t overthink it. If you have really nice tomatoes and you put a bit of salt and olive oil on them, it’s going to taste good. Just don’t overthink it.
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