Style: July 01, 2022

Style | Food 57
On the road
Much-loved Kiwi chef Nici Wickes on the magic of ‘home cooking’ on holiday.
Words Nici Wickes Photos Todd Eyre
love to travel but one of the downsides is I’m often
I without a kitchen for the time away. It only takes
about five days before I’m yearning to handle food again,
to chop and peel and gently fry something. Airbnb and
being able to stay in an actual home solves this to some
extent, as does booking in for cooking classes or tours
of food markets.
In Catania, Sicily, I stayed in the most delicious little
apartment, three floors up in the old quarter and just
around the corner from the famous seafood market. I had
such a gorgeous time that when my allocated week was
up, I texted the owner to extend my stay by a few more
days, then a few more, and then some more. I couldn’t
tear myself away from my new-found neighbourhood and
the fantasy that I was a local.
One day I attended a cooking class where it was just
me and another woman, a New Zealander who lived in
Australia and who was travelling Sicily on her own, living
her fantasy. We swapped details and the following day
I invited her over for lunch. It was such fun to be able to
host while away.
Another time, in Bali, I lived for two weeks in a sweet
little bamboo house on the edge of some terraced,
iridescent green rice paddies. The kitchen, in fact the
whole house, was open to the elements so I could
cook as I gazed out and breathed in the sweet aroma
of frangipani. I loved being able to actually shop at the
early-morning food market, as opposed to just looking
at the glorious array without the opportunity to utilise
any of it.
Just before the pandemic struck, I travelled to Byron
Bay in Australia with my niece and while we stayed at a
beautiful rainforest retreat for the first few days and ate
like queens, we also loved it when we moved into our