A gastronomic odyssey of kitchen innovation, sustainable food practices, and culinary explosions
“The kitchen is a country in which there are always discoveries to be made.”
– Grimod de la Reynière
Grimod de La Reynière was a founding member of the ‘Société des Gourmands’, a gastronomic society in Paris that brought together food enthusiasts, writers and chefs to celebrate and discuss the art of cooking and dining. He founded L’Almanach des Gourmands – an influential gastronomic publication, famous for its restaurant reviews, culinary essays and satirical content. He was known for his adventurous and innovative approach to cuisine. Grimod de La Reynière introduced unusual ingredients and creative recipes in his writing, challenging traditional culinary norms.
Grimod and I have things in common. Not many things, and to be fair, I’m drawing a bit of a long bow here … So, firstly, Grimod was great at cooking, and my cooking is, well, just Grim. I was given a cookbook by Donna Hay back in the days when I was a single mum. I took this as inspiration for an ‘adventurous and innovative approach to cuisine’, just like Grimod. Donna Hay was a source of delight for me, and a source of terror for my kids. So much so that they went to extraordinary lengths to hide that book. (I still have it. I will not be defeated). Also, my dog got fat.
Secondly, while Grimod might subscribe to the idea that in the kitchen of creativity, dishes are borne from a little controlled explosion of flavours, I take that one literally. To demonstrate the continuity of my culinary attributes of explosion, I give you two anecdotes: one from earlier times and one from just this week …
1: Years ago, my parents came to stay with me to meet my new partner (now my husband, bless his perseverance). We took them out to lunch at a local café, only to be interrupted by a phone call from my concerned neighbour telling me that smoke was pouring out of my house and he had rung the fire brigade.
It turns out that the corned beef I’d left on the stove had magically transformed into a charred piece of ash. Such sorcery! Who knew there was a difference between ‘simmering’ and ‘boiling the living hell out of”?
2: Ever-suffering, persevering husband recently renovated our kitchen. Incidentally and unsurprisingly, he does most of the cooking in our household. So, new brand-spanking quality kitchen: beautiful cabinetry, excellent layout, stunning lighting, and top-class appliances. Brilliant! I felt like a bona-fide adult chef. After all, I am a coming-of-age chef! Donna Hay would be proud, not to mention Grimod!
The ultimate joy was the brand-spanking state-of-the-art pyrolytic oven. Never would I need to sully my hands with scrubbing the inside of the oven! Technological wonder of the world.
Unfortunately, my state-of-the-art pyrolytic oven literally and spectacularly exploded the very first time I used the pyrolytic cleaning function ☹. It was the coup-de-grâce (very French theme going on in this article, I note) to my cooking confidence – shattered glass catapulted across the kitchen into every conceivable crevice. Days later I’m still finding little shards of glass in weird and wonderful places.
So yeah, Grimod and I both do ‘explosive’, just in different ways. I’m a bit more literal, I suspect.
Third, and final similarity between old mate Grimod and myself: He wrote a cookbook. Yes, dear reader, me too! Well, not so much ‘writing’ a cookbook, more along the lines of ‘collating a cookbook’. And it’s not so much a ‘cook’book as a ‘tip’ book.
See, I’m a trustee of Wāhi Tukurua, Mercury Bay Resource and Recovery Centre Trust. Wāhi Tukurua is a not-for-profit charity aiming to reduce waste in our beautiful corner of Aotearoa, and one of our initiatives is around the reduction of food waste. Roughly one-third of the world’s food is never eaten. By reducing loss and waste, we can reduce the need for land and resources used to produce food as well as the greenhouse gases released in the process. On average, a New Zealand family throws away over $500-$600 of uneaten food a year; that’s about three supermarket trolleys that go straight into our bins (a bit like that devilish corned beef I destroyed all those years ago).
So, as part of this initiative, Wāhi Tukurua is producing a book full of ideas, tips, recipes and so on to use food more fully, to reduce food waste, to upcycle food and to use seasonal fruit and veges. Help me out here! Share your recipes, tips and ideas. Email these to hello@wahitukurua.co.nz, or (click here) and you’ll find yourself in print; together we could out-do Grimod in his innovative approach to cuisine.
Words by Stella Pennell
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