BOOK:
KAI ORA: FRESH HEALTHY FOOD MADE WITH AROHA [LOVE]
ANNE THORP [AUTHOR], AARON MCLEAN [PHOTOS]
RANDOM HOUSE, AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz

DVD:  BEST RECIPES OF KAI ORA – HOSTED BY ANNE THORP, PAKIRI PRODUCTIONS LTD.

Nau te rourou, naku te rourou ka ora te manuhiri: With your food basket and my food basket, everyone has enough to eat.

KAI ORA is quite simply the best cooking programme on television for those who love to grow their own food, buy from Farmer’s Markets, or hunt from the land or fish from the sea and all who enjoy fresh food cooked with elegance, style and aroha, love. It is a book that will touch your taste buds and your heart at once. But for those who have never had the chance to see the KAI ORA programmes on Maori Television: http://www.maoritelevision.com then I suggest buying both the book and the dvd to feel the full flavours of this unique experience.

Maori manaakitanga means welcoming, feeding, nourishing and looking after your guests on every level possible and with much generosity and arohanui [love]. Both Anne Thorp and her kai [food] exude manaakitanga on every level imaginable. In both book and dvd you also experience the sheer beauty of her beach house at Pakiri which opens out to a deck and table where guests sit to eat with the exquisite cream sands of Pakiri Beach in the distance, glimpsed through waving pohutukawa, and hear the waves crashing on the beach below. KAI ORA touches all our senses at once and we are invited to share this hakari or feast with talented guests who, quite literally, sing for their meals.

Anne Thorp, of Ngati Awa and Ngai te Rangi descent, grew up in Whakatane learning to forage from the coast and fields for the whanau kai. She and her brothers and sisters could always find the tastiest wild watercress and puha for the traditional “boil up” and she also learned to cook helping out her mother in the tearooms. Her family grew their own vegetables so she knew the taste of freshly harvested food and this has carried through to her professional cooking career, which takes in her experiences of food overseas and her unique blend of Maori and Asia-Pacific kai, but always using the freshest local ingredients possible.

When you watch Anne Thorp cook, you also notice she is an artist with food, not only choosing and preparing the ingredients for taste but also for the brilliance of their colours and patterns on the plate, often using creative platters styled by local artisans. Her canvas is the plate and on her palette, the food sings nourishment to us even before we taste. This dance of art and health flies from the pages of the book and tempts our taste buds in the dvd and on television. Exquisite photography by Aaron McLean reflects the best of this artistry on every page.

KAI ORA does not just pay homage to the notion of healthy food and a healthy body. Anne Thorp has a very personal motivation to help educate and excite others with her food. She is herself a breast cancer survivor and she has worked closely with her surgeon, Trevor Smith, to make sure the food she creates reflects the very best health possible without losing any of her artistic and creative flair. His own essay in the book supports her work in developing menus that use traditional foods that many Maori and Pacific people love, but in ways that promote healthy eating and living. 

Each menu is inspired by the guests or manuhiri she is cooking for and reflects their desires as well. For instance, Tahi, the first menu, is inspired by Maori singer Whirimako Black and features Kakariki – a stunning green salad combining asparagus spears and the Maori asparagus, pikopiko, the fiddlehead fronds from the pikopiko or Hen and Chickens Fern, a traditional delicacy. Garlic Toasted Sesame Seeds and Honey Prawns highlight manuka honey, and snapper is served with healthy vegetables like broccoli and tomatoes, reflecting the green and red pohutukawa of Pakiri Beach.

There are vegetarian, kai moana [seafood], pork and variations on traditional kai loved by Maori and Pacific people but which can be adapted to menus in other countries also. For instance, some of the more oily fish can be replaced by heilbutt or halibut in Germany and Europe. Salmon is available globally and wild pork and organic pork can be tracked down in most countries. However, there is no true substitute for our great delicacy, whitebait, for overseas it is often eaten as a much larger fish which cannot match the subtle taste of our inanga. However, whitebait in this form can be found overseas and should be eaten when the fish are chopstick thin for the best flavours.

Anne Thorp is often seen buying her kai from the three markets we, at Mohala Organic Gardens, most love: Otara [a Maori, Polynesian and Asian market in South Auckland], Takapuna [where you can buy terrific kai moana, including cook’s turban shellfish which she uses in a delicious soup] and the Matakana Market, nearest to Pakiri, where a range of delicious kai is on offer. Sam Kereopa from Oceanz supplies her with the freshest fish possible, often right off the boat, just as her father would buy fish directly from fishers in Whakatane.

Not only does the author and chef encourage us to buy from farmer’s markets or grow our own food but she teaches us the gifts of manaakitanga - to return to slow cooking and enjoying the preparation of our food, inspired by the guests who are coming for a meal, to take our time and cook with aroha. This love pours out on screen and also through the pages of this beautifully crafted book, in the words, the recipes, the production and the inspiration. We feel special, that we are invited to share an intimate seaside meal with very dear friends, a meal that will nourish our bodies, minds and souls. Whether you arrive for duck and kumara soup, koura, paua tapas, salmon on coriander noodles, moana cocktail, titi with watercress and kumara, chilli kutai, smoked paprika prawns or sweet raumati salad, all your senses will be aroused by the smells, sounds of the waves or waiata, colours and patterns of the food and the sheer outpouring of arohanui that embraces and nurtures those present.

Anne Thorp reminds us that food is an art form, that it is meant to nourish our bodies, minds, hearts and souls and to bring us closer together. We remember the whakatauki:

Nau te rourou, naku te rourou ka ora te manuhiri: With your food basket and my food basket, everyone has enough to eat.

Not just enough to eat, but prepared with such delicious aroha, the food fills us with love and we feel renewed and nourished by that aroha and respond with waiata or song. This is a communal experience, where not only are the rourou or food baskets shared, but the sharing is one that resounds on deeper levels, reminding us of the three baskets of knowledge that Maori inherited to guide us in life. If we ignore the balance provided by this knowledge, which enables us to be healthy in all ways, then we suffer the consequences of ill health.

KAI ORA is more than a cook book with delicious menus. It is a model of sustainable lifestyle and healthy living. It reflects the original knowledge within the three kete, which Anne Thorp chooses to weave for us through her art of working with food, a careful warp and weft that appeals to all our senses yet is also healthy and nourishing. In so doing, she creates a beautiful taonga, or sacred gift, and presents it to us with the same aroha she has invoked to collect and prepare her food and offer it to her guests who respond with waiata or song, blessing the kai, the land and sea which has provided such gifts.

For those of us who do grow our own organic herbs and vegetables, harvest wild food from the sea and hills and enjoy providing one’s own kai and sharing this with the communities surrounding us, this book and dvd are food for the spirit as well as the body. We can only hope that one day both the book and dvd might be combined for people to experience the true fullness of this manaakitanga, with full episodes from the television series, so others can learn about the kai and the context of the kai – the land and sea and tangata whenua, people of the land, who inspire the recipes.

From our experiences over many years as publishing consultants at the Frankfurt Bookfair [7,000 publishers and 1,000 literary agents] we believe that this book could be adapted with a glossary of similar foods available in Europe and Asia and around the world, for a global audience of readers, if accompanied by a dvd featuring some of the television episodes. Indeed, if the dvd was playing at the NZ book stand at the Frankfurt Bookfair with the book featured alongside, as the Dutch publishers did so successfully at the Amsterdam Bookfair with Janet Frame’s film An Angel at My Table playing above the huge stand featuring Frame’s books, KAI ORA would arouse much interest from many cultures, especially among those who globally want to encourage the slow food movement and eating fresh from the land and sea and that, thankfully, is a growing audience.

Beyond all else, it is the aroha or love which will remain long after you have tried these scrumptious, easy to prepare recipes and enjoyed the book or dvd. It is a communal, shared aroha that flows easily between the chef and her guests, through the act of lovingly preparing food for the mind, body and soul. It perfectly embodies the whakatauki: aroha mai, aroha atu: Love flowing towards us, love flowing out from us, in an ever increasing circle of ripples that have the potential to change our lives and perspectives forever. KAI ORA is more than a cook book. It offers a blueprint for a new way of being, a new quality of life that is accessible to those who wish to enjoy it together. 

E hoa ma! Ina te ora o te tangata: O friends! Here indeed is the health of humankind.

[c] Dr Cath Koa Dunsford

Dr. Cathie Koa Dunsford [Nga Puhi Maori/Hawai’ian, Croatian & Pakeha ancestry] is author of 22 books in print and translation in USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Turkey, including the Cowrie eco-novel series featuring strong indigenous wahine toa from the Pacific region http://www.spinifexpress.com.au  Cath Koa is co-founder of Mohala Organic Gardens in Matakana, a community sub tropical and herb garden which makes herbal pestos for the Matakana Smokehouse and runs courses in the community. Cath Koa is also kaitiaki and kaupapa consultant for Rainbow Valley Farm. She was one of 28 chefs chosen globally to cook for athletes, officials and royalty at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. Dr. Dunsford is director of Dunsford Publishing Consultants, which has brought 192 new and award winning Pacific authors into print internationally: http://www.dunsfordpublishing.com Cath Koa Dunsford is recipient of two literary grants from Creative New Zealand Arts Council and was International Woman of the Year in Publishing in 1997. She has taught writing and publishing courses at Auckland University since 1975.  She tours the world performing from the books with traditional Maori waiata and taonga puoro. Contact: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)