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Karena (left) and Kasey Bird (Photo: Faanati Mamea)
Karena (left) and Kasey Bird (Photo: Faanati Mamea)

ĀteaJune 28, 2018

Karena and Kasey’s big dinner was incredible. But was it worth $320?

Karena (left) and Kasey Bird (Photo: Faanati Mamea)
Karena (left) and Kasey Bird (Photo: Faanati Mamea)

Alice Neville went along to The Creation Dinner, a pop-up restaurant by MasterChef winners Karena and Kasey Bird, and it was bloody good. 

Ko tēnei te tīmatatanga. This is the beginning.

In the darkness, sky father Ranginui and earth mother Papatūānuku are locked together in a never-ending embrace, their many children crushed between them. After some heated sibling-on-sibling quarrelling, the kids — understandably in need of some space — tear their poor parents apart, creating te ao marama, the natural world, in the process.

You have to admit, the creation story of Aotearoa is pretty wild. Maybe not as wild as the story of Māui’s death by toothed vagina, but wild nonetheless. (I recommend looking up the latter if you’re not familiar with it.) So if anyone wants to base a multi-sensory seven-course dinner at a mystery location around the creation story, I am a hundred per cent on board. (Maybe spare me a culinary take on Hine-nui-te-Pō’s dangerous downstairs, thanks all the same.)

Karena and Kasey Bird (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Manawa), two sisters from the small Bay of Plenty town of Maketu who won MasterChef New Zealand in 2014, did just that with The Creation Dinner, the Auckland leg of which took place over the weekend.

During the filming of the MasterChef series in question I was working with one of the judges, the notoriously hard-to-please Ray McVinnie, and he loved the Bird sisters. “These girls can cook,” I recall him saying. This is high praise from — and I mean this as a compliment — the most cynical man in food media.

Te Mahurehure Marae played host to The Creation Dinner

Not everyone was as pumped about the Bird sisters’ creation dinner, however. Stuff ran a story about the cost to attend — an admittedly steep $320 a head for seven courses with wine pairings — and, predictably, the comments section ran hot with horror and ridicule.

“To charge this is crazy and I’ve never heard of these two and by the sound of it they are cooks not chefs so should charge accordingly,” said the comma-averse Kiwisareace.

“Seriously who are they? Dont have time for tv but to me seems like going to an idol winners concert opposed to the real thing,” added mac taggart.

Full disclosure — I did not pay $320, or even $3.20. I was hosted at the final Auckland night of the dinner, which was for media and important people, before it heads to Wellington for a couple of nights in early August.

Would I have paid $320? If I was feeling flush, and it was a special occasion, absolutely.

On a chilly Auckland evening, we met at a bar in downtown Auckland for a glass of bubbles, before the third sister of the Bird clan, the charming (and babin’) Michaela, shepherded us on to a very plush coach to head to an unknown location. Would we be going to Maketu? Would the bus transform into a mystical flying waka and take us back to Hawaiki? The possibilities were endless, but it turned out to be a brief trip on the motorway to Te Mahurehure Marae in Point Chevalier.

Inside the marae we entered a narrow, dark room, one end of which was covered in twinkly lights like the night sky. A long table — adorned with candles and blue light boxes representing the sisters’ awa — ran along the centre. Let me tell you, it was moody and atmospheric AF.

Extremely well-trained waitstaff, all young Māori women, furnished us with wine and the most delicious rēwena bread made by Karena and Kasey’s mum, Atarangi. “As you can see, we have quite a particular hiring system,” noted Karena.

The haunting sound of a taonga pūoro was our signal to shut up, as projections appeared on the roof and the dulcet tones of te reo broadcaster Scotty Morrison (who was at the dinner with his wife Stacey, on her birthday) echoed from speakers.

Te kore, the darkness, was the first part of the story, and after we’d heard Scotty’s evocative narrative, the wait-wāhine brought out dish number one. Echoing the darkness were two oysters on a bed of stone, one raw with black garlic, black vinegar and soy, the second coated in a charcoal tempura batter and paired with a creamed pāua sauce. Delicious.

The “Te Kore” oyster dish (Photo: Faanati Mamea)

Next we heard about Rangi and Papa and the extreme PDA that was pissing off their children. The dish representing this was Wakanui beef tartare with truffle “air” and rēwena crisp, the air an intensely flavoured foam that echoed the clouds of the sky father, the rēwena crisp mimicking the earth mother.

Trouble was brewing between the embracing lovers, however, as their scheming, self-centred tamariki wanted a better life. Pūpū ake was the dish representing this, a pork and watercress consommé in which floated a single diamond shell clam. My table mate, Spinoff Ātea editor Leonie Hayden, said it tasted like a next-level boil-up. (I had a pescatarian version, which was an umami bomb of deliciousness.)

Following the scheming, Tūmatauenga was the first to take action, we heard. He gathered all his god-of-war rage to push and push but ultimately failed to separate his ma and pa. Tangaroa, god of the sea, had mighty waves at his disposal, sending them crashing over the couple, but their love was too strong and they clung on.

Luckily for us diners, Tangaroa sent us kōura instead of mighty waves — butter-poached Ngāti Porou crayfish and crayfish dumpling, to be precise, with chilli and red vinegar representing the rage of old mate Tū.

Next up were the gods closest to my gluttonous heart, Haumia-tiketike and Rongo-mā-Tane, responsible for uncultivated and cultivated food respectively. They failed as well, but we diners most certainly did not, enjoying an excellent dish of miso-brûléed Kaipara kūmara with pūha and salsa verde.

Enter Tāne Mahuta, the high-achieving brother who everyone else in the family hates (I presume, anyway). Tāne is god of the forest and he’s bloody strong and also stubborn, so he pushed and pushed for ages and finally, he did it. He ripped apart his poor parents.

The corresponding dish was spiced lamb with wild pork belly and smoked potato (I got hāpuku and littleneck clam). The smoked potato was topped with deliciously crisp curry leaves and the whole dish was presented under a nifty smoke-filled cloche. I was too distracted by the novelty factor of the smoke-filled cloche and the amount of wine I’d consumed to remember exactly how it related to this particular part of the story, but it tasted damn good.

Karena and Kasey (centre) with their team for The Creation Dinner (Photo: Faanati Mamea)

The separated lovers, of course, mourned for each other. The roimata (tears) of Rangi fell from the sky, while Papa’s rose from the earth as mist. Bit of a downer, but we got a little dish of tear-like sago floating in a palate-cleansing kawakawa and apple broth to cheer us up, with Papa’s mist rising from the plate that held it (I can only assume via magic, or maybe dried ice).

Tāne felt bad about breaking up his parents, so he planted flowers and shrubs over his mum’s body, because being nude as well as sad would add insult to injury. Ditto Dad, who got a sparkly new coat of stars and a moon on his chest, so Papa could always see him.

No new outfits for us, but we were more than happy with a salted chocolate terrine paired with a little fried bread doughnut, some blobs of smoked marshmallow and a few twinkles of edible silver leaf.

No story should end without a ray of hope or two, in this instance aptly provided by our friend Tama-nui-te-rā — the sun. Rā sent his rays in to cover the world and everyone lived happily ever after, including we diners, who got to enjoy a glorious golden orb of vanilla and passionfruit panna cotta with coconut meringue and mānuka honey.

After dinner, when the sisters came out to talk to the guests, I overheard Sid Sahrawat, probably New Zealand’s best chef, thanking them. “It was so exciting — that’s how food should be,” he said. Tautoko.

This story has been updated from an earlier version to remove the word myth.

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Image: Adrian Malloch
Image: Adrian Malloch

ĀteaJune 28, 2018

Andrew Little: ‘Pākehā ways of engaging are so inadequate’

Image: Adrian Malloch
Image: Adrian Malloch

Māui Street editor Morgan Godfery chats to ‘minister for everything’ Andrew Little about nation building and resolving Treaty settlements on ‘marae time’.

Old timers will tell you the words “former Labour leader” are a curse. Former Labour leader Phil Goff. Former Labour leader David Shearer. Former Labour leader David Cunliffe. Former Labour leader is the kind of detail loved ones omit from your obituary. The marble memorial to Harry Holland, the darling of 20th century New Zealand socialism, in the Bolton Street cemetery adds “leader of the Labour Party” almost as an apology. Perhaps the only nouns that provoke as much resignation are “Roger Douglas” and “Ruth Richardson”.

Not that anyone told former Labour leader Andrew Little, this government’s minister for everything, and the back-from-the-dead bloke who is quietly making history. Under Little’s watch abortion law reform is on its way, the Pike River families are closer than they’ve ever been to bringing their boys home, and the decades-long Treaty settlement era could be coming to a close. For any other minister this workload might seem like too much, especially in a Cabinet where half of the thinking is already outsourced to working groups. But Little seems unbothered. “I have a job to do,” he tells me over the phone, “and I’m going to do it to the best of my ability.”

Some people reckon when Jacinda Ardern speaks it tickles the back of your neck. No one ever said the same about Andrew Little. If a firm handshake could speak it would sound something like Little. The critics call it dour, but the better description is straight-up-the-guts. Little doesn’t fluff anything. If you make a mistake he’ll call you out. Last year he came into criticism for telling RNZ the Māori Party’s actions in government weren’t “kaupapa Māori”.  Māori Party members said it isn’t Little’s place to determine what is and isn’t kaupapa Māori. Is this the right bloke, they asked after the election, for Treaty of Waitangi negotiations minister?

Andrew Little with Tāmaki Makaurau MP Peeni Henare in Waitangi, February 6, 2016. Image: Cam McLaren/Getty Images

As it happens, absolutely. Within weeks Little had Tūhoronuku and Te Kotahitanga, the competing Ngāpuhi settlement groups, in the same room after the last government cut and run, withdrawing its negotiators and staff. Little’s predecessor, the brilliant Chris Finlayson, told media, “I could send Pope Francis in there and he’d get nowhere either.” The problem is he didn’t send in Andrew Little. “I was very pleased with the round of hui last year, meeting the kaikōrero for each of the hapū and hearing what they had to say.” The message, Little says, “is they want everybody to get on with it, without pointing the finger of blame, and so it’s about finding the conditions where we can get the talk about redress under way.”

But finding those conditions is easier said than done, especially when the Treaty settlement process sometimes rewards the loudest and the largest settlement group. “It’s tricky. There are some hapū and iwi who are very strong and very well organised while there are others who aren’t, [and] you do have to look after those who aren’t because the Crown usually has something to do with that.” In other words, the Crown’s past actions are largely at fault for diminishing (and sometimes privileging) some hapū and iwi over others. It’s a refreshing admission, and it’s the kind of thinking that could break the deadlock between Tūhoronuku and Te Kotahitanga.

This is what sets Little apart from his predecessors. Previous governments were fond of limits and deadlines. The fourth National government had its fiscal envelope, the short-lived “cap” limiting Treaty settlements to $1 billion in sum, and the last government had its goal of settling outstanding claims by 2020. But Little is having none of this. As a life-long trade unionist he knows a negotiation between two unequal partners isn’t so much a negotiation as it is a hostage situation, and so he’s willing to work with iwi on “marae time” (ie slowly). “Those who’ve been left behind, left out, or haven’t had as strong a voice at the table as they otherwise might have had can’t be overlooked.”

Thinking like this means “regional settlements” are on the table in the North. This is where one group negotiates the general settlement and sub-groups negotiate the particulars. It’s perfect for Ngāpuhi, a huge tribe made up not of one iwi but many, and it might amount to a breakthrough. But Little isn’t getting ahead of himself, remaining circumspect. “Nothing can truly compensate for the horrors visited upon hapū, iwi and Māori people. But we can provide some redress and, most importantly, we can provide a foundation to start building what I think is the real relationship contemplated by the Treaty – a genuine partnership – so when the Crown sits down with hapū and iwi we’re sitting down as equals and talking about the issues as equals.”

That’s the trade unionist talking, and maybe the Taranaki boy too. As someone who grew up on confiscated land Little approaches the job with humility. “Hearing the stories is a privilege,” he says, and every story comes with a “responsibility to put things right to the best extent that I can.” At its most simple, “it’s about doing justice.” Fitting, for the bloke who holds both the Justice and Treaty Negotiations portfolios. “One of the things I’m thinking hard about too is to ensure those stories are accessible to all New Zealanders … What iwi and their tipuna have been through is frightful, and if more New Zealanders knew we’d have a better understanding of ourselves and our future.”

Perhaps the government could appoint him to the education portfolio as well.

But isn’t this all a bit overwhelming? Little is reflective. “I feel very privileged to engage with iwi and Māori, and now I see how some of the Pākehā ways of engaging as ministers are so inadequate. I think we have so much to learn [from Māori], and much to change about how we approach some issues.” Again, it’s a refreshing admission, and you can see this thinking at work in the way Little is approaching Pike River re-entry. The whānau are at the front of any decision-making, a dramatic departure from the last government’s approach where decisions were made solely on official advice, not on whānau advice and needs.

Not that Little is keeping score. “Forget the party politics,” he says of his Treaty Negotiations role. “This is about New Zealand – it’s about nation-building. You know Doug Graham was Justice Minister in combination with Treaty Negotiations too. I think it’s fitting because in the end the Treaty Negotiations portfolio is about delivering justice to the best extent that we can.” With a bit of luck – and maybe another term – Little could become the Minister who finishes the work Douglas started, helping usher the country from the Treaty settlement era to the post-Treaty settlement era. If he does, he might go down in history as the best prime minister New Zealand never had.

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