FRESH, FIERCE FUTURE FOODIES
Encouraging our kids to get their cook on is a recipe for better health outcomes – and for breathing new life into an industry that needs young blood
dish discovers how getting kids into the kitchen is a win for our health and the restaurant industry.
Watching 10-year-olds on Junior Masterchef julienning like a pro and wielding a sauté pan almost as big as they are, well, it’s pretty cute. But aside from the adorable Insta opportunities, nurturing a love of cooking in our kids is more urgent than ever.
Because it seems that when it comes to kitchen skills, Kiwi adults are letting the side down. Our appetite for all things culinary may appear to be insatiable – Masterchef, MKR, TV bake-offs by the dozen, cookbooks flying off shelves like hot cakes – but new research done on behalf of Uber found only half of Kiwis cook at home daily, and only 59 per cent enjoy cooking, with dinner being the most dreaded meal.
The reason this matters? Because it’s hurting the nation’s health. Massey University associate professor Carol Wham told Newstalk ZB that people not having the skills to cook an affordable, tasty meal is leading to poor diets which are, in turn, the biggest contributor to bad health. If we don’t want our kids to fall into the same patterns, we need to get them into the kitchen from a young age.
On an industry level, there’s another reason to encourage the next generation into the kitchen. You might be surprised to hear this, with – or so it seems – a new batch of restaurants exploding onto the scene like popcorn every week. But up and down the country there is a shortage of chefs – in fact, it’s a world phenomenon. Thankfully, the New Zealand industry is busy cooking up ways to address this, from as early on as possible.
Here we talk to the founders of two of these initiatives – designed not just to nudge kids into considering hospitality as a career, but also to get them to see cooking as fun rather than a chore. We also meet the product of one of these schemes – a young Hawke’s Bay chef who is quite definitely one to watch.
TURN UP THE HEAT
Hughie Blues, Nzchefs national president, launched Kiwi Kids Can Cook – a competition for primary school-aged children – in 2009. A desire to foster a love of cooking early on was one of the main drivers.
“It’s a bit of a selfish reason on my part as I’m a chef and passionate about my industry,” he admits. “Hopefully when cooking gets bandied around at school as a job option, they’ll remember Kiwi Kids Can Cook and go ‘ah yes, I had a whole heap of fun doing that so I am going to go down this track.’”
He’s had some success with that already. “One of my previous winners, Louis Noorwalla, is about to finish his apprenticeship at the Hilton in Auckland. He was a Northland champion three years in a row.”
There are a few other motivators too. “It was to get kids cooking in a fun environment. We’ve specifically chosen primary kids because that’s when they are like little sponges, they’re sucking it all in… they have no fear and just want to get on and do it. It’s also to instil healthy eating habits. Hence in the comp they must include vegetables in their dish.”
Secondly, it was to get families sitting down together to eat – and it’s working. “I get lots of comments from parents who say ‘It’s so good since my child got into this because they’re now helping at dinnertime and we’re all back together round the table’.”
The competition initially ran only in Northland. “The first festival, we had like four kids and 20 people watching. It started off as a parent-child competition; that’s long since gone. The kids said ‘you know what, parents? We don’t need you’,” says Hughie.
Thanks to the collaboration of Nzchefs and Vegetables.co.nz, Kiwi Kids Can Cook is now a nationwide event. Starting in November and running through to the final in August, the 2019 comp has to date covered Dunedin, Northland, Levin, the Chathams and Christchurch – which is where Hughie is when he talks to dish. Next up are Wellington, Taranaki, Feilding, Auckland, then the grand final will take place at the Trusts Arena in Henderson, Auckland, during the NZ Hospitality Championships (August 11 and 13).
There are two categories: nine and under; and 10 to 12. “We’ve got four in each category here in Christchurch, they’ll cook off in a live 30-minute contest at South City Mall.”
Hughie is constantly surprised by the sheer quality of food plated up by children as young as nine – especially since they’re only given 30 minutes. “It’s up there with restaurant quality. We don’t have an oven. We just have gas cookers and a microwave so that limits what they can cook. And half an hour… even for a trained chef, that’s not a lot of time. They do everything from pancakes to salads, but also salmon, lamb rack. Proper meals.
“The youngest we’ve had is four. A girl in the Chathams, this year. She did an amazing apple and rhubarb crumble, the rhubarb being her vegetable.” How does a four-year-old even read a recipe? “She had a bit of help from her parents. Parents are there but they’re not cooking. Some kids practise so much it’s just in their head.”
Of course there is the occasional meltdown – how could there not be when you put your heart and soul into something?
“Sometimes it’s very tough and it will come down to two strong dishes. The boy who has won the Northland seniors (10 to 12s), he pipped last year’s senior winner by doing a sticky pulled pork bao bun. He made the dough for the bao bun. And he’s only 10.”
What also amazes Hughie is that these pint-sized contestants have no fear.
“They’re up on stage and there’s a crowd watching. They just get on with it and do it. I suppose it’s the passion. That’s what they’re focused on.”
You can teach your child to cook, but Hughie reckons you can’t force them to love it; the passion just has to be there. For him, the coup de foudre was a piece of fish. Halibut, to be precise.
“My parents took me out for a Chinese meal; I was nine or 10. There was this halibut that got put in front of me. It was in a light batter and had a syrupy sauce with it. When I ate it, it was like ‘boom! Wow, what was that!’ From then on I started cooking in the kitchen at home.”
That said, kids who love to cook could still do with a helpful push from their parents. “One of the reasons there is a chef shortage is that parents don’t see it as a viable option because you can be in IT or accountancy and get $200 an hour. Whereas cookery, it’s a hard industry.”
So, you know… come on, parents. Especially since the worst that can happen is that your budding chefs might end up taking a whole lot off your plate.
“You can teach your child to cook, but you can’t force them to love it; the passion has to be there”
“I get regular comments from mums and dads, saying ‘Thank you so much.’ They come home from work and the dinner is half done!”
FAN THE FLAMES
Glenn Fulcher also sees competitions as a way of encouraging kids who want to be chefs… but just don’t know it yet. He formed the National Secondary School Culinary Challenge (NSSCC) with the view that “hospitality competitions offer a unique environment where judges become your customers and competition timings become your restaurant service expectations.”
Glenn, head of Tourism and Hospitality at the Eastern Institute of Technology, says the NSSCC allows secondary schools access to industry realism that they don’t get during a 40-minute class at school. Far from putting them off, “Once a student has had a go at competitions, they generally get hooked. It shows them possible career pathways through competing and meeting the judges, who are all qualified chefs.”
Sometimes kids enter not even contemplating a career in the kitchen. “We’ve had teams who competed because they spotted an opportunity to eat heaps of food! Then over time they have fallen in love with the industry service buzz.”
It works like this: you enter the regional contest, where you have to prepare a vegetable entrée. Win that, and you secure the right for your school to compete at the national final with a team of two who must do both an entrée and main course. And every year, the quality just gets better and better.
“Some teams over the years have turned into little scientists with dried ice and molecular gastronomy, turning food inside out, upside down and completely changing textures and taste.”
He’s also seen a lot of ‘heritage’ recipes: Hangi-style smoked foods, boil-up flavoured broths and Asian-influenced spices, marinades and sauces. “It truly reflects what they see at home and witness [in restaurants], with chefs following their food heritage.”
One standout talent he can recall is Sam Heaven (see below), who competed two years in a row regionally before winning the grand final. That prize secured him an apprenticeship at Skycity.
Being a chef isn’t for everyone, Glenn says, but it does have its own rewards. “You have to love food. It’s not a high-paying job at the start, the hours are crap and all your friends are out partying while you’re still at work.”
But if you get hooked, “it can take you around the world. You become part of a family who all ‘get’ you. They have the same dreams and love for food.”
BRING TO THE BOIL
Sam Heaven is off to Russia, to represent New Zealand in the Worldskills competition in the under-23s – and he’s stoked. In all honesty, why wouldn’t he be? He’s barely turned 21 and he’ll be up against the cream of the culinary universe. “It’s going to be really cool to find out where I sit in that 53 of the best chefs of my age,” says Sam. “The coach of the [Worldskills] team asked if I’d be interested. Of course you’re not going to turn down an opportunity like that.”
That give-it-a-go attitude is what got Sam to the National Secondary Schools Culinary Challenge (NSSCC), his stepping stone into the industry. When his culinary arts teacher at St John’s College, Hastings, asked if he wanted to enter, Sam’s immediate answer was: “Why not?”
“It’s because of the competition that I’m [here]. I was offered a scholarship for winning, which enabled me to study a City and Guilds qualification for free at Skycity. For the first two years you learn the basics of French cooking. Now in my third year we are doing management papers. Rosters, reports, writing menus, costing menus...”
Even getting through to the NSSCC final, never mind winning, was a turning point.
“It blew my mind; I just fell in love with the creativity; it’s one of the biggest things that draws me to cooking. The creativity, the art. You can be so artistic. That’s what I try to portray in my food as well.”
At the NSSCC Grand Final Sam and his partner Dan Moss certainly did that. For a pair of Year 13 boys, what they served up was an astonishing feat. Scrap that – it was an astonishing feat for any cook, of any age.
Their entrée, titled ‘The City by the Sea’, used molecular gastronomy. It incorporated a mānuka-smoked sun-dried tomato duck egg tart, silverbeet spaghetti, truffle meringue, a mozzarella balloon encasing a silverbeet nutmeg mousse, a squid ink coral sponge and a beurre noisette of snapper. Served on a piece of slate surrounded by river stones, the dish was inspired by childhood fishing trips at Haumoana Beach, and the smell of the sea was recreated using seawater and dry ice.
It was Sam’s third go at the competition, but giving up was never an option. “I remember coming home the second year; we were like
1.5 points behind the winner and we were so fired up. It made me want to do and be better.”
While winning the NSSCC in 2016 helped ‘sculpt’ his future, Sam was always destined for a career in food. His grandfather, then his father after him, ran a bakery in Hawke’s Bay.
“Before I could walk I’d be going to work with dad. I have photos of me, very young, sitting in a cheese box watching him make gateaux. I was lined up to become a baker.
Then at high school my teacher got me into cooking and I fell in love with the fact there are meats, and sauces, fish, veges and pastry and you can do all of it. So at the moment I am working on pastry in The Grill [at Skycity] and it’s so good I can go back to my roots.”
His advice to youngsters considering entering the NSSCC? Don’t get obsessed with impressing the judges; just follow your passion.
“When I started I was doing traditional French food, and by the end of it I was doing molecular gastronomy. That’s where my heart and passion was. If you really like a certain style of cuisine – do it. You will cook a lot better when you cook what you want to cook.”
The Worldskills competition will help Sam define his personal style, his ‘voice’ – a process
“Some teams have turned into little scientists with dried ice and molecular gastronomy”
“Of course it’s a hard slog and long hours but the flipside of that is the camaraderie”
that is key for any young chef. And Sam wants that voice to have a distinctly Kiwi accent.
“I said to my mentor, ‘I don’t want to go to the competition and cook French food.’
I put forward a request to use dirt in the competition; one of the elements of the hangi is the dirt. There is a head chef in Hawke’s Bay who puts a tray of dirt in the bottom of his oven to get an earthy flavour. I was going to do something similar, but it got denied.”
Undeterred, he’s got other ideas up his sleeve. “I want to get flax baskets made, dry them, take them over and steam my fish in them.”
At the time of talking to dish, Sam is getting ready to attend Hawke’s Bay’s Winter F.A.W.C! event series, and the indigenous cuisine theme is one he’ll be demonstrating there.
“I am doing a hangi roast celeriac but I am turning it into a purée. The component on the plate is going to have hangi flavour then it can match through with the lamb and the sauce.
It’s just a hint of New Zealand in there.”
And to anyone thinking of chef-ing as a career? It’s a hard slog and long hours, but the flipside of that is the camaraderie, says Sam. “We work with each other for sometimes up to 17, 18 hours a day so you build friendships that are very strong.”
Long hours or not, he still loves to cook on his days off. “The other day I was back home with a couple of chef friends, and we ended up going to the market, grabbing a whole lot of produce, and heading to my friend’s house to cook his parents dinner because it’s what we love to do. We like to make people happy.”