A week of fine Kiwi food
NEW Zealand beef, lamb, oysters and wines are regarded as some of the world’s best. Their dairy products like milk and cheese speak for themselves, accounting for more than one third of the global dairy trade. But what about Kiwi cuisine?
“New Zealand is world famous for individual products, but we don’t really have a cuisine per se. You might talk about going to an Indian or Italian restaurant, but do you talk about going to a New Zealand restaurant? You don’t do that. Because New Zealand has every single ingredient but we don’t market them collectively as one package. So we are changing that,” says Richard Tankersley, managing director of New Zealand Unlimited Sdn Bhd.
Through his company, Tankersley is spearheading a movement to introduce and spread New Zealand food and wine around the world. He is in the midst of setting up New Zealand Unlimited companies in Thailand, Germany, Japan, the United States and Britain, with the ultimate aim of having regional offices all over the world and a chain of New Zealand Unlimited restaurants.
His first order of business though is organising a New Zealand Week at Traders Hotel Kuala Lumpur’s Gobo Upstairs Lounge & Grill restaurant, which will feature New Zealand produce weaved into set lunch and dinner menus from Nov 7 to 12. The set lunch starts at RM59nett for two courses and set dinners, RM145nett.
The menu has been curated by the aptly named Chef Mat Cook, the Kiwi resident chef of New Zealand Unlimited’s soon-to-be opened high-end restaurant in Puteri Harbour, Johor.
Cook has done his utmost to introduce a diverse range of Kiwi produce into the menu, like the cured NZ king salmon, which uses king salmon from Nelson, an area in the South Island so prized for its salmon, that it costs double that of Norwegian salmon!
In this dish, the salmon is cured with fennel, coriander and saffron, and served alongside avocado buttermilk, cucumber, pomelo and shaved fennel. This is one of those combinations of flavours and textures that come together like a well-rehearsed orchestra, with the velvety soft salmon leading this star-studded ensemble.
Then there is the roasted venison – pliant, supple pieces of meat with red cabbage, turnip, smoked chestnut and cocoa nib jus, which all serve to enhance the meat.
New Zealand lamb is globally recognised and so in-demand around the world that the country exports 92% of its lamb! Cook’s Pure South lamb loin pays homage to this popularity and is a triumph of contrasting flavours. The sous-vide loin offers soft succulence, while in another successful juxtaposition, the confit lamb shoulder, cracked wheat, eggplant, saffron yoghurt, peas and pine nuts all add allure and meaning to this complex, well-constructed dish that you will happily polish off.
For dessert, there is Whittaker’s Chocolate Cremeux, featuring the ubiquitous, highly popular Whittaker’s chocolate against a coffee sponge, passion fruit melting moment and hokey pokey ice cream. Cook says he came up with this dessert in tribute to some of New Zealand’s famed sweet products – hokey pokey ice cream, Whitacker’s chocolate and melting moments, a popular cookie in New Zealand that his mother and grandmother used to make often.
New Zealand Week also has other treats in store, including a one-night only Wine Dinner, scheduled for Thursday, Nov 10 which will feature a six-course dinner paired with New Zealand wines, priced at RM289nett. The wines have all been hand-picked and include the velvety smooth, richly addictive Tankersley Estate Pinot Noir 2013 (from Tankersley’s own vineyard). The slightly sweet, summery Ohau Woven Stone Pinot Griz 2012 and citrus-inflected Wooing Tree Chardonnay 2012 are also stellar additions that you’ll be hard-pressed to be separated from.
“New Zealand wines are now really world class and people are always talking about the crispness of the wines and the lightness of the red wines. Some of the wines from Australia and France are much heavier reds and with the Asian palate, the feedback that we’ve gotten is that people here prefer the lighter reds like the Pinot Noir from New Zealand,” says Tankersley.
For those who want to get a more hands-on approach to New Zealand food, New Zealand Week will also include a cooking class on Saturday, Nov 12, priced at RM160nett, where Cook will teach participants how to make classic New Zealand food like seafood soup and mussel fritters, which can be easily replicated at home.
For the highly-driven Tankersley, New Zealand Week in Traders Hotel is just the beginning, as he already has plans to launch New Zealand Week in Johor, Penang and Singapore.
“This is the start of a long road. We hope to launch New Zealand Week all over the place. Because why can’t we have it all over Asia?” he says.
Ultimately though, Tankersley says New Zealand Week was borne out of his dream to see New Zealand cuisine grow and thrive on a worldwide scale, something he has even personally told the Prime Minister of New Zealand he wants to do!
“It might take me 10 or 20 years but we’re going to make New Zealand cuisine well known around the world,” he says determinedly.