ED’S LETTER
OUR WINTER ISSUE HAS US leaning towards big, rich, casual plates of comfort food that can be shared and polished off with family or mates, or at the very least portioned up so you can freeze and have on hand when you need it.
From the photo you can see I finally got across to meet Matt and Barbara Lambert and experience their Michelin-starred New York restaurant, The Musket Room. So many of you have told us good things about their Kiwi-inspired cuisine and it didn’t disappoint. So much so that we’ve persuaded Matt to give us a recipe for you to whip up at home and serve with a beer.
With our Cuisine Good Food Awards looming I took advantage of my time in New York to hit the four NY restaurants that were on the 2018 World’s 50 Best list. One of these was celebrated chef Dan Barber’s restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. I’m proud to note that Cuisine magazine was one of the first international publications to share their story when Lauraine Jacobs reported on the groundbreaking Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture in our November 2005 issue. Established in 2004, it was a project born from the desire of the late David Rockefeller to build a centre dedicated to his wife Peggy, a farmer with a fierce passion for farmland preservation. Twenty years on, the team at Blue Hill at Stone Barns are setting the standard for the future of fine dining on so many exciting levels.
You’ll see a number of new voices spread across our pages as we continue to evolve and extend a platform to New Zealand food and drink obsessives with interesting things to say. We welcome food writers Matthew Patrick and Samuel Scott as well as chef and recipe developer/consultant Samantha Dinsdale and writer Georgia Merton.
We bring you the results of the Rare Fare FEAST Marlborough competition on page 146. Congratulations to everyone involved – it is such a pleasure to partner and support this festival that shines a much-needed light on restaurants, chefs and local producers as well as the outstanding Marlborough wine that we all know and love.
Our stalwarts bring you so much Cuisine-style goodness to choose from including outstanding pies, slow-cooked pizzas, hearty soups and healthy bowls. Our Cuisine wine panel pours you the perfect big red to pair, while Marytherese Blair (aka Mermaid Mary) discovers wines with a social conscience and whisky girl Tash Mcgill has curated some of the finest drops to warm those colder nights ahead.
As always, we’re chasing the ideal combination of food for the belly AND the brain for you, so read on and cook well…