Moi – In sensible Shoes

My family are from Rotorua – the grandparents started up a department store there, Mathias Drapery, and I spent my Auckland childhood visiting the cousins every year, mostly at Christmas. I remember the mellifluous waiata, I remember the sulphur smell, I remember the rēwena (potato bread).

Later, I filmed an episode on Rotorua for Taste NZ and discovered Māori cooking with master weaver Emily Schuster. I learned how to make fry bread, oven hāngī, boil-up with kūmara dumplings and hot pool-steamed kamokamo (squash) and freshwater kōura (crayfish). It was Emily who explained the importance of whakapapa – if you don’t know where you come from, you can’t know who you are.

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