KEY POINTS:
What happens when you put dozens of chefs and wine experts and hundreds of mad-crazy food-lovers together in one funky hotel? Savour New Zealand, that's what.
Chefs from New Zealand, Australia, Italy and the United States came together for three days at Auckland's Langham Hotel to stretch our culinary imaginations and feed our insatiable desire to understand and cook good food.
There were the food-writer cooks who made us fall in love with potatoes, the winemakers who assured us there was no life on Earth before pinot noir, and the high-flyers who dabble in molecular gastronomy.
We gasped when foam became solid, we cheered when a tray of cookies flew off the stage and landed right side up, we swooned at Vietnamese flavours.
In between, we partied, worked the rooms, and made friends for life.
The two cooks I was most attracted to were the redoubtable Australian Stephanie Alexander, and a wonderful Italian good fairy from America Faith Willinger, women who do not believe in mixing anything and everything on a plate to give the impression of innovation at any price.
Theirs is a cuisine of generosity, respect and sensitivity. They cook by instinct and feeling. rather than technical wizardry. If you asked them for a mushroom, they would give you a whole feast.
Alexander is known for her restaurants, cookbooks and awards and now she is the queen of greens. Worried about obesity and bad diet in children, she thought that if they learned how to grow their own vegetables and fruit, harvest them and cook them, they would make the pleasurable connection, and love good food all their lives.
Alexander started the Kitchen Garden Foundation for schools. Where there was once concrete, now there is beauty, living plants, red gumboots and enthusiastic children.
Alexander says it's really easy to get kids cooking silverbeet and potato torts, hot and sour fish soup with broccoli, and cauliflower fritters with mint yoghurt. The hard part is getting the funding, but nevertheless there are now 25 schools involved.
If you smell Sicilian oregano, fennel pollen, Italian olive oil and chocolate, Faith Willinger is probably nearby. She is the product woman who believes in what she calls power shopping - buy good products and work less in the kitchen.
That gives her more time to do what she loves - talking, sipping wine, making friends, and eating. She writes books about Italian food, has won awards for her contribution to the world of good food, and has a whimsical website where you feel she is speaking to you only.
Willinger is a no-equipment, no-showoff, no-fuss cook. She taught us an utterly delicious country dish of fish, potatoes, olive oil and tomatoes with breadcrumbs. The secret is in the ingredients - the best tomatoes, the best oil, the freshest fish, the nuttiest potatoes. Go savour it.
Links
www.kitchengardenfoundation.org.au
www.faithwillinger.com