Peter Gordon

Peter Gordon is perhaps New Zealand’s most internationally recognised chef. Born in Wanganui Peter started collecting recipes from the age of four and began cooking not long after. After completing a chef’s apprenticeship in Melbourne in 1985 he travelled throughout South East Asia, India and Nepal for a year before setting up the kitchen at The Sugar Club in Wellington in 1986. Peter moved to London in 1989 and worked at various restaurants until he established his name as executive chef at Mayfair’s Green Street Restaurant then at the Notting Hill and Soho branches of The Sugar Club. Peter opened his current restaurant The Providores and Tapa Room with his partners in August 2001.

www.peter-gordon.net
www.theprovidores.co.uk

Slice of Life 2007

By Peter Gordon - September 2007

Hello there. Just in from filming the British tv food show Market Kitchen, which is based around regional seasonal food, and having just eaten avocado and olive oil on toast I can’t help but think how glad I am that I don’t have to rely solely on local produce.

At the moment there’s a huge amount of growing debate surrounding the issue of Food Miles, and this is something that the NZ government and other governments around the world are having to form strategy on. Food Miles is a natty term that means absolutely nothing when talking about global warming or the likes. I recently wrote an article about it in The Independent newspaper here in the UK which you can check out at: http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article2936712.ece

Also on the show today was a spokesperson from the Soil Association, who are considering removing the title ‘organic’ from any organic produce air-freighted into the UK. This is absolutely absurd, as most of the organic farmers who do air-freight organic produce tend to be from the developing world where individually they produce about 5% the carbon footprint of the average British person, just in their daily lives. Just who contributes more carbon to the environment, thereby contributing to global warming, is definitely not the pineapple growers of Ghana.

On a more cheerful note I was in Paris yesterday, having popped over on the Eurostar at 8am, then back to London by 9pm. I was there to meet a team from the French company Potel & Chabot, who are running the catering in the Tourism New Zealand Big White Rugby Ball that’ll be sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower during the World Cup. They’re a fantastic catering company who create the most amazing looking and tasting canapés, but my role is to instil a Kiwi feel to the menu. Thankfully the chef from the New Zealand Embassy, the absolutely wonderful Rachel Gregan, made my life so much easier by doing a lot of prep in advance based on my recipes. Rachel had only returned from Marseille a few days earlier, where she’d been assisting Peta Mathias at a cookery demonstration she was performing there as part of New Zealand’s celebrations during the World Cup. This month’s photo is of Rachel and I outside the High Commissioner’s residence.

So in the kitchen at the residence not far from L’Arc De Triomphe, Rachel and I presented 14 different canapés all using at least one NZ ingredient. These included: loin of lamb with labne and walnut dukkah, beef and yuzu tartar with hard boiled duck egg yolks, smoked NZ venison rolled with peanuts and coriander, Green Shell mussels stuffed with rice and seaweed, ANZAC biscuits and raspberry macaroons with manuka honey cream and Zespri gold and green. We’ll also be serving Clevedon Coast oysters as they’re sending over 2,000 of the beauties in the half shell and there’ll also be tamarillos, kawakawa and horopito in the mix too.

The best part of the week though has to be that on Saturday I am on holiday for 10 days. This will be the first actual ‘holiday’ holiday that I’ve had for two years, because although I travel a lot these days, it’s always for work. You have no idea how much I am looking forward to this break.

However, I will spend one day in the kitchens at muzedechanga, one of the two restaurants I consult to in Istanbul, as I’m headed to Turkey to sail on a boat with my partner Michael and the owners of muzedechanga and its sister restaurant changa. You can read about both restaurants on my website.

But for now it’s time for a cup of mulberry tea, a caffeine-free tea made from the leaves of the tree used to feed silk worms. Another imported product I’m afraid – but then we just don’t grow tea in the UK.

Cheers, Peter