Inside MiNDFOOD New Zealand, July 2019

By MiNDFOOD

Inside MiNDFOOD New Zealand, July 2019
Take a look inside the July 2019 issue of MiNDFOOD New Zealand.

Food for thought

By Michael McHugh

I remember my very first overseas trip when my parents took my brother and me to Fiji for the school holidays and my dad convinced us to try Kokoda, a beautiful raw fish dish in coconut milk. I realised even then that travelling and seeing a different world also meant eating very different styles of food. I liked the freshness of the dish, and ordered it again each night as I had never eaten anything like it before. It was a very different cuisine compared to what I was used to in 1970s suburbia, using lots of fruit and fresh seafood.

I always thought Mum was a good cook, and she liked trying new recipes she’d tear from the pages of magazines. Cold cuts and salad on a Tuesday night seemed like a quick and fresh dinner solution, apricot chicken served on a bed of rice was de rigueur, or stuffed beef olives perhaps on a Wednesday. Dad would bring home fish on Fridays, a roast on Saturday night, and Wiener Schnitzel was also in there somewhere. The international stand-out dish from Mum’s repertoire was something we called Ki-Si-Ming – a ghastly-looking mince, rice and cabbage meal that didn’t taste too bad if you put lots of soy sauce on it. She did add Chinese five spice to her mince mixture for homemade mince pies which I always thought was quite daring. That secret ingredient just gave the mince a nudge, bordering on the exotic.

The horror of horrors, and I didn’t realise this until I was an adult and had travelled, was a can of Wattie’s spaghetti on pizza for a weekend lunch. I just grew up thinking that’s what Italian pizza was like until Pizza Hut rolled into town, and you could order a supreme pizza with something called pepperoni and capsicum on it.

It wasn’t until I travelled to Italy in my twenties that I realised what real Italian pizza actually tasted like, and that the ingredients on a real Italian pizza were actually quite limited – it was all about the tomato base.

Travel has certainly broadened my knowledge of food and exposed me to different styles of foods, ingredients and flavours, which has meant I’m for sure a much more adventurous palette. Over the years of my food travel with MiNDFOOD I have felt very special and spoilt taking this all in. 

Happy gourmet travels.

*Get a copy of the July MiNDFOOD New Zealand to read the full version of this editorial.

Also inside the July issue of MiNDFOOD New Zealand:

Actor and entrepreneur, Jessica Alba is on the cover. Keeping things honest, she talks about building her own business empire, being a mum of three and what makes her truly happy. Food, Drink and Travel Special: take a food journey around the world from Puglia to the planes of Africa and stopover in Dunedin as we taste the world one dish at a time. Home cooking: 8 perfect pasta recipes. Do the Brain Health Boogie and discover the neuroscience of dance. Do you have Climate Change Anxiety? We share how you can really make a difference.

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