Christall Lowe celebrates Māori hospitality in new cookbook Kai Feast

After winning an Ockham Award for her 2023 cookbook Kai, Fielding food writer and photographer Christall Lowe is back with Kai Feast.,

It is dedicated to her grandparents Don and Polly - "the epitome of manaakitanga" - for whom preparing kai was a love language, she tells Mihi Forbes.

"They would just watch on in adoration as we enjoyed it and they would try to give us more food until we couldn't eat anymore. That's just how they showed their love, their manaakitanga.

"My nana, just before she passed away, would still make sandwiches or sponge cakes and deliver them to people. It was their joy to feed and to awhi [care for] others."

Kai Feast is full of recipes interwoven with stories of traditional Māori gathering and feasting, tips on cooking for a crowd, and notes on foraging and using native herbs.

Growing up in the Manawatū, having a hāngī pit in your backyard - as her grandparents did - was "nothing special", Lowe says.

"When my koro did a hāngī, the neighbours or people from around Feilding would come and bring their kai to put in as well. It was just a normal thing in our life to have a hāngī pit."

Kai Feast features a recipe for oven-cooked hāngī and also paua fritters with kina salsa - something she created after pondering the acidity of the shellfish a couple of years ago.

"I was like, 'Oh man, this works really, really well, because that acidity of the vinegar comes through'. Kina is quite salty but pongy, you know, it's an acquired taste. But the acidity of the vinegar and then the little bit of sugar and the red onion creates this beautiful party in your mouth."

Sweet treats like nana's jelly cheesecake also make an appearance.

This recipe was passed on to Lowe's nana by a woman named Barbara who made delicious cakes and desserts at the Feilding rest home where she worked, she says.

"It's very, very simple - just cream cheese and a packet of jelly crystals mixed together and then poured over onto a base of crushed biscuits with butter."

For her brother - "I'm his personal chef" - Lowe makes a keto-friendly version of this cheesecake with sugar-free jelly crystals and either keto cereal or crushed nuts in the base.

"It became a recipe that we just kept continuing to make one because it was so simple and it was so delicious and it's just got such a nostalgic memory attached to it."

Christall Lowe recipes in the RNZ collection

Nana's jelly cheesecake

Honey-roasted yams with feta whip

Kūmara and apple pudding

Feijoa icecream

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