Greetings friends.
My wife is about to try some classic kiwi dishes
that I used to eat growing up.
You're used to like complex and aromatic flavours of India, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
So let's start with our most complex flavour.
This is the dreaded Vegemite.
Either you love it or you hate it.
Let's find out.
All right, Just. Just dig in.
What is it exactly?
It's like the leftovers from producing beer.
They make it into this bread.
It doesn't sound good.
It smells like rotten unsweetened chocolate.
Try it.
It’s so salty.
Yeah.
It's good, na? - It’s disgusting.
That's the same reaction Obama had.
Oh.
I can smell it in her breath right now.
Like it's that potent, this yeast spread.
Okay, so the trick of Vegemite is eat in a small moderations.
Now I'm going to cook you some food which involves Vegemite
because this is just a classic Kiwi flavour.
A classic Australian flavour.
And let's see if we can make you like it.
Okay? Mm hmm.
The first two dishes that I'm going to make for her both involve Vegemite.
Oh, no! And the first is this is called
a mouse trap.
And it's just a piece of bread with Vegemite and topped with cheese.
Okay? - That's it?
Yeah. - It’s so easy to make your food.
Yeah. I mean, this is what I would make as a kid, right?
This is the extent of my cooking skills.
Like, we would Paratha or at least like...
Indian food is very complex and complicated.
Yeah.
What I'm making for you here
is stuff that we’d eat as kids. Okay?
It doesn’t look good.
Lots of cheese.
Yeah, I need a lot of cheese.
And this is not the expensive stuff.
Cheese is so expensive in New Zealand.
So this is the cheap, tasty cheese from the supermarket.
Okay, babe, here we have a mouse trap.
It's bread, vegemite and cheese.
And then baked in the oven.
Hmm. Much better than eating Vegemite on its own.
Ok, this is good.
But did you say this was your favourite thing to eat as a child?
Yeah, I lived on this.
It was, like, so simple so I could make it whenever
I wanted to eat something buttery and cheesy.
Would you prefer this or Paratha for breakfast now?
Oh, yeah.
I definitely prefer Indian food over for this.
But this is quicker and easier to make.
Indian food is so complex and takes so long to make.
This I can make in, like, 5 minutes, and cook in 5 minutes.
I might start liking Vegemite now.
See, she likes anything salty. She loves salty food.
Now I'm going to make you what I used to get for lunch every single day.
Okay? - Okay.
It's called a chippy sandwich.
Can you imagine what goes into a chippy sandwich?
Chips. - And?
What! No!
You put vegemite in everything!
Then we put on chicken chips.
Chicken chips? - Chicken chips. These are chicken flavoured chips.
And you just put it just like that. It's exactly what it is.
It's a chippy sandwich.
We used to roll it and half like that.
It’s so ugly.
Sorry about the presentation, but here's your chippy sandwich.
Make sure you get some of the chips when you bite.
What's wrong with this?
I would rather have the chips
alone.
You like it? - Yeah.
So you didn't like the chippy sandwich?
No. You don't want to have this for lunch? - No.
What would you rather have for lunch?
Rajma Chawal.
Is that what they gave you in India every day? - Not every day.
But I had, like, Rajma Chawal, Chole Chawal, Paratha,
or sometimes they'll be roti sabzi.
I had this and I had a chocolate...
Chocolate Vigor.
It was like a chocolate yoghurt.
That was my lunch. Like every day.
I'm a creature of habit.
I don't like changing things, so I just stick to this every day.
But let me show you what I'd buy if my parents actually gave me some lunch money.
It’s just spaghetti.
The spaghetti is here.
I've warmed it up a bit.
You put it on half a bun.
And now we have a spaghetti bun.
But we're going to put it in
the oven and cook it.
What were you allowed to eat?
Like as a schoolkid? Would you have had something like this in India?
Yeah, we had school canteens, and the two most popular
things were Somosa and Allo Patty.
Allo Patty is like the Indian version of Pie, except
instead of meat, we have mashed potatoes with spices.
And what would your Dad let you eat as a kid growing up?
Oh, he.
We were.
It was very strict with, like, packaged food and stuff.
So we were not allowed to eat Maggi.
No ketchup, no chewing gum. - Oh!
I have tried this before at a bakery, and I liked it,
but I'm not sure about this one.
My cooking skills. As you can see, people
haven't progressed since I was about ten years old
Same.
No. - You don’t want this? No.
It's just like boiled spaghetti
dipped in tomato ketchup.? - Yes, literally.
No, the other one I had at the bakery
had like more vegetables and a bit of, like, oregano and stuff.
I think if you put salt, oregano, and black pepper, it'll make it better.
That's what Indians do.
And some garlic and ginger.
Add spices and flavour to everything.
But it will make it better, I bet.
Alright, second to last dish, babe.
This is called kiwi dip.
It is reduced cream mixed with onion soup mix.
Okay.
And a tiny bit of vinegar.
And this is what we'd have like, at a party.
You just dip these chips in and enjoy the flavour.
And then you just...
Then you just spill it, and mix it.
This is the easiest dip in the world.
So the the difference that I mainly noticed here was, in India
most of the ingredients are like raw and we cut them and then use them.
Here it's like everything packaged and you just put them together
and you call it cooking.
It's not cooking, it's mixing.
Yeah, that's why I say Indian food is so complex and also like time consuming
takes a lot of time to make Indian food, but it's also a lot healthier.
And it follows principles like Ayurvedic principles as well.
So it's extremely healthy.
The stuff that we eat at home.
I'm not talking about the stuff you get in Indian restaurants here in New Zealand.
Yeah.
So we're meant to cool this down for half an hour,
so it goes a bit hard, but you can just try it and you'll get the flavour.
Okay, so I just try it with the chips?
Yeah, exactly like that. How much? - Yeah.
Hmmm not bad. - It’s yum, na?
Yeah, but I would add spring onions to it.
I don't know how much of this stuff that I showed you is actually Kiwi.
I'm sure a lot of people in Australia would eat the same stuff like the,
the inspiration for Vegemite comes from Marmite, which is a British spread.
I'm not sure any of this is actually 100% Kiwi, but it’s what we grow up
eating, it's a mixture of like Australia, Britain and New Zealand.
Now this okay, I can tell you this is definitely 100% made in New Zealand.
This is a famous L&P drink - Lemon & Paeroa.
And from the name you can kind of guess what it tastes like.
This girl... woah!
This girl does not drink cold drinks.
She drinks them at room temperature
and you see the colour is kind of like a lemony look.
Try it and let me know what you think.
Oh, this is amazing.
Yeah, this is what we grew up drinking.
This is like the quintessential Kiwi drink.
I'm going to drink all of it.
I was hooked on to this drink on my first trip to New Zealand
and I had lots and lots of L&P and pineapple lumps.
Those are my two favourite things on my first trip
and this time I've discovered mint chocolate.
So every time I come back to New Zealand I discover something new
and I just fall in love with it and eat it for the rest of my holiday.