CookBookery with Te Radar

Take a deliciously funny trip through 150 years of New Zealand cooking with multi-award-winning comedian and documentarian Te Radar. CookBookery delves into the cookbooks that have found their way into Kiwi kitchens over generations, uncovering everything from much-loved classics to recipes that are probably best left firmly in the past. Accompanied by glorious vintage food photography, Te Radar explores what our old cookbooks reveal about changing tastes, domestic life and New Zealand’s wonderfully inventive, and occasionally alarming, relationship with food. Along the way, expect appearances from some of our best-known culinary personalities, including Graham Kerr, Alison Holst, Aunt Daisy and Hudson & Halls, alongside lesser-known cooks, community fundraising cookbooks and recipe competitions. Auckland’s own culinary past also gets an airing, with memorable creations from the likes of Trouper Cooper and the buffet team at the Logan Park Motor Hotel. Discover the extraordinary lengths cookbook writers once went to in their efforts to encourage New Zealanders to eat more dairy, offal, mutton and kiwifruit. Why disguise mutton as poultry? Were fried brains really considered suitable fare for children? And could a cookbook entitled Recipes With Canned Foods Are Interesting possibly live up to its name? Funny, nostalgic and packed with curious pieces of social history, CookBookery celebrates the recipes, personalities and peculiar culinary ideas that helped shape the way New Zealand once ate. And perhaps reassuringly, none of the featured dishes will be served.