I asked Annabel some questions ahead of her visit to Hawke's Bay.
How often do you do public speeches?
They seem to come in waves - sometimes I can go a couple of months without doing any and then there is a whole rush!
What do you build your talks around?
It depends on the audience and the brief. If it's about business then I will talk about how I have gone about building my brand both in New Zealand and abroad, or if it's about cooking then I'm usually trying to share simple, clever ways for home cooks to be successful and have fun in the kitchen. Whatever the format, I like to share my philosophy and tell stories - I've got lots of stories!
Do you get nervous?
Not really. Sometimes there's a bit of an adrenaline spike beforehand, but whatever I have to say comes pretty much as second nature - it's not something manufactured, it's about things I truly believe in and representing who I am as a person.
Your latest book is impressive and must have taken a huge amount of planning. How long did it take from start to finish?
Well it was a big baby that's for sure - a few months in the thinking, and then a good year in gestation! Near the end it just seemed to get bigger!
Tell us a bit about it.
I'm incredibly proud of it - it's the culmination of 25 years in the kitchen, my 25th cookbook and 20 years since I published The Best of Annabel Langbein: Great Food for Busy Lives. In it, I have set out to show people how easy it is to cook simple, good food and at the same time live more resourcefully and healthily.
It's a visually luscious book with beautiful photos to inspire, combined with easy, no-fail recipes and hundreds of tips and tricks that will make you a better cook.
One of my favourite features is the 'springboard' concept, where I show variations on a technique so people can make it their own.
Increasing issues around food intolerances, as well as the rising popularity of vegetarianism and veganism mean that within a household people often eat differently so I have addressed this with separate indexes for these special categories.
This book is close to my heart - it contains my favourite and most popular recipes from the past 20 years, retested and updated for a modern world, plus dozens of new recipes, which represent how I like to cook today.
What are some food trends you don't like?
I really don't like the way food has become so trendy and often elitist. Good food should be the right of everyone.
What's your favourite meal?
I love going up to my vege garden and seeing what's ready and ripe right now - it's so inspiring and gives me this really satisfying sense of connectedness to nature.
I might pick sun-ripened tomatoes, crispy cucumber, fat sweet red onions and lots of mint and coriander to toss together with quickly grilled beef steaks for a vibrant thai beef salad or a big bunch of bok choy for my bok choy and prawn risotto, or pumpkin, celery and carrots for a rib-sticking lamb and barley soup in the middle of winter. So much of my cooking is produce-driven these days with less focus on meat.
What's the most unusual ingredient you have cooked with?
Recently, for my book launch at Saan restaurant in Ponsonby, Auckland, we cooked with ant eggs. I was really dubious about trying them but they tasted like peanut butter!
Now that you are a household name how much time do you actually get to spend in the kitchen?
I'm in there every day - you'd be hard-pressed to keep me out. I always feel so anchored when I am cooking and it gives this simple, really pleasing rhythm to the day.
If you could have dinner with anyone in the world who would it be?
Leonardo DiCaprio - he is galvanising his following in such intelligent ways around sustainability, and doing really smart things in the not-for-profit space as well as doing some clever things around commercialising this focus. I'm sure he would have some great dinner-time stories to tell as well.
Hawke's Bay is renowned for its fresh produce and top-class wine. Have you tried any of it?
I love it. The Hawke's Bay has always been the fruit bowl of NZ and now there are so many more layers.
For my TV series The Free Range Cook: Through the Seasons, we came and made three programmes in the Hawke's Bay. It was spring and we had a fabulous time picking strawberries and organic asparagus, going fishing and seeing how grass-fed wagyu beef is produced. I'm looking forward to being back!
What's your next project?
I'm heading off to Bermuda around the time of the America's Cup for an event in relation to an exciting sustainability initiative there.
