Dick Frizzell with his print The Cook's Companion from The Great New Zealand Cookbook. Picture / Supplied.
Dick Frizzell with his print The Cook's Companion from The Great New Zealand Cookbook. Picture / Supplied.
Murray Thom and Dick Frizzell speak to Fiona Ralph about collaborating on The Great New Zealand Cookbook.
New Zealand's biggest selling book this year, The Great New Zealand Cookbook has sold over 100,000 copies in four months. With eight weeks at No 1, and five print runs, it would appear everyone wants a piece of our culinary history.
Why the fuss, you ask? Think 80 of ourmost iconic, celebrated chefs and restaurants; recipes, snapshots and personal notes from each of them. From restaurants Logan Brown, The French Cafe and Clooney, to celebrity chefs Peter Gordon, Al Brown, Simon Gault, and Viva's own Nici Wickes.
There's iconic joints like The White Lady and the Mangonui Fish Shop, and national treasures such as Oamaru's Riverstone Kitchen, Auckland's Mexican Specialities, and Christchurch's Dimitris Greek Food. A veritable who's who of New Zealand cuisine.
It's an ambitious project for anyone - but for producer Murray Thom, with no experience in food, and a long-standing career in the music industry, it seemed crazy. But with The Great New Zealand Songbook under his belt, he had a template for success. All he had to do was swap songs for recipes.
The "massive career highlight" was an idea that came to him in 2011, two years after the Songbook was released.
"Our top chefs get a lot more publicity in New Zealand than our top recording artists," he says. "There are many similarities between [the two]. They are both incredibly focused, highly motivated, hard-working and share a very clear vision regarding their respective craft."
With producer and art director Tim Harper, who had created the Songbook with Thom, videographer Hayley Thom and photographer Lottie Hedley, Thom embarked on a whirlwind roadtrip up and down the country, meeting the chefs, and recording their recipes. The result is a fascinating insight into some of the most creative minds in the industry, a true keepsake.
The Great New Zealand Cookbook. Picture / Supplied.
When it came to the cover art, Thom immediately turned to celebrated artist Dick Frizzell, whose iconic Four Square man had graced the cover of
. Thom visited the artist at his Haumoana home in Hawkes Bay, workshopping the cover and inside prints Frizzell would create.
"We all worked incredibly well together from the start [of The Great New Zealand Songbook] and five years later we are still very happily working together. It has been great to collaborate with Dick again. He is very quick, intuitive and lots of fun to work with."
The sentiment is echoed by Frizzell, who says it was a privilege to be involved in the project. "To be a part of something so big is a wonderful thing. Murray Thom is a genius."
He adds that it was the idea of working with Thom again that drew him to the project. "After the amazing adventure of the Songbook it was kind of inevitable," he says, although it was a much bigger challenge this time.
Dick Frizzell with his print Grub's Up from The Great New Zealand Cookbook. Picture / Supplied.
"Tim Harper and I traded and developed ideas for days ... back and forth, back and forth, moving through some crazy phases until we had it. Tim's green teatowel nailed it."
His clever prints take inspiration from this humble green and white checkered teatowel, along with classic cooking guides, and a map of New Zealand which manages to fit the roots of each chef and restaurant featured.
"I trawled through my enormous reference library of New Zealand vernacular signage photos [that I've] gathered over many years, and the cookbook logo just kinda shook out," he explains. "That amazing back cover I can't explain ... the word balloon thing came from somewhere deep down."
