Joan Bishop: Home cooking Southland style

Joan Bishop is a true southern woman, born, educated and raised in Dunedin. She has been a school teacher and air hostess and, for the past 25 years, a foodie. Joan's most recent book, A Southern Woman's Kitchen, is a collection of her favourite recipes. We put the following questions to Joan

WHAT IS YOUR FIRST MEMORY OF FOOD?

I was 4 years old and walking home from morning kindy. My mother had asked me to collect the bread from the corner dairy. In those days the loaf was called a quarter brown. It smelled wonderfully warm and yeasty. By the time I reached home I had eaten all the lovely soft, fresh bread from the middle of the loaf.

WHO WAS THE MAJOR INFLUENCE IN YOUR LOVE OF COOKING?

My mother was a good and conscientious cook, but not an inspired one. Cooking was not her creative outlet, she was a florist and a potter. During the 1950s she attended a series of lectures organised by the Otago University Home Science Extension on the importance of a healthy diet. This was quite enlightened for the time. My father had a productive vegetable garden and my mother preserved fruit, made jam, and baked biscuits, cakes and sometimes bread. It wasn't until my mid-teens that I tasted an authentic Indian curry. My boyfriend's parents had lived in Malaysia for many years and Sunday dinners at their home opened a whole new world to me.

WHAT INGREDIENT COULD YOU NOT LIVE WITHOUT?

Lemons, I love their intense flavour, which adds zing to so many dishes.

IF YOU GO TO A RESTAURANT, WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO EAT?

I love our tender full-flavoured lamb. It can be cooked in so many different ways and is infinitely variable.

IN THE COOKING WORLD, WHO DO YOU MOST ADMIRE?

Jane Grigson. I read her book English Food while I was on holiday in 1982. Her wide knowledge of European cuisine was inspirational. I was so inspired I enrolled at Otago University and did stage one papers in what was then called the School of Home Science.

WHAT DISH DO YOU MOST LOVE TO COOK?

I really enjoy the creative side of cooking so I am always experimenting with new recipes.

I tend not to return to the old favourites except perhaps when we are having friends over for a meal and I am short of time. Then a few of my best-loved recipes are the ones I turn to: chickpea and grape salad with pomegranate molasses, saffron roulade with smoked salmon, chicken with cannellini beans and capsicum in red wine, jiffy chocolate cake.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE COOKBOOK?

I have an eclectic collection of cookbooks and many favourites, including a large number of New Zealand food writers who I think are world class.

I admire Nigella Lawson's writing style. It's the sort of cookbook I like to read in bed. I love her stylish, racy and sometimes voluptuous prose. She is always an engrossing read, entertaining and fun, and so often makes me smile.

HAVE YOU A GUILTY PLEASURE?

Yes, of course. The foodie ones are blue cheese and liquorice allsorts, not eaten together.

A Southern Woman's Kitchen

by Joan Bishop, Random House, $39.99