item details
Hicks Smith and Sons Limited; publisher; 1967; Auckland
Overview
This hard-cover book, titled Meals with the Family, was published by Hicks, Smith and Sons Ltd in 1967. The cover shows the author, Alison Holst, seated at a dining table laden with food, serving three young children. A loaf of bread and a bowl of salad are visible. A residential garden can be seen through a window behind the table, and a chest of drawers with flowers and a fruit bowl on top is positioned to the left.
The book contains recipes for 'Soup and Fish,' 'Lunch and Tea Dishes,' 'Meat and Vegetables,' 'Puddings - hot and cold,' and 'In Betweens.' Each section begins with a colour photograph of a featured dish. Black and white photographs and sketches are included throughout.
Queen of the Kitchen
Meals with the Family was one of the first books written by Dame Alison Holst, a beloved New Zealand food writer and television personality. Holst was instrumental in introducing New Zealanders to new ingredients and cuisines, providing recipes that ‘helped move our food from dull uniformity’ and encouraged at-home cooks to embrace variety (New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Profile). As David Veart explains in First Catch Your Weka, ‘New Zealand’s food culture has changed more in the last 30 years than in the previous 100,’ and Holst was ‘hugely influential’ in inspiring that revolution (Veart 2008, 295, 256).Meals with the Family includes a number of recipes with international influences, although Holst herself notes that these are not necessarily authentic. Of her recipe for Pork, Vegetables and Noodles she writes that ‘because I haven’t yet been overseas, and haven’t had the chance of seeing for myself what people in other countries eat, I try not to use recipes for "Indian" curry, "Chinese" Chicken etc. I feel that such recipes have been handed from person to person and changed so much on the way that they often must bear very little resemblance to the original. I enjoy these variations a great deal, but would rather call them by other names.’ Although not authentic, these recipes did introduce domestic cooks to ingredients such as soy sauce and garlic, which in the 1960s were considered exotic, and inspired a gradual transformation in New Zealand meals.
While embracing new ingredients and technologies, Holst was always careful to keep her audience in mind. She targeted ordinary home cooks, and aimed to provide recipes that could become part of their everyday meal pattern. As explained in the preface to Meals with the Family, "these are not ‘special’ recipes. There are plenty of books full of mouth-watering concoctions, but frequently the ingredients are so exotic and expensive, or the methods so time-consuming that the busy housewife and mother must be content with imagining the final product. I really enjoy cooking and don’t mind fiddling around for hours with a special occasion meal. For every meal like this, though, I cook thirty or forty ordinary family meals, using recipes such as those which follow" (Preface). Holst recognised the tremendous amount of time and energy New Zealand cooks devoted to everyday meals, and her pragmatic approach to cooking, exemplified by Meals for the Family, proved very successful. During her almost fifty-year career Holst published more than 100 books, and in 2011 she was named Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
References
- Hill, Julie. Biography of Alison Holst. NZ on Screen. https://www.nzonscreen.com/person/alison-holst/biography
- Holst, Alison with Barbara Larson. 2011. A Home-Grown Cook: The Dame Alison Holst Story. Amberley: Hyndman Publishing.
- New Zealand Portrait Gallery. Profile of Dame Alison Holst. http://www.nzportraitgallery.org.nz/portraits-online/portraits/dame-alison-holst
- Veart, David. 2008. First Catch your Weka: A Story of New Zealand Cooking. Auckland: Auckland University Press.