‘Māori are not a garnish’

Kārena and Kasey Bird have been household names ever since winning MasterChef New Zealand in 2014. But after a decade in the spotlight, the sisters’ recent project, Maumahara, is perhaps their most exposing yet.

It’s the latest of their well-known dinner events, where they treat diners to kai with elements of kōrero, performance and audiovisual storytelling on the side. But for the first time, they’ve used kai to make a political statement.

In this conversation with Siena Yates, Kārena and Kasey break down the unexpected ways their latest dishes tell their stories.

 

Kia ora, kōrua. To start us off, can you tell me how the idea for this particular dinner, Maumahara, came about? It’s safe to say that doing something this personal and political is out of your comfort zone, right?

Kārena: Yeah, I honestly feel like this is the most exposing of our dinners. We share so much of our personal life in the videos we play before each course — we have childhood photos, and our mother is the narrator.

In previous dinner events, we’ve talked about te ao Māori, but in a general sense. We might’ve mentioned Tāwhirimātea and Tangaroa, for example. Now, though, we’re talking about our mum getting strapped for speaking te reo Māori. We’re talking about Te Tiriti. Before, we were more neutral. Māori, but palatable.

Kasey: Neutral in the sense that we were never saying anything pointed. Now, we’re stepping into a space where we’re saying more, and it’s definitely political. That adds pressure because we know some people might find that confronting and uncomfortable. Especially because they’re probably just expecting a cute, fun night out.

We’re okay with that, though. We’ve been heading this way for a while, as a result of our own identity journey. So, stepping over the line, from being palatable to political, has been empowering.

Kārena: It’s also about getting over some people-pleasing tendencies, wanting everyone to be happy and comfortable. But this is just how it is. This is our reality.

What made you feel like this was the time and place to take that step?

Kārena: Looking at the current political climate, you can’t help but go: “What’s our contribution going to be?” There are so many important kaupapa, things that are happening which affect our family, like my nephew and all the kids coming after us.

Kasey: When we finished our reo course Te Tohu Paetahi, our kaiako Ngairo Eruera said: “Okay, so this is the gift you’ve been given, to go on this journey to learn your reo. Now you need to think about what your koha will be back to te ao Māori.”

Not everyone has the chance to create mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga in their lives. The systems and policies we’re living with don’t easily allow that.

But we realised that we’re lucky enough to be able to do that within our mahi, by creating a dinner and sharing our kōrero in a space that is otherwise pretty white. People have bought tickets, they’ve come to the venue, they want the full experience. They’re our captive audience.

All right, let’s talk about some of the dishes then. At the dinner, a video clip plays to introduce the dish and tell some of the story. But talk me through how the food itself contributes to the storytelling. Let’s start with “Toitū: A belated education.”

Kasey: We knew we wanted to do a Te Tiriti dish — and to tie in our theme of Maumahara, which is about memory and nostalgia, I suggested we talk about Mr Becht, our seventh form history teacher at Te Puke High School. Because, honestly, I didn’t learn about Te Tiriti and the two different versions until we were in his class.

Looking back, he was well ahead of his time in terms of how he delivered that lesson and how protective he was of the Māori students in the class. I remember someone asking once: “Why do they have a Māori All Blacks team? Shouldn’t there be an all-white team too?” And Mr Becht just said: “The least we can do is have a space where they can be together in a sport.” I can’t even remember who asked the question, but I’ll always remember his response.

Up until that point, I was probably super naïve and ignorant about a lot of things, and his classes changed the way I looked at the world.

Kārena: In terms of the food itself, we were thinking maybe we’d have a plate full of bland, beige things, and then add different flavours, sauces and native ingredients later to bring some colour to it.

But then that didn’t sit right with us because Māori are not just a kīnaki (garnish). We’re not here to just make Pākehā stuff taste better. We’re our own thing. So we went back to the nexus of Te Tiriti, which is the friction between the translations.

In the reo Pākehā version of the menu, it’s basically “meat and three veg”. But if you read the Māori version, it goes into the details of what is in the dish. So, if you know Māori, you’ll understand better what we’re serving you. But if you don’t, you won’t have that knowledge to compare.

Kasey: The outside of the dish is a chicken roulade, which is just a white sausage-looking thing, but inside it’s tītī, which is so rich and has heaps of flavour. Then we add pikopiko, which is endemic to Aotearoa. So that’s how we struck the balance on the plate, as well as the menu.

Kārena: What’s funny about this dish is that it’s served right after a dish based on a garage party. So we’ve just had photos of people partying, and a live guitar player, and everyone singing along to all these classic garage party songs. And then we’re like: “BAM, Te Tiriti.”

Amazing! Tell me about that dish “Paati i te karaati: Garage party.” 

Kasey: This is an important dish because it reminds us that, even with all the hard things we go through — our language struggles, the failure to uphold Te Tiriti, all the damaging things this government is doing — there are still so many moments of joy within our lives. And that’s what the garage party dish represents.

It was also about bringing manaakitanga to our guests because that’s always at the core of our mahi. It provides a bit of balance and joy for the diners too. We go from stories about Anzac and the Māori Batallion, and the waterways around Maketū, to this, which just lifts the wairua a bit before we go back to the serious stuff.

And, honestly, that’s very much the journey of what it is to be Māori.

Kārena: It’s like: “This is so beautiful! This is so tiring. This is so amazing! This is so shit.”

The political stuff is so important. But you’ve got to have some fun times. You’ve got to bond through the struggle. Because it’s really tiring. I’m sick of protesting. I’m sick of writing submissions. I’m so sick of it all. I can’t even watch the news anymore because it’s so depressing.

Kasey: While we were working on our plan for Maumahara, depending on the day and what was happening, it could feel like, what’s the point? But the point is the good parts. Like the garage parties. The food at degustations can get really serious, too. So we wanted to keep the menu fun and recognisable, like having a good ol’ pie.

Kārena: I made over 600 pies in one week. I was my own one-woman Maketū pie shop.

And what else do you have when you’re in a garage? Chips and dip. So we ordered some of our own Eta chips and thought about how to make a classic Kiwi dip better. To me, it’s already perfect. But then we figured, you can’t go wrong with some creamed paua.

There’s one dish with a very strong visual. Tell me about “Tōku reo, tōku ohooho: Wash your mouth out with soap.”

Kasey: Yeah, that dish is playful because it not only looks like soap with bubbles, it’s also a palate cleanser.

We were thinking of a new and interesting way to represent the reo Māori language movement. My mum told us about how sometimes they would get their mouths washed out with soap for speaking the reo at school, so we decided to do a play on that.

The dish is made with white chocolate and passionfruit, and it has really fresh flavours to represent that feeling of cleansing and being refreshed.

Kārena: We also have kawakawa in there, which is a rongoā that flushes out all the negative stuff.

Kasey: It also has a kind of numbing property too, so you’ve got that juxtaposition of sweetness and coolness, and something that feels a bit tingly, a bit off.

It’s light and fun, but it’s also a stark reminder for people of the realities of the Māori language movement and the fact that it isn’t ancient history. Our mum is a living person who went through those struggles. And we ourselves had to learn our own reo as adults.

Kārena: There’s a line in the intro clip for this one where my mum says: “Twenty or 30 years ago, I walked into my first classroom as a reo Māori teacher, and 20 years before that I was getting my knuckles strapped for speaking it.” And people are like: “Oooh, crap.”

But we end on a positive note. “My mum got strapped for speaking Māori, but now she’s a teacher and we speak Māori.” We end with that note of hope.

I assume that’s why the final course, dessert, is called “Te Anamata: The Future”?

Kasey: Correct. We wanted to look at all the cool, positive things that are happening now and can happen in the future.

For this dish, we worked with one of the ladies who works in the kitchen with us. Her name’s Sarah Asher, she’s from Tūwharetoa, and she won the first season of New Zealand’s Hottest Home Baker in 2013.

Because she’s such an amazing baker, we asked for some help, and after we explained the concept of the dish, she suggested a dessert in three parts, creating a journey on the plate.

Part 1: “Not the Chocolate Chip in Your Vanilla Cookie” (Spiced Chocolate Brownie with Candied Nuts, Meringue Shards, Custard)

Kārena: This part is based on something Sarah said in a meeting: “I’m not the chocolate chip in your vanilla cookie.” It was during a public sector leadership hui.

Kasey: Her kōrero was about how the system isn’t designed to include us, and it’s not enough for others to just sprinkle us in. We need systems built from our own whakaaro, from the ground up, by Māori for Māori.

This has been proven time and again. Take Te Aho Matua and kura kaupapa Māori, for example. They’ve got the best stats in terms of educational outcomes. The school with the highest NCEA pass rate last year was a kura kaupapa Māori.

So the first part of the dessert is about Māori resistance to a world that isn’t made for us. It’s asserting that we are not a kīnaki — we are more than just the added extra.

Part 2: “Kua Hinātore” (Lemon Bar with Meringue Drops & Fruit Jellies)

Kasey: The second part is about critical consciousness. Kua Hinātore means a kind of awakening or enlightenment. It’s that next part of stepping into your identity, making changes to lean into your Māoritanga, learn your language, and have that consciousness of the power within yourself.

Kārena: That idea is reflected in the lemon. Sarah makes the most delicious lemon slice. It’s so moist, sharp, zingy, and fresh. And she also makes a mango jelly with citric acid that feels like sherbet. It makes you feel a kind of tingly sensation.

Kasey: So when you eat it, you do feel like: “Whoa, kua hinātore!” Eating it is like a sense of awakening, and that experience of critical consciousness.

Part 3: “Kia Hihiri Ai Tātou” (Gougère Filled with Ricotta, Cream Cheese & Herbs, Stained Glass with Pear & Plum Sauce)

Kasey: The last part is about transformation. It’s a cheese course, essentially, which generally is what people have at the end of a dinner, but it’s inside a profiterole, which is an eclair pastry.

So the dish embodies the sense of transformation. It represents the next phase after resistance and critical consciousness, the time when we embrace our true selves and mana motuhake.

Ka rawe, ngā mihi nui ki a kōrua for such a fascinating kōrero. I know a lot of people will be keen to experience Maumahara for themselves now. Are there plans to take it on the road? Or are there any other events for people to keep an eye out for?

Ngā mihi. Yes, we’ll be taking Maumahara to some other locations in Aotearoa. After Wellington On a Plate, we’ve had a lot of interest in taking this kaupapa to different rohe, and we’re looking forward to sharing this with more people. We don’t have the exact locations yet, but we’ll be keeping everyone updated through our Instagram @karenakasey or on the Kitchen Takeover Facebook page. So stay tuned for more details!

 

Karena and Kasey (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Manawa, Ngāpuhi) are chefs who’ve been bringing te ao Māori to the culinary world stage ever since winning New Zealand MasterChef in 2014. They are culinary experts and reo Māori advocates, and have published two best-selling cookbooks, For the Love of . . . and Hungry. They’ve also hosted their own award-winning TV series Karena and Kasey’s Kitchen Diplomacy, in which they travelled to more than 50 destinations to explore food and culture around the world. They’re now working on their next cookbook which will be entirely in te reo Māori.

E-Tangata, 2024