New book celebrates healthy, local Pacific cuisines
A new book by a well-known Pacific chef and culinary educator not only celebrates the natural flavours of oceanic cuisines but strongly urges people to eat healthy, local and seasonal foods.
Hawaiian born Colin Chung has been travelling the Pacific Islands for several years as a hospitality consultant and trainer. Moving to New Zealand from his homeland in the 1980s, Colin settled in New Zealand where he has run several successful cafes and bars, including the legendary Vinnies in Raglan, about 150km southwest of Auckland.
Besides advising major hospitality establishments, he has conducted training for Pacific chefs through NGOs and Pacific based organisations like SPTO (South Pacific Tourism Organisation), APTC (Australia Pacific Training College) and Pacific TAFE besides others.
The exercise of compiling the 102-page recipe book titled Kana Vinaka took five years while he saved recipes and validated techniques, developing strategies, concepts and philosophies for his training programmes across the Pacific.
The inspiration for the book came from the poor menus that he encountered, especially in the small locally owned establishments; the nearly 80 per cent proportion of foods that is imported into the islands to both feed the tourists and the locals alike and the resultant high level of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the islands.
The high content of processed, salt and sugar laden imported foods in the islands is what prompted Mr Chung to compile recipes both traditional and modern around the naturally nutritious foods abundantly available locally.
“The lack of awareness of how else to use the abundant local produce, except in traditional ways, and finally as a way of building local economies for farmers, fishermen, growers, distributors, market gardeners,” is what drove him to write the book, Mr Chung says.
The book is targeted equally at the hospitality industry, the general public, particularly the housewives, foodie-locals and visitors to the idyllic islands. “To be effective in our goals to change the way local people and the visitors eat, we also wanted to have the book serve as a teaching tool or aid. It was difficult to manage, but I think we accomplished a lot of this,” Mr Chung said.