Eating My Words: Ewan McDonald

WE CHATTED on the boat to Waiheke, as you do, if you’ve ever done it. The boat to Waiheke, that is. Matt from the Westmere organic butchery told us how the TV crew had visited their shop over the weekend and filmed everything from the freezers to the calendars. He’d made the star of the show, Herman the Chef, put on one of those funny hats that butchers wear because the Health and Safety regulations make them do it. “You’re not allowed to let your hair get in the meat,” he’d told Herman.

This was funny because Herman is somewhere north of 60, has slightly less hair than Rodney Hide, and can have even less of a sense of humour than Gordon Ramsay.

Matt also told us that several contestants had been in the shop that morning, had wanted to buy lamb racks, and had tried to beat him down on the price. We thought that must be the budget kicking in, because Tom from the Fish Market had a similar experience, though not with lamb racks.

One of the Waiheke tourist operators met us at the ferry and took us up to Cable Bay Winery on a minibus, which – I must be fair here – was in slightly better condition than some of the minibuses that we used to get around Turkey last year.

We sat on the terrace at Cable Bay and learned the first rule of reality TV. There is a lot of sitting around, waiting for things to happen. We sat around and waited for things to happen.

Fortunately one of the staff from the winery took pity on us. “Would you like to see the winelist?” she asked. We would, but only in a professional capacity. I skimmed the list and mentioned the prospect of the winery’s very fine rose to Matt and Tom, and we thought it would be good to test our professional capacities. It was a hot afternoon, after all.

The next lesson in making a TV show was that there are a huge number of people involved, and what appears to be real and spontaneous and unrehearsed requires a reasonable degree of spontaneity and rehearsal on behalf of those people who are waiting to be involved.

Andy from the winery restaurant joined us. I thought filming Andy’s lunchtime would have made an even better reality TV cooking show. He runs one of the best sited restaurants in New Zealand. It is designer cool. It looks down the vines, through the valley to the harbour, past several hundred thousand dollars of kinetic sculpture, across the Hauraki Gulf, past Rangitoto and the Eastern Beaches, to the Skytower and downtown Auckland. The food isn’t at all bad and the wine is extremely drinkable. Especially that rose. On a hot afternoon.

Except that this afternoon they have placed half a dozen chef’s stations down the sweeping garden overlooking the harbour. Each of which has a dead-set flash barbecue, lamb racks etc for the cooking of. And tables with six place-settings each. And about, oh, 40 film crew. While Andy and his staff were serving 265 lunch guests. They expect 50 or so at a Wednesday lunch. If Andy was ever so mildly fraught, he covered it well. We sympathised. In fact, Tom and Matt and I were so sympathetic that we asked the waitress to get the bottle of rose out of the fridge so we could sympathise some more.

Then we had to be coached in how to walk across the entrance to the winery, to stand, and to say our names. You may laugh: you have never been on reality TV. This took several goes. Or takes, as we call them in the business.

Herman made small talk with each of us. We were filmed trying to make small talk back to Herman. Herman is very big in the Netherlands. He is as big as Jamie Oliver, and Gordon Ramsay, and Nigella Lawson combined, and that is not a visual picture that I care to conjure up, and nor should you. We learned that you should not try to be funnier than Herman.

We were taken to the furthest of the five tables and told what would happen next. The maitre d’ half of the couple would come out, explain what the chef half of the couple was cooking, and “sell” us the meal and its wine. We would do this five times.

At the end of the exercise, we would have five choices of a meal; we would have to pick one but we weren’t allowed to tell the other judges which. We would be taken off to a quiet corner, asked on camera which meal or table we’d selected, and be asked to explain why.

For the couples, the killer blow would be that we’d all go back at Table 1, where Herman would ask which judges had chosen that meal … and so on, all the way through to Table 5.

It could be that five of us would choose, say, Table 2. Which would mean that four couples were left high and dry. Or that two would pick, say, Table 1, and then the last four couples would sweat on the idea that there’d be no one left to sit at their table … and all of this, remember, while the cameras were running and their dreams of a year’s working holiday in New Zealand, and the fantasy of emigrating here permanently, were evaporating faster than my sunblock.

MATT from the organic butchery had done his job very well. Three of the five chefs decided to prepare lamb dishes. One, bravely, was going to cook a seafood extravaganza of which the star would be abalone … sorry, paua fritters. The last had devised a snapper and salad dish.

We were walked through the tables, through the dishes. We made our choices – no conferring – and went, one by one, to tell Herman about them.

I went for Table 3. Why? “Herman, the first thing we eat with is our eyes. The table was stunning.” They had dressed it with white gladioli, the maitre d’ had carefully and clearly described a dish of red snapper in a coconut crust; curry-infused rice; watermelon, tomato and cucumber salad with warm flat green beans. Most of the produce had come from the surrounding water or land. The wine match was Cable Bay’s viognier. For a hot summer lunch (in reality, as opposed to reality TV, it was now approaching 5pm and we hadn’t eaten anything other than rose), I was sold.

The five judges, and Herman, went back to Table 1 to start that segment that you will know from every reality TV show that you’ve ever watched, even though you pretend to your mates at work or the cafe that you never sit through that rubbish. “Now judges, who chose Table 1?” And so on. And on.

And the strangest thing happened. It wasn’t planned, or cooked up, or rehearsed. Andy chose Table 1. Tom from the fish market chose Table 2, the seafood extravanganza. Ewan, the words guy, chose Table 3 because he liked the presentation and the fact that the meal sounded exciting and different and right for the occasion. Wouter from the posh hotel in Queenstown chose Table 4 because he thought that, of all the couples, if he had to hire one tomorrow, they had done the best job in selling him the food and wine. And Matt, from the organic butchery, chose Table 5 because they were cooking his lamb and they were doing it in an interesting way, with pomegranate and rosemary.

WE ATE our meals in splendid isolation. As splendid as isolation can be, when sitting at a six-seater table, in front of a plush wine estate, with one’s personal waiter and chef, 30 or 40 TV crew hovering around, and a very large camera in front of one’s mouth. Every sip, every nibble, recorded.

With Herman’s offsider, Mr Reimers, who doesn’t have a first name but does like playing golf and was looking forward to getting to Queenstown, poking a microphone in the general direction of one’s moush and asking what one thought of the dish.

Darned fine, actually. Light and fresh and fish and fruit and sweet and sour and just the thing for a Kiwi summer afternoon that had not quite faded, but was sliding over the horizon into evening by the time I ate it.

Herman had his Gordon face on, not his Jamie one, when he asked me what I thought of the dish. Or rather, he told me what he thought. “It was a mess,” he said. “There were too many flavours. The warm beans were just thrown on top of the salad.”

He must have been looking for a sound bite. He got one. “Oh, you Europeans,” I replied. “You’re so old-fashioned. You have to understand you’re on our side of the world now. We don’t have a problem putting fruit and vegetables on one plate. The colours, the taste, the texture … It was an excellent meal.”

But I hadn’t mislaid all my critical faculties in hot sunshine and rapidly warming viognier, pointing out that the coconut was in serious danger of overpowering the gently cooked snapper, which should have been allowed to speak for itself. Like Herman, I could be a mixture of Jamie and Gordon – kindly and crusty.

And that was my 15 minutes of fame. Though, when they’ve edited it, it’ll probably be 45 seconds.

Eating my words: Ewan McDonald

SIMON and Ross and that other bloke? Small time. The biggest name in reality TV – okay, the slightly smaller world of reality food TV in New Zealand is … ahem. Pause for modest cough and look down, blush … Me. Well, me and Matt from the Westmere Organic Butchery and Tom from the Auckland Seafood Market and Andy from the Cable Bay Winery and Wouter from the Sofitel in Queenstown.

You won’t find us on the covers of the glossy mags or the gossip pages of the Sunday papers or the recipe pages in the food sections. But the five of us held the future of five Dutch couples in our hands – or our knives and forks – on a hot summer’s afternoon at a Waiheke winery.

It started about six weeks ago when an email dropped into my inbox from a very nice chap called Wibke at Tourism NZ.

Wibke was co-ordinating an arrangement between our tourist promotion folk and Endemol, the hugely successful Netherlands machine that creates reality TV programmes like Big Brother and I’m A Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here! , and approximately 7000 similar concepts that I’ve never seen but you may have.

Wibke had asked around and a woman who I’d worked with about 30 years ago on another planet (Hamilton) had suggested a bloke called Ewan who might be able to suggest some people in the cuisine trade around Auckland, or have some ideas about food and wine.

I do have many ideas about food. I also have many ideas about wine. So, when the Dutch end of the arrangement flew to New Zealand a couple of months ago to do a recce (see, one afternoon and I know all the terms), we had a pleasant chat in a flash hotel about Kiwi cuisine and wine and places to film the contestants cooking NZ-style meals and who would make good judges.

Jo from Tourism NZ’s London office, came with them, and we briefed the Hollandaise about Kiwi cuisine: sausage rolls, shepherd’s pie, shrimp cocktails, roast leg of lamb, pikelets, scones with jam and cream.

We spoke about the bespoke food shops in Auckland where the contestants might buy ingredients for the meal they’d have to cook on camera. And then Jo shouted a round of drinks. Mac’s Gold, I said. The Dutch – four of ‘em – went for mineral waters. Which is not what you’d expect from television folk, if you believe the gossip pages and glossy mags.

I should tell you what this show was to be about. I’ve pointed out it was a Dutch reality TV show. And I mean Dutch. Not English. I have a handle on French, a smattering of Italian, and a morsel of Turkish, but slap a Dutch menu in front of me and I’d starve. Not to mention the winelist. What’s Dutch for chianti?

It was to be called – and for the next few paragraphs I am quoting from the official Tourism NZ official here – Herman’s Kookieland. The translation supplied was “Herman goes to New Zealand” but I suspect they might have been taking the proverbial, or whatever they call that in Amsterdam.

“Herman Den Blijker is described as a mixture of the hardness of Gordon Ramsey, the kindness of Jamie Oliver – but with the knowledge of a real head chef. He has been a judge on a programme similar to Hell’s Kitchen in the Netherlands , and is a regular face on tv – as the main personality on nine different tv series since between 2006 and 2010. He also has authored several cook books, and has two restaurants in Rotterdam.”

For this show, “More and more Dutchmen and women are playing with the idea of leaving Holland behind for a completely different life somewhere abroad. Among them are many people that dream of living and working in New Zealand .

“Herman den Blijker and hotelier Mr. Reimers meet up with 10 such enthusiastic persons (5 chefs and 5 maitres) and gives them some mouth-watering news: he’s found a beautiful hotel that looks for a chef and a maitre at a wonderful location in New Zealand , the country so many people want to emigrate to. The candidates that show the most talent apart, but also as a team will win the jobs.

“For the contestants the trip will be a tough and intense battle, full of twists and turns but also a journey of culinary discovery, with produce and recipes unique to New Zealand tried and tested along the way.

“The couples/persons compete against one another in a series of different tasks. They’re tested on all aspects of the business, from cooking ability to business instinct, teamwork, customer knowledge and hospitality. They get to know this beautiful, but to them unfamiliar, country. And we’ll be testing them on their ability to make themselves at home here, to adapt to the local customs.”

The winners, of course, get the green cards, or whatever we call them here.

You can see the attraction for our tourism folk. Money couldn’t buy several weeks of exposure for our food, wine, adventure and luxury tourism industries on primetime TV in Europe. Especially our money, against the euro.

I was involved in the first episode, an overview of Auckland and its food, and wine, and gourmet shops. The couples were given a couple of days, an envelope of cash, and several likely addresses. They could go to this fruit and vege place, or that seafood market, or an organic butchery. They had to buy the ingredients in Auckland one morning and cook their Kiwi-style meal for the five judges on 0Waiheke that afternoon.

It was supposed to be a gentle warm-up. Not an Elimination Challenge. No one would be voted off the island (neither Waiheke, nor the North Island). That would start on the next day, and Carly from Tourism NZ would have to ferry the first losers from the Coromandel to Auckland Airport. Two hours in a very small car with a lot of gear that they would have been expecting, or at the very least hoping, to use over the ensuing (or, as it would unfold, not ensuing) four weeks.

Which is what brought me, and Matt, and Tom, and Wouter, and Carly, and Wibke, to the Waiheke ferry dock on a Wednesday afternoon. Carly had made a sign which said, “Dutch Reality TV Show, Meet Here”, to avoid that embarrassing moment when people who’ve never met one another are milling around on a wharf looking for people they’ve only spoken to on email and don’t have a clue what they look like or how to contact them.

Unless they have one another’s cellphone numbers and txt the person standing right next to them. Which is when I discovered that Wibke is not a boy’s name.

TO BE CONTINUED