Soup

Red lentils and the kererū gliding and dipping
Lime juice and the family butters bread at the table
Canned tomatoes and outside the vegetables freshly planted
Paprika cumin cinnamon for our memory banks
Fennel seeds to dance on the tongue
Greek yoghurt and it’s song and taste and storytelling
Coconut milk for each heart beating

New asparagus with our footsteps on the black sand lifting
Sautéed leeks and we hear the ocean waves curling
Courgettes added and a small child tumbles
Cannellini beans for the bunched clouds and the deep blue
Chopped garlic and we’re replaying the beach dogs that yelp and spring
Dried tarragon and it’s Te Henga dotterel defending and skittering
Parmigiano for my daughter with the Siena tablecloth gifted
Chicken broth for each heart beating

Onions sweetening and we are making soup together
Chilli flakes for our daughter slicing and stirring
Chickpeas and black beans draining while the bush tūī chorus
Drained tomatoes for my weak hands holding Gaza thoughts
Corn kernels falling in the pot and it’s sweet and sour and blue sky
Perfect avocado sliced but my words cannot fill the gap
Crisp tortilla chips and I see mothers weeping and fathers howling
Fresh coriander washed and dried and there’s the child who cannot understand
Lime juice and it’s testing and tasting
Grating cheese and the pīwakawaka flutters a nose breath away
Chopping garlic and in my midnight dream I’m carrying a soup mountain for Gaza
Paprika and cumin waft and we become story flashbacks
Vegetable broth for each heart beating

Paula Green

Enjoy: Food Worth Sharing with People You Love by Kelly Gibney
(Beatnik Publishing, 2023)

How to review a cookbook? How to review a cookbook at a time when the news of the world is weight, and I am learning to navigate the long road after a bone marrow transplant. My tastebuds are haywire, I eat like a sparrow, certain foods are off limits, my energy half fills a cup but cooking is joy and vital family connection, it is memory and story, flavour and comfort.

Enjoy: Food Worth Sharing with People You Love by Kelly Gibney is sublime. I love this recipe book so much. The litmus test for a good cookbook is the way the ingredients leap off the page and activate your taste buds. All my favourite ingredients are here in various combinations: pulse, lentils, fresh herbs and vegetables, comfort spices, coconut, yoghurt, stocks, chocolate … and meat for the meat eaters in the family and can be adapted for those who don’t.

What better way to review a cookbook than to cook from it. So my adult daughter and I dived in and made three soups over the weekend to share with my partner/her dad: ‘Red Lentil, Chorizo, Rosemary & Lemon Soup’, ‘A Late Spring Vegetable & White Bean Soup’, and ‘Tortilla Soup’. They were sensational. The recipes are easy to follow and easy to make. The soups were perfect for my energy cup. The layered tastes comforting, nourishing, warming. We declared, after each one, this is the best soup we have tasted in ages! My daughter took photographs to tempt your tastebuds!

Ah! Soup heaven. Next up, my daughter will try some meat recipes, while I am keen to make the broccoli and cheese fritters, the spiced fish tacos, the black bean salad, the broccoli spinach and coconut soup. Recipes are so often springboards as you tweak and pivot to suit – and that is what works so beautifully here.

As I was making the three soups, a poem bubbled and simmered and surfaced. Food and cooking is so entwined with living and feeling, poetry is a perfect form of celebrating it. Thus my soup poem appears above, with all the life and heart connections that arose as I cooked.

Kelly’s fabulous flavoursome Enjoy is now on kitchen replay in our house. Yes it is absolutely food worth sharing with people you love and it is also food worth cooking with people you love. The photographs in the book are so tempting as you can see in the copy open on our stove. I highly recommend it!

Kelly Gibney has appeared on THREE and TVNZ and you will regularly hear her on RNZ. Kelly’s background was previously in hospitality in New York, Melbourne and Auckland. She ahs been a judge for Metro Magazine’s Restaurant Of The Year Awards and enjoys hosting and MCing food and hospitality industry-related events. Her recipes have also been published in the RNZ Cookbook.

Beatnik Publishing page