Kelda hains
“Cosmic Pancakes” Annual 2
Kelda has been mucking around in the kitchen since she was young. She calls that her real cooking education. Her first cooking lessons came from books and Vogue Entertaining Guide. She has tended edible gardens since an early age, too, and currently has three gardens and a community orchard on the go. Kelda co-owns and cooks at two Wellington restaurants – Nikau Café and Rita. Her cooking philosophy is built around using locally sourced, fresh, and seasonal produce.
“My mother worked in a library, so we were a library-going family. We always came home with masses of books. My mother says that from twelve years old, I was getting recipe books out. I was particularly interested in food from other cultures. I loved the food in fiction, too – all those pies in Farmer Boy (by Laura Ingalls Wilder). I loved reading about pioneering people, their living off the land and their food preparation – churning butter, building ice houses, making ice cream. And the abundance of harvest time! The food was both exotic and familiar, as was the food in English stories. Enid Blyton picnics always had lashings of lemonade!”