We are watching this event with bated breath because, as you know, my old highschool bestie, Robert Oliver, has been nominated for Best Cookbook in the World for 2010.
My Kwan Yin
aiming her Abundance Jar
at Robert's beautiful book
By tonight we will know. So exciting!
Darling Boy's very nervous since he's up against the Big Boys, books like The New York Times Essential Cookbook so now humbly writes "This book is our competition at the GOURMAND AWARDS for BEST COOKBOOK IN THE WORLD 2010. I am in awe of this book, so won't feel miffed if we come 2nd or 3rd to this calibre! I mean, I want to win!!! But this book is a class act, all the way."
Poor honey. It's the Oscars and he's nominated against Meryl Streep.
Nonetheless, fingers crossed! Go ROBERT! Go Pacific Cuisine!
Yup, it's not just Robert on the line here. It's the entire Pacific. Like he says "To think that Me'a Kai is now out there "in this world" (of haut cuisine). Win or lose this award, Pacific Cuisine now has it's rightful place at the table with the French and Italians."
We always knew that our food ranked high on the scale of deliciousness, but now the rest of the world gets to know it too.
Pacific food has never got a good rap. Back in Brisbane, in the early 80s, I threw a dinner party where I served up entirely Pacific Cuisine. All my guests were supposedly Global Citizens, all of whom had widely traveled and knew a lot about food. I had kokoda as an entree, followed by crab palisami in meti (that's meti on the cover of Me'a Kai) with steamed daruka, dalo and okra, and ended with a soursop icecream with sticky Fijian pudding. Or that's what I prepared. And you wouldn't believe the trouble I went to to source these ingredients.
And what happened?
No one would eat a thing. When I brought out the kokoda, "Raw fish! You expect us to eat raw fish!" these sophisticated palates said, so that sensational dish went by the board. And when I brought out the palisami (which is so very difficult to get right), "It looks like what you find inside baby's nappy." some smart aleck said, and then all the jokes started about what baby had been eating.
Since I was, by then, so angry and hating them all so much, I stuck everything back in the fridge and ordered in a pizza instead. Yup, that was these dicks real idea of international cuisine!
And the next day I rang decent Fiji folk who already knew what a treat this all was and invited them to dinner instead. And, since all Pacific cuisine - always delicious - tastes even better after a night in the fridge, this second dinner party was a wild success.
I learned my lesson from that and never again tried to introduce Pacific Cuisine to anyone who didn't already know it is unbelievably and amazingly fabulous.
But that's what Robert has done with "Me'a Kai"; introduced the world to our amazing food, and now the world is rewarding him for it. Yes, we know, even being nominated is a very great honour but wouldn't it be fabulous to take top prize.
And if it does - if the folk with the best palates on earth give this food the ultimate thumbs up - I get to mentally give the finger to all those hideous dinner guests who were there at my table for my Great Pacific Dine-Out ... and life doesn't get any better than that!
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