It’s usually a bit of a battle to get Mr NQN to go along to a cooking class. He’s innately resistant to the idea of cooking but the lure of a cooking class at Peter Gordon’s restaurant Dine was hard for him to resist as he considers the meal cooked by him at Longrain among his favourites. Peter Gordon is one of NZ’s most successful chefs and one of most famous chef that they’ve exported. He does a mixture of Asian fusion cuisine and owns The Providores in London as well as being the former owner of the Sugar Club.
His restaurant Dine by Peter Gordon sits in the SkyCity Grand Hotel where we’re staying. It’s an early start this Sunday morning at 8:30am and the class is to conclude at 2:30pm after a spot of lunch-that we cook ourselves!
Sous Chef Nancye Pirini
We’re greeted by the offer of a cup of coffee or tea by Gregory, the maitre’d. He hands us a striped apron and invites us into the kitchen where Nanyce and Giann introduce themselves. Nancye is the sous chef here and Giann works with her and they have a great rapport between them. She tells us that the kitchen itself is like a Fishtank so they are constantly being watched (which also spurs them to call each other names from Finding Nemo). Do they ever get people knocking on the window? All the time apparently including the host of Whose Line is It Anyway Wayne Brady who was staying at the hotel.
They show us the mise en place with the ingredients that we are to use today. Most of them are familiar albeit in a slightly different context than we’re used to. The first item is the plantain for which Nancye shows us two varieties, a long one and a short one the size of a sugar banana. The larger one has a more potato like taste to it whereas the smaller one has more flavour to it.
She shows us the tamarind paste that she makes up by mixing it with boiling water and allowing it to break then and then purees and sieves it. This can last for a long time in the fridge if the very top is covered with cling wrap. There are also wood ear mushrooms which have been rehydrated as well as gai larn.
Wood ear mushrooms
Rehydrated!
Today we’re making two of Peter’s signature dishes, a hapuka dish and a tapioca dessert. If you can’t get hapuka, you can use blue eyed cod instead. They buy relatively small quantities to keep the fish fresh and for Hapuka they would buy 2-3 kilos worth a week. Everything is made in house except for the jus which they are not allowed to make for safety reason as a jus boils for hours overnight and they aren’t allowed to keep a flame unattended in a hotel.
Hapuka crust
I do a bit of rough chopping of leeks and get the coconut broth ready while the others make the hapuka crust made using tofu, hapuka trimmings, shichimi, salt, crab and ginger. We tie a knot in a pandan leaf and then pound it with the base of a knife to help bring out the flavours and we peel the plaintain with a vegetable peeler as it doesn’t peel like a regular banana.
Pounding the pandan to get the flavour out
Whizzing the coconut broth
Nancye shows us the items that the pastry chef is making here including a lemon and olive oil cake, lemongrass and ginger truffles and all sorts of other goodies. The other group are shown to roll the hapuka with the crust in the panko crumbs but this isn’t done until just before it is cooked so that it doesn’t go soggy. As our coconut broth has been simmering away and is now ready, we strain it through a sieve and then whizz it with a stick blender.
After our little introduction we get a little break for morning tea (yes it’s really not hard work is it?) and we are served some lovely cakes: an opera cake, raspberry lamington and a kiwifruit cake which is my favourite as the cake is beautifully buttery. We’re shown a bottle of Peter’s Waitiki Braids wine from his vineyard in the Waiktiki Valley and they make a Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and a Reisling. It is situated in North Otago which is said to be an upcoming wine region.
Deep frying curry leaves
The finished curry leaves
We head aback in Giann shows us how to deep fry the curry leaves as a garnish. Using a strainer we remove them from the oil, place latex gloves on and then remove them easily from the stalk (the stalks themselves are incredibly fragrant too and can be crushed using a mortar and pestle). We cut up the wood ear fungus mushrooms by rolling them up like herbs and slicing them thinly (I do a terrible job, they’d fire me for that).
Removing the vanilla seeds from the bean
Macadamia crumble
It’s dessert prep time so we take a look at the ingredients that we’ll be using for the mango, avocado and yuzu sorbet. Nancye shows us the Yuzu juice which comes either salted or unsalted. They also show us the mango puree that they get from France. I make the macadamia crumble while the rest scrape a vanilla bean to make the mango sorbet. We boil the tapioca balls until they’re ready, drain and rinse them and then place them in sweetened coconut cream and give them time to absorb the coconut cream.
And a helpful tip when cooking tapioca? Add a pinch of salt to help the tapioca cook all the way through! They speed this up by placing it on an ice bath. I dice up the mango finely and then Mark Wiley the Executive Chef of the Sky City Grand comes in to give us a tour of the “Backstage”.
We take a look into the 17 kitchens at Sky City which employ 220 chefs (including 30 pastry chefs) and 70 stewards and they produce a range of things from meat pies to $40 mains to the food at Air New Zealand’s Koru lounges with a total of 2,000 meals a day.
There are 3,500 staff members, 40 million plates and volumes are astounding. Ice carving is a speciality there with a chef taking to a large hunk of ice. And did you know that not any kind of ice can be used, it has to be frozen a certain way and at a certain PH level to avoid splintering!
Chocolate chef
A little snack for us
The larder produces 2,500 sandwiches a a day and he shows us the specially bred ducks ideal for Peking Duck. They go through 1.8 tonnes of shanks a week, a tonne of chuck steak and he shows us a piece of equipment used to cook these in bulk that is worth a quarter of a million dollars. Security is strict too with access to fridges and freezers and areas swipe card controlled and payroll is controlled by fingerprint. Interestingly they only have electricity here as it is too difficult to set gas pipes in the towers are they move slightly. At almost everywhere that we stop, there is a tray of goodies for us to eat from macarons, to chocolate to the chocolate spoons above.
After our little tour we sit down in the restaurant to our entree that Nancye has prepared for us. It’s a scallop dish based on a Peter Gordon recipe that he invented 15 years ago.The Alaskan scallop is plump and seared and combined with the flavours of beetroot, ginger and chilli. Yes chilli, you see New Zealand doesn’t really do a lot of spicy food and it’s the first spiciness we’ve had pass our lips in the whole trip so we’re ecstatic!
After that we strap our aprons on again and roll the already prepared hapuka into the panko breadcrumbs and fry them breadcrumb side down. They’ll then be finished off in the oven.
We quickly stir fry the gai larn and mushrooms and then ladle some of the sauce onto the plate, place three discs of golden sweet potato onto the sauce and then top that with the stir fried vegetables and then set the fish on top of it and then top it with the fried curry leaves.
Signature Hapuka served with Johanneshof Marlborough Gewurztraminer 2008
The fish is delicious, not dry in the slightest and thick and cooked all the way through. The curry has a slight sweetness that is well balanced and the fish has a richness from the crab meat. The wood ear fungus gives it a light crunch and the sweet potato gives it a sweetness and the fried curry leaves give it a slightly earthy flavour.
Our dessert is of course last and all we have to do here is plate it up. They’re served in stemless glasses and we first layer it with the diced mango, then the coconut tapioca. Then we sprinkle the macadamia crumble around it and then the yuzu, mango and avocado sorbet and we then finish it with a drizzle of a flavoured oil. Now at first I didn’t think that this would work. Would the buttery crumble work with the coconut and the mango and slightly tart flavours of the sorbet. But it does of course!
We end off the day (all 6 hours which have passed by in a flash) with each of us getting a signed copy of Peter’s cookbook. And Mr NQN is certainly happy that he came along this morning.
So tell me Dear Reader, is your other half very enthusiastic about cooking?
NQN and Mr NQN travelled to and explored New Zealand as guests of Tourism New Zealand
Dine By Peter Gordon Cooking Class
SKYCITY Grand Hotel
90 Federal Street, Auckland
Lunch Friday 11.30am – 2.30pm
Dinner Daily 5.30pm – 10.30pm
Tel: +64 9 363 7030
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36 Comments | Add your own
Wow this is so interesting! And those ingredients you used are just incredible! My other half is only enthusiastic about EATING, not cooking
I love cooking classes and attending cooking classes during holidays sure beats squandering the whole day away on a golf course- that’s what I have been trying to explain to my friends who like to travel to exotic locations for golf….
That looks like so much fun! (And my hubby does like to cook. He’d be in his element!)
I was lucky enough to meet Peter at a launch event for his book here in the UK. It wasn’t a cookery class but we had a small group demo during which Peter created two of the dishes from his book for us, talking us through them and then we all got to eat them.
A couple of weeks later, I attended a winemakers dinner at Providores where different wines from an NZ producer were matched with courses designed by Peter and the Providores head chef.
Two great evenings and I got a copy of the book to boot – though I never thought to get him to sign it! DOH!
Peter Gordon is one of my food heroes! How nice to see the inside of his restaurant – sounds like a fabulous cooking class!
That looks so good I am really jealous! I try to keep my better half out of the kitchen as much as possible it never means good things when he ventures in.
Goodness me, Bringing back memories of working in commercial kitchens with all those quantities! : )) I love the shot of the Hapuka, my undisputed favorite white fish. Nomnicity.
wow… thats so exciting!wish i was so lucky
What a great experience! 6 hours is enough time to really get stuck into things too. I love tapioca!
My hubby cooks once a week on Wednesdays- wether I want him to or not! It gives me a break mid week. My eldest daughter cooks once a week as well to prepare her for the real world, but she has a 3 dish repitoire and we are now considering banning those 3 dishes….
What an amazing experience to get a lesson from these folk huh – slighter shade of green going on here Lorraine
Beautiful and mouth-watering food. Couldn’t get my husband to cook, not even to save himself from starving. LOL
Now *this* is a cooking class I’d love to be a part of! Sometimes I’m impressed by what you create but couldn’t see myself having the patience (the cake decorating ones, for example), but I love the look/sound of what you created here. Yum!
Oh, and my imaginary other half is amazing – he doesn’t cook much but he’ll eat whatever I make
That looks great. What fun.
Mangoes from FRANCE?
The hapuku course looks very nice and I think ideal for guests. Well provided you can multitask (which I can thankfully with baby in one arm).
Loved reading this post. He used to be interested in my cooking but that was ads far as it went.
No, he’s certainly not AS enthusiastic, but he is enthusiastic about me cooking, so that works
What an amazing day for you, I would have loved to do that.
Another fantastic article Lorraine. I went to Dine when I lived in Auckland, was good, didn’t realise they had classes. Bummer. The article has inspried me to seek out some classes in Sydney though.
Great photos too, live the frying pan shot.
What a fun day! The scallop dish looks particularly appealing.
Those chocolate spoons look amazing. And the rest? Well as usual it made me drool.
MPS is not fond of cooking and is rather miffed at being the resident cook AGAIN!
That’s soo cool! I wonder which was your favourite dish from so many tastings?
My other half is only interested in baking and gets very cranky if cooking is involved!
On a side note, the chocolate chef looks a bit like Chow Yun Fatt!
Lovely! What a great insight to some fabulous food. Salivating!
Hi Lorraine, off-topic – saw you and Mr. NQN at the shops today. I was much too shy to say hello, but I did spy a jar of glucose syrup in your trolley. Can’t wait to see what you’ll be making with it! Cheers, Kat
You eat better and have more fun than anyone I know. Good for you! Haven’t gotten “Dad” to a cooking class yet. xoxo Mum
My other half JC loves to eat and I love to cook so it works for us. He would eat cheese and ham sandwiches every day of his life given the chance, whilst I’m in need of variety every day. I love seeing these NZ related posts – I have absolutely no idea about NZ cooking and the ingredients are wild!
My other half is lucky he can make eggs, lol! (And I’m a bit scared because my birthday is this week and he’s making me a romantic meal…and he’s refusing to tell me what it is, calling it a “surprise”! Aaah!) Everything you made is lovely. I’m very interesting to try wood ear mushroom, I’ve heard very good things about it!
What an amazing experience! I am a big fan of Peter Gordon, and really like his most recent cookbook. Got a few recipes bookmarked to try.
My other half is very interested in eating and very interested in me cooking for him LOL, but as far as him cooking, well lets just say we were at mcdonalds this morning and i had to season his hash browns LOL.
Hope you had a lovely weekend.
*kisses* HH
iam in awe with the dessert !Pierre
This looks amazing Lorraine! (All I seem to do is gush at your posts, but they are fabulous!)
Looks like a fun class and delicious dishes too!
What a fun day! I love coconut tapioca
My other half loves cooking – we take turns thoughout the week. He tends to cook without thinking of the calorie content though, which isn’t too good for me
ooh cool how the mushroom rehydrates
Hi Maria-Haha I have the same specimen I think!
Hi Shirley-It sure does I agree! Luckily Mr NQN doesn’t like to play golf
Hi Betty-Ahhh this would be perfect for him!
Hi Kavey-HOw fantastic! Now that would have definitely been a treat
Ahh well, next time perhaps! 
Hi Celia-Ahh fantastic! Yes they serve some absolutely delicious food there-fusion done very well!
Hi Gillian-Haha oh no! He’s a bit of a disaster?
Hi Bridget-Ahhh yes of course!
It’s delicious I agree! 
Hi thatssoron-Thankyou!
Hi InTolerantChef-I know, it was a long time but it really flew by! Me too, love the stuff
Oh how lovely that he does that. Perhaps he can show her a new
dish?
Hi Anna-I know, I felt very fortunate indeed!
Hi Matilda-Hehe I think we must have the same husband!
Hi Hannah-Yes it’s all totally doable!
Haha ok! I bet he’s just perfect! 
Hi Debra-Thankyou!
Hi Fiona-Frozen mango pulp from France. Many restaurant kitchens use this for consistency of product.
Hi Claudia-Hehe yes! What a challenge with a baby too!
Hi Valentina-Aww really! Well you must be a great cook then!
Hi cityhippyfarmgirl-That’s good! It’s important to appreciate too others cooking too!
Hi Gareth-Thanks very much! I think the classes are a new idea. Thankyou!
Hi Cakelaw-I know, that was so delicious! I love scallops!
Hi Kelley-Oh pet, how are you feeling? I hope you get better soon!
Hi Soy-That was hard! I really loved this dessert though, like loooved it!
Hehe well you make a good team! 
Ahh right, good spot! 
Hi Liss-Thanks lovely!
Hi Kat -Hehe that is so funny! :lkol: Oh next time please say hello! And yes that was glucose syrup. I hope I didn’t have anything too embarrassing in my
trolley!
Hi mum-Aww thanks mum! I think it’s because you cook so well! xxx
Hi Natalie-Hehe he sounds very much like Mr NQN and I’m like you-variety is great!
NZ has great food and quite different to us! 
Hi Faith-Haha! Now I know why Faith and that’s because you cook so well! Oh how exciting! I can’t wait to see what he makes. Will you blog about it?
They’re good, a really unusual texture!
Hi Heavenly Housewife-Oh great! And you can easily get to one of his restaurants too!
Hehe ok how funny! 
Hi pierre-Hehe it was delicious!
Hi Loll-Aww shucks thankyou Loll!
Hi 5 Star Foodie -It was really good!
Hi Chanel-Isn’t it yummy?
You guys make a great team although yes guys can forget about calories can’t they! lucky buggers 
Hi Fiona-I know, it’s like new again!
Wow that dessert certainly looks interesting!
My hubby cooks but definitely not with passion!
WOW…stunning experience. How do you get a gig like that? Really!
Haha, I don’t have an other half but my kids are very enthusiastic about cooking, does that count?
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