Chef scoops national award with ‘Edmonds cookbook for our time’

• Published date: 25 May 2023
• Publication title: Guardian, The

Her cookbook Kai: Food Stories and Recipes from my Family Table is published by Bateman Books

“Kai has everything you’d expect from an internationally recognised food photographer: elegant and enticing images, topped with well-placed illustrations and the compelling use of colour,” category convenor of judges Jared Davidson says.

“But it is the substance of the book that shines. Whānau stories and recipes provide the reader with a wider insight into te ao Māori, creating a homage to food that is both grounded in tradition yet modern.

“Kai is the Edmonds cookbook for our time.”

Lowe (Ngāti Kauwhata, Tainui, Ngāti Maniapoto) received $3000 and a 12-month membership subscription to the New Zealand Society of Authors.

Catherine Chidgey won the $64,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockhams for The Axeman’s Carnival. It is described as a page-turning novel of depth, pathos and humanity that skilfully infuses comedy with a building sense of menace, narrated by a precocious magpie called Tama.

Scholar, poet and irredentist Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) won the Mary and Peter Biggs...