What would Waitangi Day be without a pav?

The pavlova (named after the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova) was created by a chef in Wellington in her honour on the occasion of one of her tours in the 1920s.

Mum’s best friend, Isabel Holdsworth – 95 this year – gave us her recipe years ago and it’s a stunner.

As is my Kiwi Daiquiri recipe, tested to great effect on layers of middle-management at Lufthansa Cargo in the late 90s.

I’d front up with a blender, a big bag of kiwifruit and limes, crushed ice plus a bottle or 2 of cachaça (basic ingredient of caipirinha) that one of the South American route managers had got the freighter crews to bring back from Rio or Sao Paulo and away we’d go.

Started off doing it for co-workers in our office, but someone else happened to drop in and – New Zealanders being an exceptionally hospitable bunch – was invited to join in the celebrations.

Big mistake.

The word spread like wildfire and in following years, folk would sidle up to me in mid-January and ask “Tell me, jb, when’s this Whatatangi Day with those Caipikiwiraquiris..?”

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the company was only marginally functional as from early afternoon until clocking-off time on 6 February for a number of years, with decision-makers drifting around with bright red heads, a glazed look in their eyes and not a lot of functioning cells between the latter .

Appalling commercial decisions were made, either by neglect or pro-actively off-target assessments.

But if you want to risk it, here’s the recipe:

• 50 ml (1⅔ fl oz) cachaça
• Squeeze of lime juice
• 2 teaspoons crystal or refined sugar
• 1 peeled kiwfruit
• Crushed ice

Throw into the blender and let rip. If it tastes a bit insipid, pour in a couple more glugs of cachaça. Or a couple more…

06 Feb This entry was published on 6 February, 2013 at 09:00 and is filed under Away, City Daily Photo, Culinary, National Day. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.