Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/49418
her wellbeing AFTER A RIGOROUS 18 MONTHS of taste-testing, styling and capturing a year of wholesome frivolity, the iconic Soul Bar and Bistro has compiled a collection of opulent, yet approachable, dishes in its first cookbook, The Soul Cookbook. "The chefs and I were working on the dishes all through the year, as dishes came on and off the menu," says Soul proprietor, Judith Tabron. "When Gareth [Soul's head chef] and I would sit there and do the matches together we would decide whether that recipe would be included in the book. We'd group them into six-eight lots, and food and wine writer, Lauraine Jacobs would ascertain whether they were approachable for the average cook, then Aaron McLean would come in and photograph them. It really was a group effort. "Some are classic recipes that have been on the menu for a long time like Salt and Pepper Squid, and others had only been on the menu for a month. It came down to whether Gareth and I both liked them and whether Lauraine, who was testing them for us in her domestic kitchen, felt that the recipes were approachable for the home cook." The Soul Cookbook, which contains 75 of the restaurant's elite dishes, arrives just in time for the tenth anniversary of the book's namesake, an eatery born when Auckland's Viaduct Harbour was no more than a fishing port and industrial precinct. It was a sleepy, scruffy place of little interest to anyone except fishermen and sailors. Then the America's Cup arrived. A plaza was built around the edge of the dock, restaurants opened and fortunes were made in the frenzied storm of the Cup – then lost overnight as the crowds moved on in the calm that followed. Judith, fresh from the shackles of a restraint-of-trade she carried from the sale of Ramses in Newmarket, saw the opportunity in a large, brassy restaurant that was up for sale. With a silent financial partner and negotiations assisted by her father, Gerald, she bought the business and opened Soul. Over the next decade the restaurant grew to unmatched notoriety, and with the recent Rugby World Cup masses, Soul was catering for 400-500 lunches on Saturday's and Sundays, and enlisting up to 100 employees over what has been the restaurant's busiest period to date. Judith is now looking forward to a relaxing summer break and her annual Christmas celebrations at Soul. "We usually have around 60 people around for a Christmas roast at the restaurant," she says. "We start with shared starters down the middle of the table like tomato and mozzarella, smoked salmon, and prawn cocktails, then it's on to roast beef or turkey and finally a dessert and cheese buffet for people to help themselves. We put all the wines up along the bar for people to choose from. My brother normally gets on the guitar, and best of all no one has to worry about doing the dishes!" Nakita Ardern with excerpts from The Soul Cookbook 72 | December/January 2012 | HER MAGAZINE Reprinted with permission from The Soul Cookbook by Judith Tabron and Gareth Stewart. Photos by Aaron McLean. Published by Random House, RRP $60.