SUNDAY AT THE GOING WEST FESTIVAL

Dick does the West

Chef Ordinaire Richard Till

The Festival organisers thoughtfully planned a later start Sunday morning but what a spectacular start it proved to be.Brilliant.

Richard Till, whom I have yet to meet, is both ordinary and extraordinary. He has been variously called "the thinking man's Aunt Daisy", "the prince of mince" and "the white knight of Kiwi cuisine". He describes himself as an "enthusiast for ordinary cooking" and as being a promoter of "ordinariness in cooking".

He proved this I guess by preparing in his makeshift kitchen in the Titirangi War Memorial Hall, (three electric frypans on a table and trestle), pikelets, (from one of his huge collection of community cookbooks), saveloys with Marmite and tomato sauce, rissoles made from yesterday's left over risotto and the aoili to accompany it.

This was an hilarious and enormously entertaining and relaxing way to start the day.

When standing still and not talking, (which is not often), Till is a rather stately, serious looking fellow, but the moment he starts talking, (and peels of his tweed jacket to reveal a red t-shirt featuring Canterbury and the Ranfurly Shield), that all changes and he soon has the audience in stitches. He is a natural comic, and I might add a natural storyteller although he does tend to go off on great tangents.

In between his cooking and hilarious accounts of his childhood, touring with his famous pianist father, and helping his mother in the kitchen, (he gives her full credit for his adult interest in food and cooking), he occasionally turned serious and spoke of matters such as salmon farming, obsessive packaging, the pleasure of preparing meals, and over beaten muffins.

Back to his humour and his account of his most favourite meal, mince on toast, and how he ate it as a child would make a superb 20 minute TV clip which would draw big audiences on You Tube.

This was an hilarious and enormously entertaining and relaxing way to start the day.

Till's new book, Richard Till Makes it Easy, is published on 12 October, 2009, RRP $35, Renaissance Publishing.