Admission: Adult $7, Concession $5, Family Pass $15, Under 5s free.

Curated by Ngahiraka Mason

Stimulate your taste buds in this sumptuous visual feast offering a variety of artistic flavours and textures.

Art reveals the central place of food in all cultures. Different peoples develop their own relationships with food, from the careful preparation of traditional dishes to the communal consumption of celebratory feasts. Brueghel's A Village Fair and Lindauer's Time of Kai depict communities observing these time-honoured traditions. Renowned photographers Marti Friedlander, Gil Hanly and Glenn Jowitt document Polynesian food practices. Jae Hoon Lee looks at the global migration of food culture, composing his own Kiwi feast from random Korean meals recreated in plastic.

Historically, food in art was often laden with symbolic meaning. Pop artists radicalised the depiction of food with works like Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can and Ruscha's Exploding Cheese.

Modern living has brought new approaches to food. Brian Brake's photos of Picasso and friends speak to cafe culture, while Robin White's Fish and chips, Maketu is an iconic emblem of New Zealand cuisine.

Sustainability concerns contemporary artists like Ani O'Neill, who uses recycled wool for her crocheted octopus stuffed with empty plastic water bottles. Ruth Watson’s newly commissioned butter mountain takes a post-recession look at New Zealand's relationship to the global food trade.

Come to Auckland Art gallery this summer and revel in the luscious beauty of food and the tactile, sensual qualities of art.

Taste is a mouth-watering experience not to be missed.

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Neenish Tarts

From page 84 of Ladies, a Plate by Alexa Johnston
To download a printable version of the recipe click here

Ingredients

sweet short crust pastry * 500 g
* Recipe below

For the filling
4 oz / 115 g butter
2 oz / 55 g icing sugar
½ tsp vanilla essence ** 
pinch cream of tartar pinch
1 tsp† gelatine
3 tbsp boiling water
** or ½ tsp finely grated lemon zest
† heaped

For the icing
1 cup / 120 g icing sugar
1 tbsp hot water
¼ tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp cocoap
1 tsp butter

This cornerstone of New Zealand afternoon teas originated in Australia, where the first published version of the recipe dates from 1929. Neenish Tarts are small, sweetened short crust pastry cases filled with mock cream and distinctively iced – one half chocolate, the other plain. I compared nine recipes in my cook-book collection – interestingly, there were none in my Aunt Daisy books – and found few significant variations. Two versions had chocolate-flavoured pastry cases and only the Edmonds Cookery Book used sweetened condensed milk in the filling; the others all used butter and sugar creamed and set with gelatine. The clever icing method is Australian, based on the instructions in Margaret Fulton’s Encyclopedia of Food & Cookery ‡. But be warned, it is still a little tricky to get those halves looking perfect.

MAKING THE PASTRY CASES

1. Roll out the pastry and use it to line 12–18 patty tins.
2. Prick the bases lightly with a fork and chill the cases for about 30 minutes before baking them at 350°F/180°C for about 10 minutes until they are golden brown and crisp.

MAKING THE FILLING

1. Cream the softened butter and sugar until very light and fluffy, then mix in the vanilla essence and the cream of tartar.
2. Add the gelatine (dissolved in the boiling water), a teaspoon at a time. You should have a creamy mixture.
3. Fill the cooled cases, level the tops and leave in a cool place until firm.

FINISHING

1. Put the icing sugar into a heatproof bowl, mix in 1 tbsp hot water and heat over simmering water until the icing softens. Add the vanilla, then use immediately to ice one half of each tart.
2. Add the sifted cocoa and butter to the remaining icing, return the bowl to the heat and stir until glossy. Add more hot water if needed.
3. Ice the other halves of the tarts. (By heating the icing you ensure that it will set quickly and avoid the two colours running together.) This is just enough icing for 12 tarts; make more if you need to.

‡ Margaret Fulton, Encyclopedia of Food & Cookery, Octopus Books Australia, Sydney, 1983, page 432.

A VARIATION

If all this sweet icing and filling seems too much, you will get almost as delighted a response if you offer Pineapple Cream Tarts. Just put a little drained crushed pineapple into your pastry cases and top them off with a piped swirl or a spooned dollop of whipped cream. A small piece of pineapple on top – or a few pistachio nuts – and they’re ready to go.

Short Crust Pastry

From page 76 of Ladies, a Plate by Alexa Johnston

Sweet Short Crust
8 oz / 225 g flour
4 oz / 115 g butter
1 egg yolk
pinch salt pinch
1 oz / 25 g caster sugar
2 tbsp cold water

Of course you can buy short crust pastry frozen in sheets or blocks if you wish, although it is unlikely to have been made with much butter and the flavour will not be as good as if you make it yourself. With a food processor in the kitchen, the making of short crust pastry is literally a matter of minutes. Buying pastry was not an option for New Zealand women 50 years ago when few had freezers to store it. Most of the community cook books included a whole pastry section with tips like ‘Cold in the making, brisk in the baking’, an old adage about successful pastry and worth remembering. It means, keep the butter cold, work quickly and always use a hot oven. The recipes below can be used for small tartlets or large tarts.

RUBBING THE BUTTER INTO THE FLOUR

1. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl, cut in the cold butter and toss until well coated with flour.
2. Now rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture is like breadcrumbs, lifting and sprinkling the mixture as you go. Just use your fingertips, since they are colder than the palms of your hands. You could also use a pastry blender, or the food processor, working in short bursts to keep everything cool.
3. Add the sugar to the mixture. If using a food processor, tip the mixture into a bowl.

MIXING THE PASTRY

1. Using a round-bladed table knife, stir in the egg yolk with about 2 tbsp of very cold water until the mixture begins to clump together a little.
2. Using your fingertips, gather the mixture into a ball, adding a little more water if it seems too crumbly.
3. Work into a soft, not sticky, mixture which leaves the sides of the bowl clean. Make into a rectangular block, wrap in waxed paper and put in the fridge or a very cool place to relax before you roll it out.
4. Allow at least 30 minutes of resting time. This pastry will keep for a week in the fridge, well wrapped, and for at least a month in the freezer. Makes about 1 lb / 425 g pastry.

Pastry Tip
You could replace 2 oz/55 g of the butter with lard in the above recipe, since lard gives pastry a crisp, short texture and makes it easier to handle.