Fortune Cookie

A radio food show helped launch one of our highest-profile cooking careers.

You could say Julie Le Clerc has always realised that cooking can lead to fame and fortune (well, a moderate dose of the latter in New Zealand maybe). While in the 1960s, when chefs were hardly conferred the celebrity status they are today, her mother Loraine’s star turn in a high-profile bake-off broadcast live on national radio had her craving a culinary career of her own.
“She must be an original master chef,” laughs Julie, now one of our best-known chefs and food writers. “I remember my brothers and sister and I were glued to the radio listening to mum’s progress. She was very clever – she even painted Irvine’s Dutch girl symbol on her pie with vegemite!”
Loraine’s ingenuity also saw her stash a pot full of burnt mashed potatoes in her handbag, which, incidentally, she forgot about until she returned home and noticed the telltale smell. The loss of a favourite handbag was worth it though. Then ‘king of the airwaves’ Merv Smith declared Loraine the overall winner, scoring her a state-of-the-art washing machine, stainless-steel benchtop and case of champagne. It was, as Julie points out, a “pretty flash” prize at the time.
This isn’t to suggest either fame or fortune is a primary motivator for Julie, who has clearly inherited her mother’s enthusiasm and talent for cooking as well as her resourcefulness. Even as a small child, she was entranced by the alchemy of cooking, of seeking to understand how individual ingredients come together to create something different entirely.
“Mum was a huge influence on my cooking. She has always been a wonderfully inventive cook and a great baker. She had a home business professionally icing wedding cakes so I grew up watching her spin sugar into fanciful icing sculptures. It was magical.”
Living in Auckland’s multicultural Westmere, Julie also derived culinary inspiration from her neighbours, who included Croatians, Indians and South Americans.
“I spent half my childhood eating in one neighbour’s house or another’s. I’d go home and try to recreate what I’d eaten there. I was always asking Mum to buy ingredients which weren’t readily available then – olive oil, garlic and suchlike.”
Her adventurous tastes – and taste for adventure – saw her head to Europe in the early 1980s, which she concedes she treated as a continent-sized smorgasbord, indulging in as many new foods as possible.
Back in Auckland, she finally made up her mind to pursue a professional cooking career.
“I had always gravitated toward food but, when I left school, cooking wasn’t an easy career path for girls (and in some ways it is still a harder path for women). But I kept going back to it and I’m glad I persevered. I think of cooking as my vocation and I feel incredibly fortunate to have a career I can genuinely say I love.”
Graduating from the Cordon Bleu cooking school in 1986 at the top of her class, she accepted a teaching role at its Parnell institute – an experience she reckons was at least as educational for her as it was for her students.
Entrepreneurial and ambitious, she opened a café with her sister Helen in 1992 on Ponsonby Road – then just a smidgen of the espresso-fuelled mecca it is today. Named after the eponymous Turkish city now known as Istanbul, Byzantium offered accessibly exotic, mostly vegetarian fare inspired by Julie’s travels through Europe. At the time, there was nowhere quite like it.
Although the sisters were quietly confident the café would prove popular, they were entirely unprepared for the stampede through the doors on opening day (the queue stretched onto the pavement). Helen frantically made coffees while Julie struggled to cope with the ever-intensifying heat in the tiny kitchen. Theirs was the first café in Ponsonby to offer an authentic version of eggs Benedict with smoked salmon and spinach instead of ham. Julie, sure it would prove the most popular menu item, had freshly prepared a big batch of hollandaise sauce. Instead, she found herself in a literal scramble.
“New Zealanders weren’t ready for anything quite so exotic and everyone ordered scrambled eggs!” she laughs.
Luckily, Loraine came to the rescue, stepping in as kitchen hand/cleaner/counsellor. She later told a popular women’s magazine, “I remember doing dishes and cleaning and mopping up the girls’ tears along with everything else. They were utterly exhausted, but it was a great lesson all the same!”
The café retained its cool factor and soon became the subject of overwhelmingly positive media reviews. Julie concedes she found running it thrilling and terrifying in relatively equal measures. Determined to cement its reputation for excellent food, coffee and service, she put in what she now recognises were ridiculously long hours.
“I’m very much an all or nothing person, so I throw myself wholeheartedly into everything I take on. At first, it was because I had no money and nothing to lose. Having a shoestring setup budget meant I had to cover every shift to keep costs down. Anyway, I figured that if I was going to have a business, I wanted to do all the fun jobs – cooking, making coffee, training, and serving customers – as well as the more mundane stuff. I have learned I need to delegate more, but I find this very hard. Because I love what I’m doing, I simply want to do it all.”
In 1995, ready for a new challenge, she opened the Garnet Road Foodstore near her childhood home, which soon became a local institution. She launched a signature catering service, which she promoted within the café. Her quality, contemporary European-inspired food won her a large and loyal customer base – and a book deal with Penguin.
First published in 1999, Simple Café Food went down a treat with home cooks nationwide and was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards the following year. It has been reprinted numerous times since and a newly revised and updated version was published in February this year. Its appeal is clearly evident; recipes are innovative, approachable and mostly healthy. Although, I feel compelled to mention, her cakes and pastries are particularly divine (the café’s enormous, dried-fruit-filled ‘sticky buns’ were heaven on a plate (or takeaway paper bag).
It’s proved a foolproof recipe. In the past 12 years, Julie has published an impressive 13 cookbooks and has just put the final touches to her fourteenth. Although her publisher has forbidden her from divulging any details about the nascent tome until its October due date, she promises it remains true to her signature style.
“I like to say my cooking is partly inspired, partly invented and essentially based on good-quality ingredients cooked well. All my books feature the type of food I like to cook at home, but each has a habit of evolving as I write, test, style and photograph the recipes. It’s always a dynamic process.”
She enjoyed compiling her first book so much, she decided to sell the Garnet Road Foodstore (which continues to do well under its new ownership) and set herself up as a freelance food and travel writer. Naturally, she worked long and hard and soon found herself writing for several high-profile magazines and newspapers. She was named food editor of both NZ Home & Entertaining and Your Home & Garden magazines in 1999 – a title she has held for numerous magazines on both sides of the Tasman since. Currently the food editor of Next, she also works as a consultant and stylist for corporate clients, and hosts regular cooking demonstrations. She has found time to develop a signature range of chutneys and other preserves and study photography. Of the latter, she says, “Capturing my own work with a camera literally allows me to complete the picture in my own style.”
For Julie, one of the best things about her work these days is the opportunity it affords to travel to exotic destinations, sampling as many new foods and cooking styles as she can in the name of research (although, we should point out, she funds all overseas trips herself).
Of Syrian heritage, Julie is particularly fascinated by the Middle East and other Arabic nations, which have inspired several of her cookbooks. A visit to Lebanon and Syria last year was particularly significant: she made contact with relatives she had spent years searching for (her great grandfather was born in Syria and moved to New Zealand in the early 1900s).
Writing about the trip on her blog, Julie says, “I count myself lucky to be able to taste time-honoured recipes that are part of a varied, tasty and healthy cuisine. The meals I eat seem to be infused with an almost otherworldly dimension, layered with vibrant flavours which echo a colourful past … nothing has ever tasted as good; it’s food prepared by my family to demonstrate their love for me.”
The trip was so transformative, personally and professionally, that Julie resolved to one day write a book about it.
“My personal story will be interwoven with authentic recipes and travel photos taken to document my journey,” she blogged.
Her recipe for career success is deceptively simple, containing just two key ingredients: passion and hard work.
“I’m willing to work very hard because I gain a lot of pleasure from it. And I am ambitious – in the nicest possible way of course. I enjoy taking on new challenges and achieving goals. But I’ve found that if I concentrate on trying to do my job well, other people notice and opportunities come to me. My career seems to follow its own natural progression.”
Such dedication to her career does of course have a flipside. She admits her work is “fairly all-consuming”, leaving precious little time to devote to other things.
“I have to admit I don’t always succeed in keeping a balance. Writing can be a lonely profession and I am grateful for an understanding family and friends who are always there for me when I emerge from periods of solitary confinement.”
As hungry as ever for new experiences, Julie is open-minded about future projects. She hopes to continue to write cookbooks, saying it’s her “greatest pleasure to share good food and culinary advice with people in this way”. Still enthusiastic about the café scene, she doesn’t rule out the possibility of opening another of her own one day.
She’d love to host her own TV show, ideally one that enables her to introduce the imaginatively delicious and nutritious meals, for which she is renowned, to a wider audience. Her warm and engaging personality, previous TV experience (she’s been a guest chef on shows such as New Zealand on a Plate and Taste NZ) and easy-to-follow recipes certainly suggest she’d do a fine job. Our suggestion: stay tuned.
Lorna Thornber
www.julieleclerc.co.nz

Mixed Mushroom and Herb Soup
Dark and mysterious, the pungent earthy aroma of porcini permeates this soup. If you cannot find porcini (special Italian dried mushrooms), the soup will still be flavoursome but porcini are worth foraging for in any good delicatessen. Serves 4
15g dried porcini mushrooms
500g field mushrooms
250g button mushrooms, sliced
1 large onion, peeled and finely diced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 cups chicken, beef or vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1 Tbsp each chopped thyme, parsley and oregano
1 Tbsp cornflour
salt and pepper
Soak the porcini in two cups of hot water for one hour. Purée half the field mushrooms in a food processor and thinly slice the remaining field and button mushrooms.
In a large saucepan, sweat the onion and garlic in oil until softened but not coloured. Add the mushroom purée, cook until it releases water and this evaporates. Add porcini and soaking liquid, stock and bay leaf. Simmer for five minutes then add sliced mushrooms and herbs.
Mix cornflour with a little water until smooth, add to soup and simmer gently for five minutes to thicken. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

Roasted Tomato and Lentil Soup
Roasting concentrates the tomato flavour and gives an almost smoky character to this soup.
Serve in big bowls with crusty Italian ciabatta bread. Serves 6
1 red onion, peeled and sliced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 Tbsp caster sugar
20 small ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/3 cup olive oil
¾ cup green or brown lentils
2 litres stock or water
1 bay leaf
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 Tbsp tomato paste
½ cup tomato purée
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 200°C. Place onions, garlic, sugar and tomatoes in a roasting pan and drizzle with oil. Roast for 45 minutes, tossing occasionally.
Meanwhile, place lentils, stock or water and bay leaf into a large saucepan. Simmer for 45 minutes until lentils are tender. When tomatoes and onions are cooked, tip into lentil pot along with paprika, tomato paste and purée. Mix together and heat through. Adjust seasoning.

Sweetcorn Chowder
Chowder is generally described as a thick soup containing clams or fish. This is a vegetable version with sweetcorn as its base, but fish could easily be added if desired. Add fish or shellfish at the end so that it cooks briefly and remains tender and juicy. Serves 6
1 large onion, peeled and finely diced
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 large potatoes, diced to 1cm cubes
2 sticks celery, finely diced
1 red capsicum, finely diced with seeds out
1 cup vegetable or chicken stock
2 cups milk
450g can corn kernels
450g can cream style corn
3 spring onions, finely sliced
salt and pepper
3 Tbsp chopped fresh coriander or parsley
In a large saucepan, sweat onion in oil until softened but not coloured. Add remaining ingredients, except seasoning and coriander. Bring to the boil then simmer until potatoes are cooked through.
Purée about one third of the mixture in a blender or food processor to add body to the soup then return to the pan. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper and gently reheat. Stir through herbs just before serving.