Worldwide Wahine
In the eight years since sisters Karena and Kasey Bird wowed the Masterchef kitchen with their home-grown culinary flair, they’ve collected more awards and travelled around the globe showcasing their kai. Now Kasey has an exciting new food critic on board to taste test all their fresh ideas.
words Sue Hoffart / image Graeme Murray
Baby Koaretaia Biel is destined to eat exceptionally widely and well, given the legendary cooking prowess of his mother and aunt.
The Maketu boy was 11 weeks old when mum Kasey Bird and her older sister Karena flew to Dubai on an official government cooking mission. The television stars and award-winning cookbook publishers travelled to United Arab Emirates in January, to help showcase New Zealand’s culinary culture. During their stay, the pair undertook a cooking challenge, led a kitchen demonstration event, designed a hangi-inspired beef dish and created a Matariki-themed multi-course feast for the World Expo.
But, even while preparing a degustation dinner for international dignitaries, Kasey regularly stepped out of the kitchen with a breast pump to keep her milk supply going in readiness for their return. She did the same thing on flights, in restaurants and while holed up in a quarantine hotel. The jet-setting mum left litres of milk with her baby’s grandparents and trainee teacher father Patuara Biel, who sent daily updates and videos of their son. Meanwhile, Karena has been researching baby food traditions in other cultures, to plan Koaretaia’s first solid meals. An Indian-inspired dahl perhaps? Or a turmeric-laced puree using vegetables grown in his grandparents’ garden. They also like the Chinese tradition of giving teething babies dried fish to gnaw on, though of course theirs would come from Bay of Plenty waters.
The sisters (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Manawa) are determined this baby will be raised by whānau, with his feet in Maketu sand and his taste buds roaming the world. It’s a recipe that has certainly worked for them.
Growing up in the coastal village, east of Tauranga, the pair would dash across the road after school to swim or gather shellfish. Their earliest memories revolve around digging for pipi in the estuary, then cooking the molluscs on an old cake rack over an open fire on the sand.
“It felt so safe, really idyllic,” Kasey says of their Maketu childhood. “It was normal to let kids go to the beach by themselves. Mum could see us from home and our Aunty would whistle and all the kids knew it was time to come home.”
“Every Sunday, we would have this big pot luck dinner with all the family and friends, everyone bringing a different dish. And we’re the type of kids, if we saw something we didn’t recognise, that’s what we wanted to try.”
Food dominates their memories. Kasey has always been drawn to the kitchen, while her sister was the eager eater in the family. It was Kasey who caught and smoked her own fish and pestered aunts and grandmothers for lessons and recipes or begged for cookbook gifts each Christmas. Although her sibling had little interest in cooking, she was equally excited by a good meal. Especially if it involved new flavours.
Karena recalls marvelling at the magical ingredients – capers, olives, sundried tomatoes – in a salad her aunt brought to the house. Her sister was certain she had found “the nicest thing on earth” after tasting crème brulée for the first time.
Kasey was 10 when the girls’ parents Kerry and Atarangi Bird shepherded the family onto a plane and headed overseas, intent on expanding their daughters’ horizons.
“They always wanted us to know where we’re from and be grounded,” Karena says. “And they also wanted us to see the world was a big place, to see a world full of possibilities.”
Decades after ticking off Los Angeles and New York, London, Paris and Sweden, it is the culinary memories that linger. They still talk about discovering fresh pretzels and just-made lemonade, sushi and Mexican food for the first time. Or the French bistro where they happily ate lentils with sausages and “really stinky cheese”.
As teenagers, the sisters would scour ‘top 50’ restaurant lists and pool their pocket money before driving to Auckland to dine out.
“When we were in high school, food was all we talked about. While our friends bought concert tickets and clothes and CDs, we would save up money to go and eat in restaurants. We’d take pictures, try new things, then come back to Maketu and try to replicate it.”
Their horrified parents – this dining out compulsion was wasteful according to chartered accountant dad and university lecturer mum – insisted the duo pursue proper careers. Both made choices that now confound them.
Kasey initially studied fashion in Melbourne until homesickness drew her home, where she enrolled in an accountancy degree and found local work auditing health contracts. Her sibling headed to Wellington to begin Bachelor of Commerce studies.
Neither was particularly interested in balance sheets or finance and neither was destined to complete her degree.
Instead, Kārena decided to attend the cordon bleu cook school in Sydney, while obsessively watching competitive cooking television programme Masterchef New Zealand.
“My flatmates thought I was crazy. I’d never cooked one meal in the flat and on leaving night, they gave me a Masterchef cookbook and wrote ‘can’t wait till you’re on the cover one day’. They were thinking it was a big joke. I still have that book.”
Karena only ventured into the kitchen once she was home again, intent on saving and practicing for her pending culinary training. With no restaurants nearby and no escaping the family cooking schedule, she threw herself into trialling techniques and trying to outdo her sister when it was her night to cook.
“I was making up for lost time,” she says. “I cooked heaps. I’d watch food shows then recreate it. I learnt a lot.”
Without realising it, the sisters were also amassing a portfolio of images, menus and experiences that would impress television producers looking for talent to feature on the show. A week after submitting their application, the duo had an interview and launched into auditions.
The rest is history. In 2014, the Te Puke High School graduates – Karena is a former head girl – attained national celebrity by winning the reality show Masterchef New Zealand. Their own travel cooking series followed; Karena and Kasey’s Kitchen Diplomacy saw the pair film 20 episodes in 20 countries over a two year period, with a host of impressive international cooking engagements on the side. Trips to Asia and Europe and South America were interspersed with five separate stints in China, work for wine and food companies and starring roles in a food safety programme for the Ministry of Primary Industries. They have also run a diabetes education programme for kuia and kaumatua in a community hall in Murupara. And they have self-published two sell-out cookbooks, the first of which collected an international award. Their third book is expected to hit shelves later this year and will be written entirely in Te Reo, with pages of text and glossy photographs laid out in their parents’ house. Kasey and her husband live across the road and Karena is a one-minute walk away. Master Koaretaia is passed between all three homes and adored by everyone, including youngest Bird sibling Michaela. Auntie Michaela is an actress living in Auckland but spends plenty of weekends back home, doting on her nephew.
Maketu is the well-travelled sisters’ turangawaewae, the place they come home to for a dose of reality and unconditional love. Their mum will ask whether they have done their laundry and insist they place newspaper on the floor while cooking, to mop up any mess. No-one cares that Karena has been dining in an exclusive restaurant overlooking 15,000 fish inside the world’s largest aquarium. Or that she had to pick gold leaf out of her teeth. Back home, she is expected to rinse her dinner plates and contribute to family life.
“I think it’s what keeps everything in perspective,” Kasey says. “Just being part of the fabric of whanau and community, everyone is just the same.
“I like to think we have the best of both worlds, that idea that a modern woman can have your baby and go to Dubai. And eat truffle and go to the marae and be in the kitchen with the aunties. The next generation can have all of that. You can still be worldly and still be really grounded.”
It was their grandfather who arrived in nearby Te Puke, from Rotorua, to open a branch of the family’s jeans manufacturing company before moving to Maketu. But the Birds have had holiday homes in the beach community for six generations; Kasey lives in a house her paternal great great grandparents once inhabited. In recent years, they learned a Scottish female forebearer opened Te Puke’s first bakery in the 1800s.
“We loved growing up in Maketu. It’s still unspoilt, it’s remained that real quintessential beach town. It’s such a safe haven for us.
“Travel definitely gave us the real deep appreciation of where we come from and of our family.”
It also helped shape their determination to learn te reo. Although they spoke the language as young girls and grew up around it – their mother is a Maori language lecturer – their enthusiasm waned. That interest was reignited through learning about other nations’ culture, language and history and realising they knew too little of their own.
“Being Maori is really important to us but we almost started to feel like imposters,” Kasey says.” People were so proud of us but we didn’t have the language.”
It was Kārena who pushed for them both to place their international schedule on hold and spend a year at Waikato University’s Tauranga campus, learning te reo full time. They did still squeeze in work trips to Fiji, China and Taiwan before emerging as fluent speakers, at the end of 2019.
The timing has been remarkably fortuitous. As Covid slammed international borders shut, their new skill led to new work. Like a string of Matariki-related engagements or the television miniseries that saw them teach a master class in cooking, solely in te reo. Or the nine-course fine dining event that tells the Maori creation story through food.
“I think the best thing about learning it, though, is the feeling we have, feeling complete. And now, having a baby, it makes it all worthwhile. He’s going to have both languages.”
This year will bring another round of speaking engagements and celebrity cheffing roles, including high guest spots in the inaugural Flavours of Plenty festival. Their Hangi With Karena and Kasey event promises “a deeply cultural feast” that blends traditional cooking techniques with modern twists, whilst celebrating the Bay’s plentiful plethora of produce.
No doubt there will be more international travel in future, too.
“Always, all the time, we are looking at each other and saying ‘how good is our life?’,” Karena says of their last eight adventurous years.
“We never take it for granted,” her younger sister chimes in. “We always pinch ourselves.”
Division of labour
Much of the sisters’ work and home life is deeply enmeshed. They even refer to Koaretaia as “our baby” and Karena attended a few antenatal classes when the father-to-be couldn’t make it.
But they do take account of each other’s strengths when it comes to sharing the load.
Kasey is the organised one, the logistics and planning expert. She is happiest behind the scenes and her accounting background has come in handy after all; she looks after the finances.
Karena is the outgoing people person. She’s more bossy, generally takes the lead in the kitchen when it comes to plating food and tends to do the talking in public, though Kasey has plenty to say one on one.
Karena likes to claim she brings the x-factor to the partnership. “And the humility,” she jokingly adds, as the sisters break into laughter.
“Being sisters, we just know what our roles are without even talking about it. We have this innate understanding.”
Would they ever consider splitting up to pursue separate careers? Especially now there is a baby in the mix?
“We’re not for or against the idea,” Kasey says. “If something came up for Karena that was really awesome, we’d just be happy for each other. We want what’s best for each other.”