Photos: Sally Tagg.
Peta Mathias has a busy year ahead. Next week, the chef, author and entertainer heads to India to host a luxury shopping tour, showcasing the country’s fashion, textiles, interiors and jewellery. Then she’s off to Hawke’s Bay, where she’ll entertain a packed house for a wine-matched three-course French dinner at Pask Winery for F.A.W.C!, the region’s annual food and wine festival.
Once home, she’ll host her bi-weekly supper clubs in Auckland, teaching guests how to cook recipes from around the world. Then in early May, she’s off overseas again, this time to Marrakech, in Morocco, for a food tour, before relocating to Uzès in the South of France for a few months, as she does every year. She’ll return to New Zealand in October to launch her next book – her 19th.
That schedule would be exhausting for someone half her age, but Peta, 75, has no intention of slowing down.
“I love this life,” she says. “My work is my life – the two are inextricably linked. If one stops, the other would stop. My health is good – if anything happened to me, I’d have to change my life dramatically. But, fortunately, I’m not at that point yet.”
While Peta stresses not every minute of her life is lived at breakneck speed – “I do have quiet times, I just don’t talk about the moments I’m lying on the floor at home!” – her high energy is something she inherited from her parents, Harvey and Ann, who both remained very active until they died in their mid-nineties.
“My mother was an artist who painted constantly, until she went blind with macular degeneration,” she explains. “And my father was an accountant during his working life and never stopped helping people.
“I adored my father. He was a gentle soul, very witty. I’m saved from being too strong a personality because fortunately I inherited a bit of his humour. However, I am just like my mother in looks and temperament. She was very clever and creative, but she was also very tricky. Living with her was like living with myself.”
Mother and daughter were so alike, their relationship was fractured and difficult from the start.
“We were in a battle for supremacy from day one,” admits Peta. “She was a tough Irishwoman who came from a huge family and made a huge family – I’m the oldest of six – and she was very hard on me. She got a bit more reasonable as my siblings came along. My sisters had a very different experience to me growing up.”
It wasn’t until Peta was almost 50 that the pair finally made their peace.
“It was much too late, of course – you need your mother to apologise before you’re in your late forties,” says Peta, tears welling as she recalls the moment their decades-old feud ended. “You need to make peace with your mother when you’re younger and it matters. Gosh, I can’t even talk about it without crying!
“Mum was visiting from Australia, where she lived, and I was driving, so I couldn’t look at her – and she suddenly said, ‘I’m sorry.’ I knew immediately what she meant. She told me she knew she’d been too hard on me, but she was proud of how I’d turned out. And that was it! After that, we got on like a house on fire until she died at 97.”
While Peta doesn’t harbour any resentment towards her mother, her need to look after people the way she cared for her siblings played a role in her career choice.
“I initially wanted to be a nurse, but I hated that, so I became a drug and alcohol counsellor,” she tells. “I didn’t land on being a chef until I was 30 and living in France.”
Even now, Peta’s on a mission to make people happy.
“Providing food is a very nurturing role,” says Peta, whose idea of fast food is a slice of cheese, some really good bread and a glass of red wine. “People love you if you cook for them.
“Teaching people how to make beautiful but uncomplicated food is a gift. Food – cooking – gives joy. If you start chopping tomatoes or making mayonnaise, it feels good. I’m incredibly fortunate that I get to share that joy, that love of food, with people all over the world. Why would I stop? And if my parents’ ages are anything to go by, I’ll be doing it for a long time yet.”
F.A.W.C! Food and Wine Classic runs from March 14-23. For more information, visit fawc.co.nz
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