Good Tasts Nici & Carole's Appetite For Life

The Mother-daughter Cooking Duo Tell How the Kitchen Fuels Their Soul

- Nicky Pellegrino

Food has always been an important part of the close bond between Nici Wickes and her mum Carole. The pair have been cooking and eating together for decades now, and so many of their memories revolve around delicious smells and flavours: meats roasting, velvety soups simmering and best of all, the baking.

When Nici was growing up, the kitchen was the heart of their home in the Auckland suburb of Kohimarama. The neighbouring kids would pile back there with Nici and her siblings after school, knowing that Mrs Wickes always baked a cake and a slice each day, and was happy if the whole lot was polished off.

“Mum has always been a great baker,” tells Nici. “Even now, we can work from exactly the same recipe and Mum’s version will be better.”

A love of good food has been passed down through generations of women in their family. “I remember my nana’s cooking,” recalls Carole.

“She was very poor, but knew how to make something from nothing. And my own mother loved to cook. We always went to her place with the five children every Sunday; we never missed it.”

Memories of those feasts at Nana’s house are precious to Nici and every week felt like a special occasion.

“She’d make a full afternoon tea with little butterfly cakes and spider drinks if us kids were lucky. And then a smorgasbord would roll out with sweet and sour pork, a curry, some sort of roast, and then fruit salad and probably a sponge pudding.”

Nici could be a fussy eater back then and wasn’t wild about vegetables. Carole still shudders as she remembers her chewing peas and refusing to swallow.

Nevertheless, of all her five daughters, Nici was the one most drawn to the kitchen. She learnt to make everything from Crêpes Suzette to Carole’s famous one-egg chocolate cake, at her mother’s side.