MKR SISTERS' KITCHEN CRED

Their taste buds are stronger than most, thanks to wacky childhood creations

- Fleur Guthrie

While other kids might remember their favourite food smells being chocolate chip cookies baking or the waft of a roast chicken, Waikato sisters Emma Driver and Abbie Broome joke that they’re instantly transported back to their childhood with the pungent smells of blue cheese and shrimp paste.

It’s all thanks to their “foodie” dad Paul, who loved experimenting in the kitchen – and other rooms in the house for that matter!

“He was a photographer, so we had a dark room downstairs, but when he went through a phase of making blue cheese, it became a cheese room, and it stored boxes and boxes of mouldy cheese in it,” laughs Abbie, 26. 

“And that wasn’t the only thing that stunk the house out for hours,” adds older sister Emma, 36.

“Dad would make ox tongue or brawn [meat jelly made with the flesh of a boiled pig’s head]. Or he’d make a beautiful nasi goreng with shrimp paste, and we’d all go and hide in our bedrooms when that was cooking.

“Even now when we do family dinners, we’ll take a peek in our parents’ fridge and there’ll be something weird of Dad’s festering in there like a plate of pig’s trotters or a four-litre tub of jalapeños.

“Unfortunately, he suffered a stroke a few years ago and since then, his cooking hasn’t been quite the same.”