New Zealand's naked chef
Home » Magazine » Good, issue 5 » New Zealand's naked chefMeet New Zealand's naked chef, Angus Allen
A can of Nestlé Reduced Cream, a sachet of Maggi Onion Soup mix, a squeeze of lemon and a quick flick with a fork are all it takes to conjure up the classic Kiwi party dip. It’s not exactly sophisticated snacking, which is why foodies around the country are falling for Naked Organics. Some even try to pass off the gourmet dips as their own—and who could blame them?
Certainly not Angus Allan, the founder of the Naked Organics brand of dips and soups. New Zealand’s answer to Jamie Oliver just wants us all to eat decent food.
Angus began mixing his organic dips seven years ago, in fairly unsophisticated style himself—in his mum’s kitchen. Starting simple, with basic aioli, Angus swiftly moved on to more exotic blends and had tubs of Naked Organics dips on supermarket shelves within a year—holding down a full-time job as chef at O’Connell Street Bistro all the while.
If launching the organic food business sounds easy, rest assured it was anything but.
“I was as green as a cucumber,” Angus reckons, and he doesn’t mean it in the tree-hugger sense. “I knew a bit about food, but that was it. I knew nothing about business.
“I just thought the dips we ate were crap.”
So, he set about making better ones. That meant throwing himself into the world of suppliers, organic certification and, eventually, factories and large-scale food processing.
“I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn’t know what gross profit, net profit and labour costs were. I had no business nous at all. I lost a lot of money making a lot of mistakes.”
Learning from his mistakes was nothing new. Angus taught himself to cook in much the same way—but as mistakes go, they were classy ones, made on board luxury boats, cooking for super-wealthy Mexican families while touring the Caribbean and Northern Mediterranean.
“We’d get off the boat in the morning, go to the farmers market at the dock, buy all our food from the farmers, then go back and cook it. Everything was incredible quality—and you never got the same thing twice.”
Making up different menus every day meant he had to be “ridiculously creative”, an experience he describes as something akin to five years straight on cooking show Top Chef.
“I made some seriously weird stuff. You think you know what it’s going to taste like, but sometimes you just don’t. That’s where I learned to cook—I kind of fudged my way through it.”
All those farmers markets got him hooked on fresh, organic produce, but his unlimited food budget also meant lots of not-at-all-sustainable foods—caviar and foie gras, “before they were bad!” he laughs.
That was the 90s, and Angus has seen a lot of food fads come and go since then. Now, the chef finds satisfaction in pushing Kiwi palates towards more adventurous tastes.
“The public changes slowly. If you say something’s got chilli in it, people won’t buy it. If you don’t tell them it’s got chilli in it, even if it tastes hot, they’ll buy it and like it.”
But things have changed a lot over the past five or ten years, he says. “We’ve seen the growth of farmers markets, the local and organic movements, the Slow Food movement … people know a lot about food now.”
And Angus knows a lot more about business. Four years into Naked Organics, the company making Lisa’s Hummus made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Being bought by his number one competition was not without its embarrassments, however. “I’d been telling my friends for five years never to buy Lisa’s Hummus!”
These days, he counts business as one of his biggest passions—although food still comes first. Which is why New Zealand’s favourite dip-maker is sharing the recipe for one of his best sellers with Good. Here’s Angus’s hummus: authentic, naked and delicious.
Middle Eastern hummus
This recipe for authentic Middle Eastern hummus is rich, smooth, moreish and creamy. Enjoy!
150g dried chickpeas
60g high-quality tahini (best to buy from a Middle Eastern store)
10ml water
125ml sunflower oil
60ml fresh lemon juice
10g sea salt
1 tbsp toasted pine nuts
½ tsp smoked paprika
Soak the dried chickpeas in 400ml of water overnight in the fridge.
Rinse soaked chickpeas and place in a pot with cold water.Place pot on heat, bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Remove any film that rises to the surface while the chickpeas are cooking. When cooked (approx 50 minutes), remove from heat and drain.
Hummus is best made while the chickpeas are still warm, to get a nice smooth consistency. Keep a few cooked chickpeas aside for finishing, and place the rest together with the tahini, oil, lemon juice and salt in a food processor and mix on high until the hummus is smooth.
Scoop the hummus into a bowl or plate, drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with smoked paprika, toasted pine nuts and the rest of the whole chickpeas.
Serve with fresh pita bread or crisps.
