Michael van de Elzen was caught by the buzz and addiction of a busy restaurant kitchen rather than the food when he started as a dishwasher many years ago.
''It wasn't really until a number of years later when I went to London and was working in kitchens there that it really dawned on me what I was about to undertake,'' he said.
''London taught me how to love food and understand food and understand textures and flavours. I guess London taught me how to be a chef.''
Training in New Zealand gave him the basics but things like how to handle pressure, how to work with flavours and the seasons and vegetables and the actual passion side of it had to come from elsewhere, he said.
After travelling and working, he and his wife Bee returned to New Zealand to open Molten, a restaurant in Mt Eden, Auckland.
He was in the kitchen and Bee, who is also a chef, ran the front of house.
''She knew the fundamentals of food and could sell them and share the passion of the food with the guests, which is very important, because if you have great food coming out of the kitchen and no-one out the front to share that, it's sometimes a bit wasted,'' he said.
Then they tried to have a child and ended up going through IVF, which failed twice.
''It was like 'What are we doing wrong?'. My sister, who was a great inspiration, and a Chinese acupuncturist said `you have to look at the big picture'. We were working extremely hard.
"We probably weren't looking after ourselves - stress, not enough sleep, not eating well doesn't make for good fertility, so we changed all that,'' he said.
''We cut down our hours, we started eating better, we cut out all the rich food we used to have in the restaurant and the third round [of IVF] produced our two beautiful little girls who feature in the book.''
They sold the restaurant, Michael worked on The Food Truck show, which was about healthy fast food, for some years and now they have opened a new chicken restaurant, Boy and Bird, in Ponsonby.
''I want to focus on families eating. Restaurant food is rich and does have a lot of dairy in it - that was an important thing for us.
"Fast - that's important as well - good home cooking you can do quickly because we don't all have a lot of time.
"I guess it's me changing as my life changes and as my family grow up.
"The focus of this book is about eating good but not fluffing around with over-complicated recipes that require too many ingredients,'' he said.
He describes himself as a ''great vegetable hider'': Many of his dishes contain hidden vegetables, such as meatballs with grated pumpkin, sausage rolls with courgette, or cauliflower in macaroni cheese.
However, some of his old chef habits kick back in with other recipes, such as the roast chicken with tarragon and garlic butter pushed under the skin and smeared over the top.
There's also a section of children's and baby food, with photographs throughout of their children, Hazel (3½) and Ivy (1½), enjoying chewing on a chop or a stick of broccoli or asparagus.
Van de Elzen's first cookbook, Molten, was cheffy with complex restaurant recipes; the two Food Truck cookbooks were simple and focused on speed, but he regards Fast as a combination of both.
''It's where I am right now with my life, my style of cooking and what I enjoy to eat when I'm at home cooking. It's a good balance for me; there's a lot of health in there but I haven't sacrificed flavour and I've indulged a bit in a few places. I guess that's what you can do in your everyday life.''
Mushroom risotto
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Ingredients
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion
1 cup finely chopped leek
4 cloves garlic
2 cups arborio rice
1 cup pearl barley
1 cup white wine
1 quantity mushroom stock (see below)
½ cup finely sliced shiitake mushrooms
½ cup enoki mushrooms
½ cup finely sliced button mushrooms
½ cup chopped flat mushrooms
½ cup very thinly sliced Jerusalem artichokes
50g parmesan
Mushroom stock
Prep time: 2 minutes
Cooking time: 30-40 minutes
trimmings from risotto vegetables (mushroom, leek, onion and garlic)
2 bay leaves
1 cube vegetable stock
1.5 litres water
Method
Heat olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add onion, leek and garlic and cook until translucent. Add rice and pearl barley, turn up heat and cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add wine and stir until absorbed. Gradually add mushroom stock, stirring until absorbed after each addition. Stir in mushrooms and artichoke and cook for 2 minutes over a low heat.
Just before serving, stir in half of the parmesan.
Mushroom stock
Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer on low heat for 30-40 minutes.
Meatballs in tomato sauce
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
1 small onion
500g pork mince
1½ cups grated pumpkin
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
½ tsp white pepper
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
4 Tbsp breadcrumbs
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 quantity tomato sauce (see below)
Tomato sauce
Makes 3 cups
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion
3 cloves garlic
½ cup chopped herbs: parsley, rosemary and thyme
1 cup red wine
2 400g tins crushed tomatoes
2 tsp honey
salt
freshly ground black pepper
Method
Preheat oven to 180degC. Mix first 8 ingredients in a large bowl until well combined. Form into 60g balls. Heat oil in an ovenproof frying pan and fry meatballs until browned. Pour tomato sauce over meatballs and cover with foil. Bake in oven for 30 minutes.
Tomato sauce
Heat olive oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan. Saute onion and garlic until soft but not coloured. Add herbs and cook for a further 1-2 minutes. Deglaze saucepan with red wine. Add tomatoes and simmer until reduced by half. Add honey, and season to taste.
• Recipes from Fast: Good home cooking by Michael Van de Elzen with photographs by Babiche Martens (Random House)
