November 09, 2022
Toilalo cooks up reo lessons
Television presenter and baker Naomi Toilalo hopes her new bilingual cookbook gives people the chance to learn a little reo while they bake.
Whanaukai features 70 recipes for breads, slices, biscuits, cakes and pastries which Ms Toilalo initially developed for the Instagram cooking show she presented during the pandemic.
She says common kitchen words lend themselves to learning the reo.
“Like stirring, stir this, throw that in, mix this, all of that, it lends itself to really beautiful reo teaching and so my hope is it teaches people and inspires people to show how beautiful our reo is and lots of repetition because within the kauta I use a lot of the same ingredients and so people read it over and over again and I hope they can learn and absorb and enjoy our beautiful reo in amongst some baking,” she says.
Whanaukai is available in stores and online.