Everyone has their dreams. Everyone says, “Wouldn’t it be lovely if…? One day I’d like to…”. The difference is that Stephen and I do the things we dream about. These are the words of Jo Crabb in her eminently readable and engaging new book, My Two Heavens (although Jo prefers A Tale of Two Kitchens and has a limited run of copies under that title).
Known to most of us through cooking rather than writing, Jo says she believes everyone thinks of writing a book but they don’t do anything about it. She says that she broke several pens and “there was one point where it almost didn’t get there”, but it is clear how delighted she is that she persevered and completed it.
Previously owners of Café Medici, which they ran for over 11 years, and now Carême cooking school at Palliser Estate, Jo and her partner Stephen enjoy a life in two worlds- Martinborough and France.
Jo’s book moves, as she does, between them. It is both autobiography and food memoir, the story embellished with (mostly French) recipes and garnished with Stephen’s delightful drawings.
Jo and Stephen met at university over 30 years ago, where Stephen was studying fine arts and Jo economics. Unsurprisingly, Jo swiftly realised that an economist’s lot was not for her, and embarked on a life in food.
Following a decade of travel and work, Jo and Stephen came to Martinborough nearly 20 years ago. Jo says with a chuckle that “we chose Martinborough off the map”. The list of criteria focused on a better climate than Auckland, where they lived at the time, no traffic, proximity to a main centre without being in it, and something ‘extra’ of interest. Of course in Martinborough that was wine.
Once here, however, Jo says “we didn’t realise how rustic and rural it was – there was nothing to do”. They were living the good life, but it wasn’t enough to have the bucolic landscape, the chickens and the sheep, and what was then a very sleepy village.
Just as Jo found herself using the word “boring” to describe her life, along came Café Medici. It was the perfect solution and Jo and Stephen thoroughly enjoyed running the café, which was more successful than they had ever believed it could be. But that success also meant that they worked far too hard.
Being neither skiers nor devotees of tropical island holidays, Jo and Stephen looked elsewhere for an annual winter break and found that of all the options available to them, France was the place that repeatedly called them back. In 2005 the couple bought a “gorgeous, very old stone house in Montjaux”, which is what Jo describes as “a not very prosperous but genuine place in back country France – like Eketehuna but France”.
For 10 months of each year in Martinborough Jo indulges her passion for French cooking with her programme of classes at Carême and Stephen paints, and they holiday in France for the remaining two. That way they enjoy an endless summer and return to Martinborough and the Carême cooking classes at Palliser with renewed vigour and an even greater desire to share the best of French cuisine. Judging by this delightful book, the combination works – to use one of Jo’s favourite expressions – like a dream.
New Zealand is reality; France is romance – we wouldn’t, we couldn’t, these days, have one without the other. Jo Crabb
Rachel McCahon
