My Sunday: Josh Emett

Friday, 29 June 2018

Josh Emmett with wife Helen, who is herself an accomplished cook.

In the early days of my career, back with Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's, I always worked a Sunday. I still distinctly remember my days off in London were a Wednesday and Thursday, when no one is around. Saturday, Sunday and Mondays were always my big days at work. I remember everyone doing nothing all day on a Sunday and you were in work all day. It was painful. And even though it's been a while since I've worked weekends, I still never take having them off for granted.

The week days for me are really full on and packed with a lot of travel. I actually travel almost every week. I'm down to Queenstown to check in with my restaurant Rata twice a month, and then at least once a month I'm in Christchurch, Dunedin or Hamilton. And every so often I'm also overseas. When I'm not travelling, I make sure that I'm there to take Finn to soccer practice in the morning and Helen and I will do our boot camp at the same time.

When it comes to the weekend, I always have this idea that it's going to be relaxed. But when it comes around, we end up packing in the activities with the kids and wanting to see friends. There's always something to do. Our life revolves around kids' sports and I love it. On a Saturday, it is football, and in the summer, we play a lot of tennis. I play with the kids and then with mates. But Sunday is the one day, we don't have to get up and out, with the boys playing water polo in the afternoon.

Josh Emmett's downtime revolves around family and food.

* Us Two: Josh Emett and Fleur Caulton of Rata and Madam Woo's

* Josh Emett opens up**

My favourite part of the day is waking up with the kids at about 7am and making breakfast. I actually don't cook much for the family in the week. I'm lucky that Helen cooks so well and such beautiful food. For me, by the time it comes to the end of the day in the week, I'm really happy to be cooked for. But on a Sunday, I like to focus on cooking food for the family. And in the morning, I'll do eggs and bacon and maybe some pancakes.

My wife Helen is English so a big part of our Sunday is a big family roast. We generally do roast beef and we make the decision on the day and all head down to the Good Grocer in Kohimarama in Auckland. It's just around the corner and they do great meats. It's a nice walk and we get what we need and then pop it in the oven and then go for another walk around Madills Farm. The boys kick a soccer ball around and our dog actually has a whole lot of dog mates down there so he plays with them.

But the roast is perhaps our least healthy meal of the week. We eat pretty bloody healthy. It's a big focus for us as a family. We try to be a little more relaxed with the boys, let them eat what they like to eat. But if we have breaded chicken, for example, we'd buy the chicken breast and bread it ourselves. We don't buy the boxed stuff. And we try to integrate vegetables where we can with their food. My favourite dish to cook the family is risotto and I sneak in lots of vegetables.

The boys definitely have an interest in cooking, until they get distracted by something else. Food is such a big part of who we are, so they have picked that up and we like to do a little bit of baking. But they are boys, they get very distracted until it comes to eating it, that is. But we made a bombe alaska recently and I let them blow torch it and that is exciting for them, and they love that as a dessert. The definitely like the idea of cooking but then they'll drift off and start doing something else.

We are a five minute walk from the beach, so summer is all about swimming and fishing. I love being outdoors. But now we are in winter, I've just introduced the boys to playing chess. And they actually beat me every so often already. Even my youngest beat me with a move he learnt online. Films and documentaries are big on those rainy winter days as well. We try and watch something that everyone likes, rather than anything cartoony. It will be more like a classic like The Goonies or documentaries, especially on surfing and snowboarding.

I always take half an hour out of the day to plan for the week ahead. I just take those thirty minutes to realign myself with what's happening in my coming week. If I do that, I go to bed on Sunday night not thinking about Monday morning. But if I don't it, then I will be worrying and wondering what am I doing. Except for that time, I try to stay away from my device. In the week, I am on my phone a lot. But I always try to not drift off into Instagram and use my phone more functionally. Otherwise before you know it, an hour has gone and you've done nothing but look at pictures that you aren't even that interested in.