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Kerr, a chief catering adviser for the Royal New Zealand Air Force, also tried to create a cooking style for the region’s stunning local ingredients: Queensland duckling, the small kumara sweet potato, the giant and now-rare Toheroa clam.

Some of the ingredients have not aged well - toheroa, a green clam from New Zealand, is almost extinct - but Kerr’s clear and concise methods for everything from carving chicken to poaching fish are timeless.

Under the native name of Toheroa, a factory at Dargaville preserves these bivalves in tins.