Annabel Langbein


Annabel Rose Langbein is a New Zealand celebrity cook, food writer and publisher. She has published 25 cookbooks and fronted three seasons of her TV series, Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook, which launched on the TV One network in New Zealand and has since screened in more than 90 countries.

Family

She is the daughter of Fred and Anne Langbein and is married to Ted Hewetson, with whom she has two children. Her father worked in a city office but was a keen vegetable gardener and beekeeper, while her mother was a cook and home science university graduate. She credits her mother as the inspiration for her cooking. Langbein met husband Ted while working as a possum trapper on his family's farm on the East Cape of New Zealand.

Life

As a teenager in the 1970s, Langbein says she was a fully-fledged hippie and feminist, railed against domesticity, consumerism and the urban world in general, and left home and school at the age of 16. Her mother took her to Europe in the hope of showing her the 'real world' but on her return she moved up the Whanganui River with some friends to enjoy an alternative lifestyle growing vegetables, cooking over a fire and living off the land. For several years she hunted and fished for much of her own food, and it was during this time that she honed her cooking skills through endless experimentation.
She started to cook for a living when she went to Gisborne to work as a chef in a friend's restaurant. But she soon realised that she didn't want to cook the same food every day and used the opportunity to save money for an overseas experience. She travelled the world experimenting with different flavours but got sick in South America and ended up living in Brazil for a year and starting her own croissant business there. She eventually made her way back to New Zealand.
A life-threatening experience in the 1980s, when she was thrown from a horse and given virtually no chance of walking again, reinforced for Langbein the importance of safeguarding her wellness and making the most of each day. She experienced a ‘eureka’ moment when she realised she could change people's lives by sharing her knowledge of cooking and eating well, and confounded the doctors by making a complete recovery.
She and Ted now live on the shores of Lake Wanaka, in New Zealand's spectacular Southern Alps, where over more than 20 years they have transformed a patch of boggy bush into extensive gardens and orchards.

Career

Langbein has never formally trained as a chef, but has a Diploma of Horticulture with Distinction from Lincoln University in New Zealand and has attended residential cooking courses at the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York.
Since 1984 she has worked as a food writer, writing for several magazines including The New Zealand Heralds Canvas magazine, NZ Life & Leisure, NZ Listener and Cuisine, as well as writing and publishing her own cookbooks. She has appeared on The Today Show in the US, Saturday Kitchen in the UK, 24Kitchen in The Netherlands and numerous other media outlets.

Books

Langbein self-published her first book of recipes 1988, and has since built one of New Zealand's most successful publishing houses, Annabel Langbein Media. She has authored and self-published 25 cookbooks, which have been published in numerous languages and sold more than two million copies all around the world. The Best of Annabel Langbein: Great Food for Busy Lives, was published in 1997, has been reprinted numerous times since and is known as “the kitchen bible” in many New Zealand households. Her 2010 book The Free Range Cook was available in more than 70 countries and sold more than 110,000 copies.
In 1991 she established the Culinary Institute of New Zealand, a specialist food marketing consultancy, and was responsible for marketing and media campaigns for New Zealand food manufacturers, retailers and exporters, as well as promoting New Zealand food offshore for Trade New Zealand. For seven years she was a director of New Zealand gourmet cheese company Kapiti and for three years she was a judge for the International Association of Culinary Professionals' Julia Child Award for the best first cookbook.
Her philanthropic work has included raising substantial sums for the National Heart Foundation of New Zealand, Autism New Zealand and other charity groups.

Television

UK-based global content company FremantleMedia first noticed Langbein's presenting skills in 2008, when she posted on YouTube a series of how-to cooking features that she had made to promote her book Eat Fresh. They approached her and offered to back her to produce a fully fledged TV series.
In August 2010, New Zealand's TV One debuted her show, Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook, a 13-part cooking and lifestyle series filmed at Langbein's cabin on the shores of Lake Wanaka and showcasing New Zealand's scenery and artisanal produce. She co-produced the series and worked with a seven-person TVNZ crew over a six-month filming schedule. It was the first time she had fronted her own cooking show and series on television, but she has since co-produced two further seasons of the show.
The series has been distributed worldwide by FremantleMedia, and has appeared on the ABC and SBS networks in Australia and other networks in France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Israel, UK, Canada, Asia, Brazil and Japan.
In Brazil the show airs on the GNT cable channel under the translated title A Cozinha Caseira de Annabel.
YearProgrammeEpisodesDuration
2010Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook13 episodes30 minutes
2012Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook: Simple Pleasures13 episodes30 minutes
2014Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook: Through the Seasons13 episodes30 minutes

Honours

Langbein's books and TV series have won numerous national and international awards. In February 2016 she won the People's Choice Award for Best Home Chef in a TV Series at the US-based Taste Awards.
Her books have won Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for Best Entertaining Cookbook, Best Easy Recipes Cookbook and Best Celebrity Cookbook. In 2013 she won NZ Guild of Food Writers Culinary Quills for best website, best TV series and best book, and in 2014 she won Best Culinary Series and Best Presenter at the Best on the Box People's Choice Awards. The Best of Annabel Langbein: Great Food for Busy Lives won the 1999 New Zealand Guild of Foodwriters Recipe Book of the Year award, while Savour the Pacific: A Discovery of Taste won the Best Photography in the World award at the World Cookbook Awards in Périgueux, France, as well as a Ladle at the 2001 World Food Media Awards.
In 2008, Langbein was inducted into the Wellington Girls' College Business Hall of Fame, and in 2013 she received New Zealand's most prestigious individual achievement award, a World Class New Zealand Award. Langbein was awarded an honorary Doctor of Commerce degree by Lincoln University in 2017.
In the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours, Langbein was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services as a food writer.