Cookery in the Colonial Era. Contact with the immigrants brought new types of kai and ways of cooking to Maori, explored by Prof Helen Leach of the University of Otago in the second of her 2008 Macmillan Brown lectures. From the range of introduced crops and animals, Maori selected those which slotted easily into their culinary tradition as substitutes for traditional foods. In contrast Pakeha settlers faced food shortages and a temporary loss of cooking technology. After a period of mutual borrowing, in the 1860s. Pakeha turned to older colonies around the Pacific for new recipes and equipment.