Bruce 'Pic' Picot celebrates the versatility of his "really good" peanut butter in the new Pic's Really Good Recipe Book.
Among the recipes are a "not too satay-ish and really, really lovely" Peanut Butter Chicken Pie – Pic's personal favourite – and his own for Peanut Butter & Tomato on Toast.
Pic Picot talks to Karyn Hay about the book.
Pic Picot Photo: Supplied
Explore yummy recipes that use Pic's products here
Photo: Penguin New Zealand
As well as being a collection of fabulous peanut butter recipes, Pic's Really Good Recipe Book tells the story of how a semi-retired Nelson man became a peanut butter baron.
As a young man, Pic made leather goods such as sandals and handbags to pay for his first OE, then once back in New Zealand learnt the trade of furniture-making and worked in giftware sales.
He was 55 when the lease ended on the laundromat he'd been running. Pic started pondering something he could make to sell at the local weekend market for a bit of extra cash.
Around the time, the peanut butter lover discovered sugar was creeping into supermarket brands to his disgust.
As a child, Pic had discovered the joy of fresh peanut butter via his mother's homemade oven-roasted version.
In 2007, he made a homemade batch himself. It tasted great but roasting many kilograms of peanuts in the oven without burning them was impractical.
He realised that the peanuts needed to somehow keep moving as they were cooking. The solution? A customised concrete mixer in the garage.
"A concrete mixer keeps moving so I just put a burner under a concrete mixer and roasted the peanuts that way."
Photo: Pic's Peanut Butter
On Pic's first day at the Nelson market, his peanut butter sold out. But he says it wasn't until people came back to buy more the next weekend that he knew he was on to a good thing.
"I tell people if they can make something want to get, that's where you need to be.
"If they come back and buy it again you're really on a winner.
"People believed in us, people liked the stuff. It made all the difference."
At the Pic's factories, nuts are fresh-roasted using solar-powered machinery.
Really good peanuts are the key to delicious peanut butter, he says, and theirs come from Kingaroy in Queensland.
"I just fluked on that … When I tried to find someone who'd sell me wholesale peanuts I came across this guy Greg from Australia. And he was dealing in Australian peanuts that were high oleic."
Despite the delicious peanuts he's getting, Pic says it would be lovely to make his peanut butter a domestically sourced product.
He's excited about the peanut-growing trials Pic's is currently running in Northland.
Listen - Pic Picot talks to Kim Hill about his memoir Pic: Adventures in Sailing, Business and Love
