15 October 2010

EATING ON THE EDGE

Here's a piece I recently wrote for the International Association of Culinary Professionals, most of whom think the Sydney Harbour Bridge crosses to NZ!!

When that great British navigator, Captain James Cook, sailed into a bay on the eastern coast of New Zealand in 1769, he discovered a lush land with surprisingly few native vegetables or fruits and no indigenous mammals. He also encountered extreme hostility and was involved in skirmishes that forced him to up-anchor and sail north in search of friendlier shores. The Maoris who inhabited that land ate a simple diet of seafood, birds, and roots and ferns. Their cooking methods did not include iron or pottery vessels but involved heating the stones of a large umu (underground oven) and steaming the food over these for a feast known as a hangi.

Visitors who arrive today in these same far flung shores on the world’s edge today are warmly welcomed, unlike Cook, and find a land offering an exciting array of fresh food. Pristine primary produce from the agricultural based economy accounts for more than 60% of New Zealand’s export income. The restaurant and café scene is sophisticated yet the primitive hangi of the Maori people lives on and is a unique expression of eating that intrigues visitors and locals alike.

I was asked to entertain a famously voracious food writer from Gourmet magazine more than 20 years ago, and so dug up my back yard to feed Mr Fred Ferretti and his food writer wife Eileen Yin Fei-Lo in the traditional manner. Members of the famous national All Blacks rugby team turned up to assist and even Mr Ferretti could not keep up with another local custom of the hangi; the consumption of dozens of bottles of locally brewed lager beer that calm anxiety as the Maori hosts wait, and wait, and wait some more for the right moment to open the underground feast of pork, lamb, chickens, cabbages, potatoes, and kumara, a unique sweet potato that is popular throughout the country. The flavours were pure; unadulterated by spices or herbs, as that’s the traditional way. Mr Ferretti was mightily impressed with the food and drink and wrote about the event in his Gourmet column. I, on the other hand, was singularly unimpressed that my lawn took two years to recover.

This year, the world’s king of fusion cuisine, the talented chef Peter Gordon re-invented the hangi for a large local fundraiser held on the Turangawaewae marae (the meeting place where New Zealand’s Maori king is domiciled), for the Rautakauri Music Therapy Centre. The New Zealand born and raised Gordon drew early attention to ‘fusion’ cuisine when he served knock-out dishes at a small Wellington restaurant, The Sugar Club in the mid-eighties. He audaciously mixed flavours and ingredients from the Pacific Rim countries of Asia, the Americas and the South Pacific Islands and drew worldwide acclaim for his innovative cuisine. He then moved to London and from the base of his restaurant Providores and the Tapa Room in Marylebone, his influence extends to menus in Istanbul (changa and musdechanga restaurants), NYC (Public Restaurant), Auckland (dine with Peter Gordon, Sky City) and everywhere else his kitchen disciples have gone.

650 guests were treated to Gordon’s gourmet hangi. Pity that Mr Ferretti did not return, as the feast include marinated pork loin and stuffed pork belly, marinated chicken, whole baby lamb and marinated beef. Gordon explained this was a traditionally cooked hangi with an injection of flavours. “All the dishes were devised to add a twist to the usual hangi fare. I simply added a fusion approach using local ingredients such as coconut, curry juice, walnuts, apple and sage, pikopiko (local fern fronds) and some Asian spicing as well. It was very tasty, I can assure you. ”

It has taken almost 200 years to modernise this traditional fare. Until the last couple of decades, the majority of immigrants who settled in New Zealand were of British stock. About 6000 Chinese turned up in the 19th century gold rush, some stayed on to become the backbone of the early horticultural industry and there were also Dalmatian gum diggers who were the forerunners of New Zealand’s now burgeoning and successful wine industry. The sad news for New Zealand cuisine which developed through this time was the country missed out on the vibrant sunny influences of Italian, Greek and other Mediterranean cuisines that underpinned the evolving food cultures of Australia and the American continent.

The colonial women were cheerful yet plain cooks and their greatest legacy has been the ubiquitous roast leg of lamb, which was the mainstay of the family diet for decades. They also helped New Zealand to become a nation of home bakers, and today the constant urge to make cakes, biscuits and small sweet things harks back to the very colonial high teas that the early British settlers indulged in. Cook books that offer lovely baking recipes inevitably top the nation’s best selling non-fiction list every month.

There’s a raft of interesting home grown cookies and cakes that can claim to be original , although occasionally there’s a bit of a ruckus as rivalry between Australia, the larger country a few hours’ flight west of New Zealand and the Kiwis (as New Zealanders are known) is fierce. Anzac biscuits, afghans, hokey pokey biscuits, Louise cake, and pavlova are all claimed by New Zealand cooks and recorded in the community cookbooks of the early twentieth century.

Pavlova is the most fascinating. A few years back the ‘Pavlova Wars’ broke out when Helen Leach, an anthropology professor at the University of Otago presented research to prove the earliest pavlova, a frothy egg white and sugar concoction, was made by a New Zealand housewife in the mid 1920s. The Australians had always claimed it was theirs, an invention of Perth chef Bert Sachse who presented such a dessert to ballerina Anna Pavlova in the 1930s. All hell broke loose in the press! I tasted a little of this friction last year, as a speaker at the Ubud Literary Festival in Bali, when I was asked to submit a recipe that was representative of my home country. Of course I sent the pavlova, not knowing that the largest part of the audience at the festival would be Australians. There were jeers and boos when I got up to speak about ‘my’ dish at a dinner, although the Aussies were quickly and effectively subdued when I quoted Professor Leach’s excellent research. And for the rest of that week I was known as the ‘Pavlova lady.’

New Zealand’s population, now around four million, has exploded in more recent times with immigration from the Polynesian islands and Asia. It’s an attractive destination for both starting a new life and for tourism. No-one in New Zealand lives more than 20 kilometres from a farm, and there’s a vineyard within two hours’ drive of every town and city. So New Zealanders are blessed with an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables, rich dairy products, aromatic wines and olive oils, and a plethora of artisan and gourmet foods. The diet is loaded with protein from the grass fed beef, lamb and venison that is farmed on the extensive pastoral lands. If New Zealanders grow anything better than anyone in the world, it’s grass and many countries would be envious to hear the animals are raised outdoors year round and there is only one very small boutique feedlot in the entire country.

Tourists visit for the extreme sport and adventure activities offered everywhere, but recently food and wine has shot to the top of the list of thrills that visitors seek. And it’s not only the fresh farm produce found in restaurants, cafes and the many farmers markets in every town that appeal. With 19,000 kilometres of pristine coastline on the two tiny islands and the largest fishing grounds of any country on earth, seafood is also a must. Shellfish, the highly rated Bluff oysters, tuna, Greenshell mussels and an array of both unique and familiar fish are fresh, tasty and freely available. A Friday night ritual for many families is to order in large newspaper wrapped bundles of ‘fish and chips,’ fresh moist fish deep fried in crunchy batter, accompanied by a pile of crisp or sometimes soggy fried potato chips with tomato sauce.

This profusion of fresh fish and the new Asian influences make sushi the number one choice for a fast lunch in the cities. Venture into rural areas, however and the very popular meat pie or sandwiches, often thin and cheap, are more likely to be the choices. To visit New Zealand and not eat a hokey pokey ice cream would be to miss an essential part of the food culture. We all grew up on this. Hokey pokey is sugar and golden syrup (a little like corn syrup but far superior) boiled together with bicarbonate of soda. When this mixture sets it forms a crunchy, almost fizzy candy that is then cut into small chunks and stirred into vanilla ice cream. It’s wonderful.

But a word of warning. New Zealanders love to eat fresh and locally produced food of course. No contest. But this tiny country, on the edge of the world where there are no farming subsidies, no tax concessions and no protection, has an economy dependent on exporting produce around the world. So don’t talk about food miles!