Trying to Cook in NZ

Two blog posts in three days? Amazing. Now that Nina and I are homeless, unemployed and living in a tent down by the river, I have some more free time. I can also plug the laptop in at the library and type away in a nice warm building. Today I am going to write about food.

 

First off, the food of Wanaka. Nina and I have been here for three days now and have had lunch in three different chip shops. The eating options here are slim. The town is very very small. Only 2000 permanent residents live in Wanaka itself, but there must be around 2000 homes. Most are holiday homes for rich Kiwis and people like Shania Twain. There are two or three Indian, two Italian, one Mexican, and two Thai restaurants. The Thai restaurants have the same menus though. They are actually identical, the same dishes, fonts, colors, pictures and everything. We haven’t eaten at them yet, but we will have to try them out. There are also five to ten nicer restaurants and around five pub type places. The quick/cheap options are a bit slim. There is a Subway (which I hate), a Turkish kebab/fish & chip place, a Chinese/fish & chip place, a fish & chip place and a little NZ style bakery. We went to the kebab place a few days ago and I had a pretty good Lamb doner wrap. It wasn’t the best I have had, but it wasn’t the worst. Nina had a spring roll, it had mutton in it. Needless to say, we won’t make that mistake again. We tried the Chinese place this afternoon. Nina got a vege spring roll and kumara fries and I had the big burger and fries. The fries were good, but very greasy. As I write this my stomach is kind of complaining about the grease intake. But, maybe just maybe, it was the burger. The “big burger” was a beef mince patty that had the texture of a sausage patty, sautéed mushrooms, sautéed onions, cheese, sweet tomato sauce, some kind of white sauce, a huge slice of ham, a fried egg and a pineapple ring. It was huge and also pretty good. I don’t know if I have to get it again, but it was filling and cheap by NZ standards. Once we get jobs, you can expect some more thoughts on Wanaka fare.

 

On our way up from Dunedin, Nina and I decided to have our second, once monthly fancy dinner (postponed until further notice) in Moeraki at Fleur’s Place. It was highly recommended by all three of our guide books and it didn’t disappoint. The restaurant was the only restaurant in Moeraki and looked very ramshackle on the wharf. The inside was very nice though. Unlike most of New Zealand’s spiffy cafés with stainless steel, white painted walls and light wood, this one was all warmly stained wood with lots of great angles, nooks and crannies. The tables were all set with nice flatware and had a single long taper candle. It was a very cozy romantic spot. The special board was amazing. They offered grouper, terakihi, warehou, gurnard, flounder, sole and petrale. The main menu offered salmon and blue cod. I have never seen a restaurant have so many fish. The town is a day port and the fishermen unload some of their catch directly to the restaurant. We started off with bread and dips along with an Emerson’s Bookbinder dark bitter ale for Nina and a 2006 Pinot form Central Otago for me. The bread was a nice mix of different flavors and the dips were nice too. My favorite was a fish and sorrel pate while Nina’s was a kumara hummus. Our mains were a different story completely. One of the traditional dishes of New Zealand is Titi or mutton bird, it is a seabird. I can’t think of another seabird that is commonly eaten and there may be a reason. It is a very acquired taste. Nina ordered a half bird. It came to the table following a bowl of warm lemon water and a tea towel for her hands. The bird itself was served with potatoes, sautéed spinach and some sort of parsley sauce. All of which were overpowered by the bird. I think the bird was brined and then smoked in the traditional way to preserve it. It was very salty. The meat itself was incredibly dark, like mutton and very very greasy. The flavor was of salt and the ocean, kind of like kelp (possibly its only food source). I don’t know much else about it, but I will do some research. I had a more conventional blue cod filet wrapped in house smoke bacon with a cream sauce and cockles. It was very good. Dessert was a nice chocolate tart with roasted figs and rum raisins. We want to go back if we head toward Dunedin again.

Some of you may be thinking that there is nothing good about food and drink here in New Zealand. In my first food blogs, I have been writing about things I have thought were different or strange here, but now it is time to tell you about some of the wonderful food finds here. This could be a very long entry, so I will try to keep it brief and maybe go back to some of them in the future.

First of all, I have to mention the foods from Asia we have had here. Starting off at Food Alley (see Auckland blog), in Auckland, we were very happy to find amazing Asian food. Nina had Malaysian and Japanese and I had Vietnamese and Thai foods. It was great. As we headed south we ate dinner at a nice Indian place in Wellington and was happy to see that they had peshwari naan, one of Nina’s favorites. It was good there, but the naan we had the other day here in Nelson at the Indian Café was great. It had shredded coconut and dried cherries in it along with the loads of butter and ground nuts. It is the perfect thing to dip in any spicy sauce that you get with your main course. Also, here in Nelson, Nina found a great place to get Pad Thai. The Poppy Thai, a place that I wanted to try for their egg curry, turns out to have a great Pat Thai. It is so good that it doesn’t even need extra peanut sauce. It is too bad because their homemade roasted and ground peanut sauce is excellent unto itself.

The quality of some of the meat is also very good. Kiwis do not mess around with their lamb. Since there are 40,000,000 million sheep here, they don’t mind sending their lambs to slaughter young. The lamb chops are tiny and delicious. In America, your standard rack of lamb might be six bones and weigh over a pound, but here it is less than eight ounces. The bones are like pencils. It is amazing. All the lamb is tiny. This makes for very tender cuts even from parts of the animal that aren’t usually that tender. The fish is also amazing. Nelson is the largest fishing port in New Zealand so the fish we get here is fresh. There are large factory ships that aren’t doing any good to the ecology of the area, but there are also a lot of small fishing boats that bring the fish in fresh. I have yet to smell bad fish here. I might be desensitized from working with fish all day, but the marina doesn’t smell like your normal marina. The varieties are also very delicious. Tarakihi is one of my new favorites. It is a thin fish with nice flaky flesh and a nice mild flavor. Another very popular local fish is the Grouper. That one is meaty like halibut, but not as white. In fact, I might stop by the fish and chip shop at the bottom of the hill today for lunch.

When I am not eating, I like to be drinking. I am sure you have seen my beer list. Just so you know, I really only drink on my weekend. Since, I have started keeping track of the beers I have had, I have tried 22 different NZ beers. Not too bad a start, if I am lucky I can try them all. There are a lot of very good beers here. It is not fair to judge the quality of beer by the major national brews, just like the fact that America has much more to offer than Bud, Coors and PBR. There is even another beer fete in March and the four breweries are each brewing a special beer just for the event, so there are four more right there. I can’t wait. A couple of good non-alcoholic options here are L&P and Lemon with Bitters. L&P or Lemon and Paeroa is a sweetened New Zealand mineral water with lemon added. Sean, a Kiwi at work says there must be something else in it due to it’s color and if it was just mineral water, sugar and lemon, we could all make our own. What ever it is, it is a nice refreshing drink. Lemon with Bitters is a Schweppes concoction that is made by other companies. It is just like a lemon lime drink, but with a hint of bitters that makes it very nice.

As fresh produce goes, New Zealand is just coming into its own both in the short term and the long term. In the short term, the summer produce is just starting to flood the farmers markets. Most vendors sell your standard lettuce, tomatoes and other normal vegetables, but now some are getting in different varieties of peaches and plums. It is turning into a cornucopia. There is an Asian farmer there who has a great selection of uncommon vegetables. He is on the forefront of the long term progress New Zealand is making in its food culture. He offers apple cucumbers, water spinach, five different pepper varieties, a couple different tomatoes, and some different onions. He also grows some Asian vegetables. And that is just small old Nelson. I hear that the markets in Auckland have great selections. I saw one picture of a stand that had four different radishes.

There will be more to come about the food here shortly. On Saturday, Nina and I are going to the Marlborough Wine and Food Festival at a winery outside of Blenheim. It sounds like a big event with food, wine and music. I hear they usually get 40,000 people there, so it should be a very nice way to spend a Saturday. Stay tuned for the highlights, I plan on taking lots of notes.

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