All posts tagged: Maori

Fire smoke land and sea

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Heading west on Friday afternoon, we drive into a brilliant lilac sunset. My “fork buddy” Aimee is at the wheel and our spirits are high. We’ve been looking forward to this for months. We are going to Hiakai and hiakai means hungry in Māori. However, the weather soon sours. By the time we arrive at Vineyard Cottages in the heart of Kumeu, it is dusk and both sky and earth are wet. Typical Auckland. A couple of fire pits and glowing tents are beacons in the dark, confirming our destination. One bell tent with a warming wood stove burner is to be our dining room and the other canvas tent to serve as the camp kitchen and kitchen pass. I first cottoned on to chef Monique Fiso on the recommendation of fellow blogger Bri DiMattina. @momofiso’s brand of honest, humble humour track her explorations and experiments into a new standard of fiercely Māori cuisine. Having spent 7 years working in some of New York’s best kitchens, Wellington-born, Māori-Samoan chef Fiso returned to New Zealand in 2016 …

Hiakai means “hungry”

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Māori cuisine is curiously uncommon in our culinary landscape. Growing up in the Māori wonderland of Rotorua, I enjoyed many hangi as a kid. I just didn’t appreciate or understand how special it was until we moved to Auckland and there were no more hangi. For those not from around here, hangi is a traditional Māori technique of cooking food underground, using heated rocks and covered baskets. It involves a lot of digging and a lot of time and is thus reserved for special occasions on marae (Māori meeting houses) such as weddings and funerals. For most New Zealanders, Māori cuisine is not an everyday occurrence and even tourists visiting our country will struggle to find Māori cuisine. Searching “hangi” on Zomato comes up with one result and both “boil up” and “Māori” yield no results. None. I know of one cafe in Auckland serving Rewena bread as part of their menu, but it’s not like I can just go out and enjoy Māori food whenever I want. The industry just doesn’t look like that. Yet. In contrast, searching “sushi”, “butter …

Kiwi Flavours in Mt Eden

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Last month, I was invited to Tuihana Cafe for a Zomato meetup. A mere 600 metres from my house, I was a little embarrassed that I’d never visited Tuihana Cafe before. With a clean, modern interior with gorgeous monochrome wallpaper on one wall and a huge photographic print of the owners on Piha beach, Tuihana has a modern kiwi feel…like a brand new beachside bach. The owners are Nate and Leslie: Nate is the operations guy and Leslie in charge of the food. The story We met with Nate, who guided us through their menu and business as if we were new staff getting up to speed. I’ve worked in hospo before but I’d never seen anything like this sort of training. Nate had printed a set of notes for each of us, props at the ready for our viewing pleasure and professionally photographs via his iPad to explain the dishes. Nate’s background is in IT and this geekery clearly shows with their tech integrated cafe. As someone tethered to a computer, phone or wifi …

Smoked Salmon and Urenika

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If you like colourful, accessible food, this one is for you. This recipes shows off the lovely purple Urenika potato but you can substitute any good quality potato and the flavours will be the similar. Coloured potatoes contrast beautifully with smoked salmon and lemon so if you can, opt for colour potatoes. The deep purple Urenika or Maori potato is precious here in New Zealand. They are pretty boring looking the outside, and their secret is within. The small knobbly spuds can be found at most farmers markets but are absent from supermarket chains and as there is no mass farming of these potatoes. It’s as shame as they are quite beautiful to look at and taste earthy. I guess their rarity makes them more special. I’ve heard these potatoes can be quite easy to grow. In any case, at the end of summer, I poked a few sprouting potatoes into a planter box. The tomatoes were finished so I figured I had nothing to lose. A plant that looked liked nightshade sprouted up and …

Kai to Pie and World on your Plate: Maori

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Kai to Pie “Kai to Pie — Pie to Chai — Nosh to Posh. Whatever way you slice it, Auckland’s stories can be told through food: from the extraordinary wealth of people and cultures, to its fertile abundance of land, sun and sea, come up to the Museum for a serving of Auckland on your plate.” If you haven’t already been, check out the Kai to Pie exhibition at the Auckland Museum. There’s still 3 weeks until it ends and it’s free to all Aucklanders. 12 June – 25 October 2010 Special Exhibitions Hall Auckland Museum Free entry Here are some of my photos from the exhibition. World On Your Plate: Maori Running in conjunction with this exhibition is World On Your Plate – Saturday demonstrations of cuisine from around the world. I attended the Maori food demonstration by Charles Royal and his family in July. Charles is “a fierce advocate of sustainable local cuisine, indigenous produce”. Sadly, Maori dishes and native ingredients don’t feature in the day to day cuisine of the majority of New Zealanders. …

Purple fleshed kumara

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When I saw these at my online organics shop, I had to buy them. But once they were boiled and mashed, they turned out much darker than I had hoped for. Purple fleshed kumara mash with meatloaf dinner. I vowed to try it again – next time with some white potato in the mix so that the purple colour could pop.