On my recent cookery course in Chiang Mai, one of the other participants, upon hearing our travels would take us to New Zealand, recommended we try the green-lipped mussels.
Continue reading New Zealand Food Exploration: Green-lipped Mussels
New Zealand Food Exploration: Mutton Bird
One of the stops for my New Zealand research was Not Quite Nigella’s blog posts about a trip she had made there. One in particular spoke about a Queenstown visit she had made to a fish and chip shack, where she tried something called mutton bird.
Despite it sounding a little unsavoury, I was intrigued at a foodstuff I had not eaten before, and hoped I’d get a chance to give it a go.
When we eventually found ourselves standing outside Aggy’s Shack (Marine Parade, Queenstown), staring at the menu, it suddenly seemed less appealing compared to the crispy fish and chips I could see other people tucking into. After much deliberation though, I threw myself on my sword in the name of experimentation and ordered it.
After a short wait, the mutton bird (also known as titi) arrived resting on a bed of golden chips. I eyed it suspiciously. It resembled a bony portion of duck, and did not look very appetising. I poked it a bit with a fork and eventually levered off a shred of meat and popped it in my mouth.
New Zealand Food Exploration: Kumara
I’m really pretty crap at this blogging malarkey. Every time some food turns up, my laden fork is halfway to my mouth before H exasperatedly reminds me yet again that we should have taken a photo first.
This is for my blog, you understand. I know, I know, I should be suffering for my art, nobly allowing the photographer to work while my dinner starts to cool. I should probably be taking the photos myself in fact, instead of lazily allowing H to exercise his skills. However photography is his thing and he does it brilliantly, so I view it as a win-win.
Besides, my “forgetfulness” means I get to eat straight away while H instead has to take a photo of his still-intact plate. Score!
Anyway, all this is leading on to explain why there is no picture of a kumara to accompany this post. Kumara chips? Ate them. Kumara mash? Ate it. Any other form of kumara? Nothing to see here, folks. I suggest utilising the wonders of Google (yep, I’m a failure and I give you homework…hey, why are you reaching for that X in the corner of the browser window?).
So kumara (which peeps seemed to pronounce as coo-mer-a with the emphasis on the first syllable) is a sweet potato. It turns up all over the place, adding a mealy heft and caramel note of sweetness to the plate. Buy it and try it, oh and send me a photo please…
New Zealand Food Exploration: Feijoa
The morning after we arrived in New Zealand, we lurched, jet-lagged, down an Auckland street and stumbled into a café for breakfast.
The dawning realisation that my strict food budget really wasn’t going to go that far put a severe downer on proceedings, but I perked up when I saw a bottled smoothie of an unknown fruit for sale.
The cross-section illustration on the label was disturbingly similar to a cucumber, but I was feeling optimistic and took a generous swig.
New Zealand Food Exploration: Introduction
When me and the boyfriend decided to visit New Zealand as part of our “We’re Having an Early Mid-life Crisis Freak-out Tour 2011”, I fell to researching straight away.
I devoted perhaps 25% of my time to hotels and tourist attractions, and the rest to tracking down must-eat food tips. From Chowhound to random Google searches combining place names and cunning key words such as “food” and “blog”, I gradually created lists of restaurants and notes on treats to try.
Our strict budget meant many delicious-sounding venues were discarded, but for the benefit of fellow cash-strapped food lovers, I’ll be posting on some of the thriftier edibles we’ve sampled.