Impress guests with quality New Zealand-grown ingredients.
It's a sad state of affairs but the best of our produce is exported, and locals have to pay top money for the what's left of the prime harvest from our land and sea. I have always believed that New Zealand should be like Italy and keep a good percentage of our best produce here.
Thankfully we can holiday in places where our unique seafood may be fished, dived for or gathered for free. Or we may get lucky and be able to buy over-runs of our export meats.
Recently I catered a dinner in a private house for a visiting Chinese delegation. The brief was to showcase New Zealand food. I chose to keep it simple with Asian influences. This dinner is high end, but the execution is easy. The best ingredients need less fuss.
There are ideas here that you could replicate during the holidays when you might have access to our country's abundant offerings. I'm looking forward to the Christmas holidays when I will be staying at a bed and breakfast called The Port, on the coast between Kaikoura and Christchurch. Crayfish, paua and fresh fish is on tap, whitebait caught from the Hurunui River will be in the freezer, there's an excellent butcher shop supplied by local farmers, and vegetables from The Port's over-productive garden are there for the picking. I'll be cooking food like this in a much more rustic style and relishing every mouthful. We all deserve to eat like this every day in a country as bountiful as New Zealand.
