We live in a multicultural food mecca, with just about every cuisine available to us but our own.
Although Maori ingredients such as kawakawa, horopito and karakeke seeds are increasingly used in dips and seasonings, traditionally, these were used for medicinal and healing purposes in rubs and pulps. And despite boil-ups turning up at certain establishments (Kingsland’s Portland Public House, for instance), Maori food is hardly commonplace on restaurant menus.
Until Thursday that is, when a special invite-only three-course Maori-inspired feast will launch Matariki 15 (the Maori New Year) at the Auckland Museum. The “Long Hakari” menu was designed by top Auckland chefs Tu Fearn (Harbourside) and Nancye Pirini (Novotel Auckland Airport Hotel), who used to work together under Peter Gordon at Dine.
“It’s such a hard food to modernise,” Nancye explains. “You can do a spin-off on a boil-up or pork bones and watercress using pork cutlets, with a really good consomme and dumplings. But I think people wouldn’t recognise it as a boil-up. Traditionally, it’s very simple food. It’s always served with boiled cabbage and boiled potatoes. Not a lot of flavour is put into it.”
That can’t be said of the modern menu, inspired by the chefs’ roots: an entree of Horopito Manuka Smoked Salmon, main of Confit Belly of Pork and Polenta Cake with honey cream for dessert. Tu created the entree with kahawai croquette, kawakawa and avocado, coriander mint chilli and ginger, and karengo (a seaweed also eaten in Japan) for the Culinary Fare in 2008, in a category called Nga kai a te Maori, which he won.
His main is a modern take on pork and puha, only with coconut braised silver beet, rather than puha, which can taste bitter and is harder to source. He’s also added spring onion, urenika, upland cress and jus. The stand-out in the dish is urenika, the starchy, vibrant purple-coloured potato, which he’s smoked to impart more flavour.
Tu says his Mum was a great cook who’d often make pork and puha, and a variety of Maori breads rye, rewana, a sourdough made with potato, and takakau, a type of flatbread. There was also “heaps” of seafood sourced on fishing trips in the Hauraki Gulf. As a youngster he’d help his mum in the kitchen, but it wasn’t until he left school and got a job as a kitchen hand that his curiosity in a cooking career was piqued.
Eventually he got a chefing job at Dine; both Nancye and Peter are his son's godparents. Tu and Nancye have worked with Gordon on various events, including his gourmet hangis at Turangawaewae marae, and on his TV show, Native Kitchen.
“I learnt so much from him,” says Tu. “Especially how to use different flavour combinations.”
But he agrees that, other than Gordon, there are few chefs showcasing Maori food. Now that he’s head chef at Harbourside he has more freedom and is planning on adding a pork and puha-inspired dish to the menu.
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Advertise with NZME.“I’d like to showcase a lot more New Zealand products. We get a lot of international guests.”
Working at the airport means Nancye does, too; she’s also cooked for Prince Charles, Pink and Lionel Richie, and in 2011 she won restaurant of the year at the NZ Culinary Fare for Jet Park Hotel. Her contribution to the Long Hakari is a polenta cake dessert with cashew nut, salted caramel, popcorn and honey cream, a modern take on steamed pudding and runny cream. Steamed puddings on the marae were “all you got”, she laughs, with cream fresh from cows, and unpasteurised milk from the farm.
“I would eat steamed pudding and cream over this any day. One of the aunties or nannies would make it. They always knew how far to take the sugar. It’s like making a caramel but you take it past that point, just before it burns.”
Growing up on the Apanui East Coast, this mum of five’s Maori and Samoan family’s property was surrounded by maize and corn hence her initial plan to use corn; she used a playful touch of popcorn instead. There’s also a hint of orange, zest and Cointreau in the cake, as the property was surrounded by orange orchards.
“As kids we’d eat as many as we could until our mouths were filled with ulcers and we had sore tummies.”
Seafood was also big on the menu, fresh from the Te Kaha coastline: barbecued crayfish and kina. Or one of the pigs caught on hunting expeditions in the bush with her uncles.
“We’d have a lot of open-fire cooking. My grandad would throw potatoes straight into the fire. They’d be completely charcoaled on the outside.”
She also fondly remembers her aunties’ rewana bread.
"Every Maori family makes the best and our auntie looked after lot of kids in the family. She taught me how to make rewana bread and I still make it to this day. It's something I hold very dear because things like that get lost."
• For more information on the festival line-up go to matarikifestival.org.nz.
