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Editorial
Bruce Griffiths
The
idea of food and beer matching is fun. The rules are basic and changeable,
remembering the idea that pungent, sour, bitter, salt and spiciness go
well. The balance of the dish is directly related to the weight/flavour/tang
complexity of the brew.
Our Monteith’s menu for the 2003 Wild Food Challenge is about using
ingredients associated with New Zealand’s culinary heritage to contemporary
New Zealand dining.
An appetising starter, the dish we call 'AD 1769' is an excellent match
for Monteith’s Golden Lager with its sweet light creaminess and
crisp dry finish.
Sea greens (Cook’s scurvy grass and native celery) are salted then
then finished in ‘Cook’s spruce beer’. Blue cod is seasoned
in horopito (Pseudowintera axillaris), commonly known as the
pepper tree, and then caramelised for a spicy sweetness. The creamy body
of the dish (blue cod and quark) highlights the subtle creaminess of Golden
Lager. Its sweetness is drawn out by the pungent crayfish glaze, and its
crisp dryness is complemented by the lemony flavours of the quark. The
crunch of the cabin bread also works well.
Plank of Salted Venison Brisket is a substantial main course and well
balanced by Monteith’s Celtic Red, with its full earthy flavours,
malt creamy mouth feel, and dry finish.
Venison is cured to complement the dryness of the beer. It is then poached
in Cook’s spruce beer and glazed in a mixture of pure malt and molasses
to highlight the maltiness of Celtic Red.
A little black pepper is added for spice, while watercress gives a peppery-herbaceous
finish. Manuka-roasted gourds have a dense earthiness, and chestnuts a
creamy nuttiness. The gourds and eggplant dip add aromatics and smokiness
to the dish. Caramelised olives, rock salt, and rosemary in the damper
adds a final zing.
Embracing
the spirit of Montieth's Wild Food Challenge
Leedom Gibbs
Cook’n’ With Gas took the wild food theme to
the limit in this year’s challenge. They 'went wild’ in creating
exciting dishes with wild foods from the sea and countryside of New Zealand
for this pre-eminent competition.
The aim of the competition is to promote the idea of matching exquisite
beer with wild food.
The unique menu was created to complement Monteith's Golden Lager and
Monteith’s Celtic Red.
Christchurch is one of six regions in this sixth Annual Challenge. Cook’n’
With Gas and others were be judged in the following categories: Overall
Winner, Best Individual Beer and Food Match, Best Service, Best Spirit,
and Consumer’s Choice.
Cook'n'
with Gas won the Best Spirit of Challenge award and the Coalfish dish
was nominated for Best Match.
Cook'n'With
Heritage Food At The Gas
Leedom Gibbs
This year’s entries in the upcoming Sixth Annual Monteith’s
Wild Food Challenge celebrate early European culinary history in New Zealand.
The use of native foods is also of note.
The starter takes us back to the beginning, using the same basic ingredients
as Captain Cook did in his campaign against scurvy.
To this end native ‘greens’ were included in the shipboard
diet. When combined with the constant supply of fresh fish this was thought
“little inferior to fresh meats roots & c.” Blue cod (coalfish,
so-called for its resemblance to a northern hemisphere fish of the same
name) was thought of as a superior fish by Cook.
The main course features foods as found on a sea journey to the colonies
and on colonial tables. Pickled meat, gourds, and nuts were selected for
their storage potential before the days of refrigeration.
Venison is found in New Zealand thanks to the pioneering efforts of European
settlers. Damper celebrates their spirit and the idea of ‘making
do’.
The
name of the game is game
Mike Bradstock
Early Europeans were
uneasy about New Zealand’s distinctive flora and fauna. They missed
the familiar birds, mammals, trees and flowers of the ‘Old Country”
and were determined to set this right. Acclimatising familiar animals
helped them cope with isolation and loneliness—and sometimes, hunger.
New Zealanders now enjoy access to some of the world’s best wild
food—introduced game and fish as well as the native animals like
muttonbirds, eels and seafoods. From a culinary viewpoint, the best outcome
was the introduction of game animals.
Venison has a long history since red deer were first introduced in the
mid-nineteenth century. At different times deer have been protected, hunted
for their trophy antlers, exterminated as pests destroying the forests,
and elevated to the status of a valuable farm animal. Most recently, game
parks have been established to make trophy deer available for tourist
hunters.
Venison has remained among the most popular of colonial fare, and deerstalking
is regarded as a classic activity of the ‘Kiwi bloke’. There
are seven types of deer—red, sika, fallow, whitetail, sambar, rusa
and wapiti (elk).
Captain Cook made the first European attempts at acclimatising food animals.
He released fowls, sheep, goats, and pigs at Queen Charlotte Sound in
1769. The pigs thrived and today their descendants are known as “Captain
Cookers”. Wild pork is a quintessentially New Zealand colonial dish,
and is celebrated in the novel Wild Pork and Watercress by the
late Barry Crump.
Previously, Maori had introduced a number of plants, including kumara.
Their only new animal was kuri (dog), of a breed now extinct. The kiore
(Pacific rat) was until recently thought to have been introduced by Maori,
but it is now known to have arrived about a thousand years earlier. Who
brought it remains a mystery but clearly these people were not fruitful
and did not multiply.
Songbirds like the thrush, gamebirds like pheasants and fish such as trout
were successfully introduced by Europeans. Other introductions failed,
including nightingales, toads, and lobsters. Disasters include the rabbit,
which out grazed sheep and ruined many farmers; and stoats, which destroyed
native birdlife. Other introduced game include chamois, Himalayan tahr,
hares, goats, and ducks.
Cook's
Scurvy Cure
By Mike Bradstock
Captain James Cook’s utilisation of fresh local ‘greens’
while in New Zealand helped maintain his crew’s health. Vegetables
were recognised as the answer to scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C
deficiency.
Cook looked upon such foodstuffs as “very wholesome and a great
Antiscorbutick” (cure for scurvy) and attributed “being free
of the Scurvy to the Beer and Vegetables we made use of in Newzealand.”
At every opportunity Cook loaded as much fresh produce as possible onto
the ship. He named these vegetables Scurvy grass and Sellery. Beer also
was made from manuka and rimu shoots.
To prepare the vegetables “Both sorts were boild every morning with
wheat ground in a mill and portable soup for the peoples breakfast, and
also amongst the pease soup for dinner. Others ate them as salad or dress’d
as greens, in all which ways they are good.”
Scurvy grass (Lepidiun oleraceum) is a herb of the crucifer or
cabbage family. It is now rare and endangered in the wild but plants are
being produced sustainably for culinary purposes.
Native celery (Apium prostratum) also a herb, is a close relative
of both celery and parsley. It resembles the latter closely in flavour.
It is also relatively scarce. We believe this is the first time that both
plantshave appeared on a menu in New Zealand.
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