In September 1996 Horace Bent of the British Bookseller invited entries for a contest producing a three-course wild food meal. This is Mike Bradstock’s entry:

Dear Horace,

…A gourmet meal of three courses is no problem. In fact, why not have five?
We start with an hors d’oeuvre of fried huhu grubs (a national delicacy obtained from fallen trees in a nearby plantation), home-made red caviare, and roasted young globe artichokes (these are growing outside my office window) in a French dressing.

I propose an entrée of terrine of wild pork (from Kaikoura) and boletes (collected from nearby Victoria Park); or a soup of tuatuas (surf clams, from New Brighton Beach) and puréed puwha (native sowthistle).

Next, choose between Cajun-style rainbow trout from the Waimakariri River, and smoked Lake Coleridge quinnat salmon. Offering such a choice is necessary as Cajun trout, with its crusty coating of burned sugar, salt and garlic, covered in melted butter and topped with chopped bacon and coriander, the whole finally being sprinkled with bourbon, is not to everyone’s liking; while the salmon, lightly cured with salt and brown sugar and smoked over tea-tree shavings, seems never to disappoint. If I found time to go tidepooling within a few hours before serving this, I would accompany the salmon with a sauce of kina (sea-urchin) roes pounded with a little olive oil and lemon juice.

For the main course, shall we have a boned leg of wild venison from the Seaward Kaikoura range, roasted with whole garlic bulbs after being rubbed with brown sugar and olive oil? The vegetables, all from my kitchen garden or public lands on the Cashmere Hills, will be minted new Cliff’s Kidney potatoes, and a choice of braised fat-hen tips with orange hollandaise, or a salad of young watercress leaves, fiddleheads of hen-and-chickens fern, and buttercrunch lettuce with a dressing of balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and yeasted herb salt.

For pudding I cannot improve on Malcolm Gibson’s proposed sorbets (this is the parallel thinking of true gastronomes united by poverty) and envy him his wild raspberries, the very thought of which almost makes me swoon. For my sorbets, as it is spring here at present, we shall have to make do with blackcurrants and redcurrants grown last summer and snap-frozen.

None of the above is bartered or provided by courtesy of airlines. (Nor, I hasten to add, is it poached, taken by trespassing, or otherwise illicitly gained.)

Under £10 means a ceiling of NZ$21.59 on today’s exchange rate. The modest amounts of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, butter, cream, bacon, bourbon, two oranges and methylated spirit to fuel the fish smoker, will cost about $6.64, leaving us with $14.95, enough to buy just one bottle of wine, so it’ll have to be a chardonnay -- preferably Montana Gisborne 1991. I will have to prevail upon you to supply the claret.

Please advise your flight and arrival time.

Feedback? Comments? Any questions: info@heritagefoods.co.nz