Warning: this post contains some graphic food! 
” Get your Mountain Oysters!”
“And what is your purpose for visiting New Zealand today?” the Christchurch immigration officer asks me when checking my immigration form. “To visit the Hokitika Wild Foods Festival” I answer. She laughs “Ahh okaaay. Well good luck! I wouldn’t eat half that stuff” and waves us through.
The Startled Worm Cafe-featuring earthworms among others!
The Stream Larvae stall
Shark anyone?
Our trip to New Zealand was almost a year in the making which is a long time for a person like me who has very little patience. Mr NQN and I were being hosted by the lovely people at Tourism New Zealand and the event that I really wanted to go to was the Wild Food Festival held in March each year thereby necessitating the year long wait. It was something that we had heard of on our last visit where we had heard that all sorts of weird and wonderful things were being served there. A few days before I find myself looking up their website to see what I am to face. I find myself googling “What is punga?” and “What are huhu grubs?”. There are also larvae, worm truffles, mountain oysters (aka sheep’s testicles), moonshine, stag meat patties, mutton birds, paua, locusts and grasshoppers but then there is “safer” fare like shark, venison, wild boar and whitebait.
The bugs on offer
From 10am-5:30pm this sunny Saturday, the small town of Hokitika on the West Coast of the South Island, they will welcome just under 15,000 visitors to this one spot. Parties are encouraged with posters advertising “bring your party to our party” and dressing up is encouraged as we discover. The festival has attracted a lot of media attention in the past and has been featured in Playboy magazine (who claimed that the emu shells sold there were an aphrodisiac), The Amazing Race and features in Frommers Top 300 events in the world snaring second place 2 years ago (only pipped by Italy’s Slow food Festival). It pumps $2 million into the local economy and serves up an enormous range of food. One year they served up 10,000 Whitebait patties which is a South Island speciality and this year 300kg of whitebait was caught for the festival.
Pukeko (swamp hen) skewer
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March 25th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
When new words enter my vocabulary, usually as foreign language names by way of a menu, I’m usually unsure how to pronounce them. I remember the first time a friend and I went out to lunch when we were teenagers and there was a debate as to how to pronounce foccacia. My friend ordered it and pronounced it correctly but then the waitress corrected her. “It’s fukachiya” she said butchering the word in her broad Aussie accent. My friend was suitably chastised and mumbled “Yes that one please” and the waitress flounced off in the incorrectly superior knowledge that she really knew how to pronounce it. Of course my friend was right after all but not after we had to consult people i.e. our Italian friends to see how it was really pronounced should we ever be condescended to again.
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March 24th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
“Oh I know just the place for us” Queen Viv intoned authoritatively to me. I know she knows exactly what I like so at times like these I’m happy to give up eating location decisions to Queen Viv. When I had told her that I wanted to go to the Berkelouw Books Cafe on Oxford Street in Paddington she told me that an even nicer one existed in Newtown. And when she told me it involved stuffed vintage leather lounges I was even more sold.
We walk through the bookstore (which is always a good place for last minute gifts as they do free gift wrapping – many a time my derriere has been saved by them) and upstairs and stake our claim on a leather lounge. I feel like something savoury as I’ve missed out on lunch whereas Queen Viv feels like something sweet so we get a bit of each and share it. As I’m ordering an iced coffee comes out and it looks inviting so I order one of those too.
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March 23rd, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
I’ve mentioned my readers umpteen numbers of times. I love how you send me fantastic recipe suggestions and places to eat. One reader Stefania emailed me recently with a recipe suggestion for a No Knead bread. The recipe is by Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery and Co Pizzeria and addresses one of my biggest problems pre Kitchenaid – the inability to knead dough. I’ve never been able to knead dough properly-my arms just aren’t built for it although they are very good at carrying bags of shopping and dropping things and taking doors off hinges (accidentally of course, I can be freakily strong at the most inappropriate times).
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March 22nd, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
Camel Pie?
It was Day 2 of our Sydney to Melbourne Coast drive tour and we had just left Paperbark Camp in Jervis Bay. After a bit of a time we drove through to Mollymook in the hope of having lunch at Rick Stein at Bannisters. Sadly the restaurant wasn’t open for lunch today so we had to keep going and before long eagle, eyed Mr NQN spots a sign proclaiming “Camel pies” from Hayden’s Pies. We have to stop and try one, after all how often is one offered a camel pie?
Yes Camel Pie!
We chuckle – the address is “166 Princes Pieway” according to the sign. We walk in and service is friendly and we get a square camel, coriander and chickpea pie to eat outside and tomato sauce is from a giant pump dispenser (don’t you love free sauce? It’s always extra in Sydney). The camel meat (from the camel rump) is similar to a beef or lamb, although slightly more sinewy and the filling is soft and tender with a tomato-ey base with whole chickpeas and ground coriander and it’s a very good pie indeed with is a buttery shortcrust pastry. Apparently the camel appears often on the menu and if it doesn’t, there is usually a game option such as venison, rabbit or kangaroo.
The Bodalla Dairy Shed
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March 21st, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
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