Wonders never cease

Over the past 18 months I’ve had a hankering to get my hands on some black nuts but they have eluded me until recently.

Black nut – also known as keluak – is used in Indonesian and Malaysian cooking.  I’d never heard of them until I read Debbie Teoh’s fantastic repository of Peranakan recipes, Nonya Cuisine.  

Debbie’s book is choc-full of really interesting and highly authentic recipes and I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve cooked so far.  Her black nut chicken curry recipe caught my eye because it contained this novel ingredient and I was intrigued by her description of its chocolate/mushroom flavour.

My interest was further piqued when I discovered that they are highly poisonous in their natural state and have to undergo a treatment process over 40 days before they are edible. God only knows why I’m attracted to such weird food.  I’ve searched my psyche and conclude that it must be some kind of rebellion against growing up in Palmerston North during the 1960s and ‘70s, where chicken chop suey at one of the city’s two Chinese restaurants was about as exotic as it got.

The convoluted process of making black nut safe to eat
reminds me of the lengths pre-European Maori
went to in order to eliminate deadly toxins
from karaka berries.  Just think how desperate for
protein they must have been to have persisted with
a food that could killed them in a most grotesque
and painful manner if they got the preparation wrong.
 Click here for the fascinatingly gruesome details.

So, the hunt was on for some black nuts!

Auckland has some impressive Asian food emporiums, where you can get everything from very dodgy looking pickled things that even I’m too scared to try – through to all manner of exotic vegetables.  Although it’s possible to find a wide range of weird and wonderful fresh and frozen South East Asian ingredients, it transpired that black nuts were not among them.  In desperation I contacted www.malaysiakitchen.co.nz but they didn’t know where I could get any either.

So I’d resigned myself to being none the wiser about this mysterious ingredient for the foreseeable future.  

But fate was on my side.  One of my local Asian grocery stores isn’t big, and it doesn’t stock fruit and veges, but it’s clean, has friendly staff and has all of the basics.

Besides a wide range of Chinese goods, I often find unusual Malaysian, Indonesian and Japanese ingredients there too, so I usually browse around to check out what’s in stock on the off-chance of finding something new and different.  The strategy paid off because a couple of weeks ago I spotted – tah dah! – vacuum packed black nut meat thanks, apparently, to demand from the store’s Indonesian customers.

Fortunately the nuts had been pre-prepared, so it wasn’t necessary to start dinner preparations 40 days in advance and I didn’t have to worry about inadvertently killing off my family if I got it wrong.








So, without further ado, I got cooking and here’s the somewhat unappealing looking result:

I’m pleased to report that, in this case, its evil appearance was deceiving.  The curry was delicious and did indeed have chocolaty and mushroomy notes as promised by Debbie Teoh.  To my amazement everyone in my family – even plain foodies Don and Rory – said they liked it and would happily eat it again.  

Wonders never cease!

Where to buy black nut:

The Tofu Shop
955 New North Road
Mt Albert

Dicing with death

It was somewhat disconcerting to discover that a recent weird food find could kill me.

The potential for high drama in the kitchen unfolded following an impromptu visit to the Avondale Market.  I usually get overly excited by market offerings and go completely overboard but this time I decided to be disciplined and only buy a few veges for the family’s dinner.  

Resolute, I strode past the exotic Asian vegetable offerings and averted my gaze from the plethora of weird and wonderful Thai desserts.  No burdock root, fakthong buat or sticky rice surprise for me!  No siree; carrots, cabbage and onions it would be.

Emboldened by my rare and welcome burst of willpower, I eased up a bit towards the end and allowed my gaze to linger on a stall selling tofu products and unfamiliar looking gelatinous stuff.  The temptation to inspect more closely proved irresistible and, before I knew it, I was the proud owner of a lump of konjac jelly.

The jelly had a really weird, yet
familiar odour.  I finally figured
out it smells like soft prezels
that are dipped in lye solution
before cooking.  I know
this because I've made some!

The stall owner informed me that konjac jelly is popular in Japanese cuisine.  It is produced from a root that isn’t grown in New Zealand, so his version is made from dried powder.  In addition to its culinary value, konjac also has medicinal properties.  What more could I possibly ask for!

Eager to know more, I later Googled only to discover that konjac’s very firm gelatinous properties make it easy to inadvertently inhale while eating it and many people had choked to death as a result.  Making a mental note to chew lunch carefully, I searched for recipes and came across this gem:



Mustard fried konjac recipe

1, mustard fried konjac knife into small modification of konjaku bean curd, open burning point konjaku bean curd quick-boiled salt water into the water, you can effectively get rid of Beany, shredded and then cut the mustard, ginger slices, cut the garlic sprout, red pepper crusted tuna cut ring garlic sprout flowers, stewed konjac with above work can begin the preparations;

2, and first to pot burning hot, placed moderation source, oil warm Shi placed is garlic minced fragrant hot sauce down fried fragrant, then to mustard silk, and red pepper crusted tuna ring Cook fried a will, moved fried out mustard aroma Shi placed konjac tofu turned fried Shang one or two Bell, then plus little water, water without too more just didn't had konjac tofu can, adjustable into salt, and health pumping, and sugar, pepper powder, will good taste Hou with small fires received juice;

3, when you juice your concentration, increased firepower in two thin powder, BA on konjac, then sprinkle with garlic Miao Hua, plus fried chicken powder and sesame oil doubled several times, broken health of garlic sprout, you can pan a plate, put under coriander decoration.

Tempted though I was by the prospect of eating a lunch containing ‘health pumping’, ‘crusted tuna ring’ and juiced concentration, I was hungry so I decided to take a short cut and create my own recipe.

I started by frying cubed konjac with lots of garlic and
ginger, and shredded Chinese cabbage.



Adding chilli and diluted peanut butter made for
an aesthetically disgusting but nevertheless
tasty Sichuan style dish.  Like tofu, konjac is bland
 and serves as a carrier of other flavours.

Voila!  As for the creation on the left; that's made
from something else I bought at the market
but wasn't going to tell you about.  Click here
for an earlier blog about that foodie discovery.

A few days after surviving the konjac lunch I came down with the flu and was bedridden for several days. 

Food barely featured in my thoughts during that time but, for some weird reason, late one feverish night visions of my konjac creation slid through my mind with nauseating persistence. 

I can’t say I’ll be cooking any more in a hurry.

Ants in my pants

I’m feeling incredibly restless and fidgety this afternoon.  The usual cheap thrill of grossing you out with the weird and extreme things I’ve eaten has nothing on the buzz I’ve got from today’s rather conventional foodie blog experiment – a coffee tasting.

A friend had heard good things about Coffee Supreme's Thursday morning coffee tastings, so off we headed to check it out.

I’m not quite sure what I expected but, had I thought it through, then embarking upon a coffee tasting tanked up with my usual breakfast time double-shot flat white probably wasn’t the smartest idea. 

Despite my love of strong coffee, I can’t drink a double shot after around 9 am if I plan to be asleep before 2 o’clock the following morning.  Tragic but true.  Today I downed around seven shots by mid morning so heaven help me tonight.

But it was worth it because the tasting session was amazing.  Every week’s session involves different types of coffee prepared using different techniques – espresso, plunger, filter, drip, etc.  

Today’s session used Chemex
filters and five different Ethiopian,
Brazilian and Costa Rican beans
and roasts that work best for filters.

Apparently it’s important to match the beans and roasts with the right type of coffee making technique.  Today’s beans (I can’t remember their names, apart from the Ethopian yergacheffe) are delicate wee things and their flavours would be ‘squashed’ by an espresso machine’s more forceful extraction.

As much as I’d loved to have lolled about sipping upon a succession of flat whites, a coffee tasting is an academic rather than a hedonistic experience because the samples are unadorned by either milk or sugar so as to enable you to experience their true aromas and flavours. 

We found there was a surprising variation in each coffee’s acidity, aroma, mouth feel and flavour.  My favourite was the one that smelled like Whittaker’s peanut slabs!

Coffee Supreme's expert spent a good 45 minutes with us and happily answered our plethora of questions.  It was an incredibly informative session and we came out buzzing in every sense of the word.

Coffee Supreme's tasting counter:
42 Douglas St * Ponsonby * Auckland

Ph 376 2784 * www.coffeesupreme.com

So, if you can manage to skive off work or other duties on a Thursday morning between 8 and 10, and don’t want to sleep that night, then head over to Coffee 
Supreme’s wonderful weekly tasting.

But wait, there's more! At the risk of lowering the tone, I thought you'd appreciate these...

Coffee art gone mad #1: At Kenzie Cafe,
Manukau Road, Epsom.  Crema cats, pandas,
pigs, butterflies - you name it.  All
rendered in impressive detail and
almost too unbearably cute to drink.

Coffee art gone mad #2: Our beloved Prime Minister rendered
in coffee beans. A "thanks I've 'always' wanted one of those"
gift to New Zealand from the Vietnamese government
at last year's ASEAN summit. 

Terrorist tagine

The prospect of eating tagine prepared by a former terrorism suspect proved irresistible, so off I trotted to the K’ Road food court to join my brother for lunch at Ahmed Zaoui’s stall, Salam.

As you may recall, Ahmed Zaoui made headlines about 10 years ago for being thrown in prison on trumped up terrorism charges after he sought refugee status in New Zealand.

To cut a long story short, the Government’s fears turned out to be groundless and Ahmed was subsequently released.

These days he is still making the news – but this time it’s for his delicious Algerian food.  So apologies to Ahmed for this blog’s tacky title and salacious starting sentence.  If it’s any consolation, I briefly considered erring on the side of good taste but political correctness failed to triumph over alliteratively titivating lexical temptations. 

Unsurprisingly, lunch passed without incident and only food-related intrigue was in evidence at Ahmed’s stall.

I tried to get brother John to hold off eating long
enough for me to photograph the chicken tagine.  But,
as you can see from the blur of fork action, he was
in no mood to wait.

My lamb tagine was so delicious - delicate
and flavoursome - that I'd woolfed
most of it down before I thought
to share the experience with you.  
 I especially liked the way
it was studded with little nuggets of
preserved lemon.

I was intrigued by this lemon honey drink but was
loath to buy some in case it was too sweet.
Ahmed kindly insisted that he would
refund my money if I didn't like it.
Fortunately it was delicious!

Ahmed Zaoui (left) and his helper at Salam.

Salam's food is simple, unpretentious and prepared with a quiet sense of pride.   If you're looking a tasty and very reasonably priced Algerian food experience then check it out at the K Road food court (184 Karangahape Road, opposite St Kevin's Arcade). 

Pushing the boundaries

I knew I’d reached the limits of my culinary boundaries when I found myself retching at the smell of dinner cooking. In all fairness to the dinner, it doesn’t take much to set me off.  Even so, mutton bird hasn’t gained a fiercely fatty and odorous reputation for nothing.

Mutton bird - or sooty shearwaters - are known to the Maori as titi.  It’s a delicacy that may only be caught by Rakiura (Stewart Island) Māori during a limited season and it is difficult to buy unless you know where to look.

I bought a couple after getting carried away during a visit to Huntly Wild Game Meats earlier this year.  This unprepossessing little shop sells all manner of game, including rabbit, hare, venison, boar and eel. Over the years I’ve eaten my way through most of its offerings but had never before seen mutton bird there so I decided to give it a go. 

I was heartened to learn that the proprietor believed mutton bird’s bad reputation was unfounded, and it tasted – and should therefore be prepared – much like anchovy. But eating a weird dish is one thing; preparing it is quite another.  The thought of brewing up a reeking fat laden meal unnerved me, so I decided the only way that I’d ever be able to face cooking the two vacuum packed specimens lurking in the downstairs fridge was to invite some fellow brave hearts over for dinner.  As ever, Lindsay and Freeman were up for the challenge.  

After a bit of Internet research and some hard thinking, I decided to take some inspiration from the Thais and prepare the meal in a manner that balanced salty, sweet and sour flavours; and soft and crunchy textures.

None of us had ever seen a mutton bird so,
in the interest of science, I Googled some
images on my smart phone while dinner was
cooking.  Doing that was, upon reflection,
probably a bit sick because it really did look
far too cute to eat. 

There was nothing cute about these vacuum packed
horrors.  In a nightmarish form of osmosis, the fat had
started to leach through the plastic.  It smelled like a
combination of fowl, fish and putty.  Yeah, I know; waaay
too much information.

I was so squeemish I had to put the dish gloves
on when handling these.

The fear, loathing and retching was all worthwhile.
Crispy bruschetta topped with tomato, buffalo
mozarella, fresh basil and mutton bird rillette. 
Divine - and quickly hoovered up.

This combination of flavours worked really, really
well together.  Clockwise from top:  creamy kumera
and orange salad; mutton bird rillette; Eastern European
crispy cucumber; roasted Maori potatoes. 
For the record, mutton bird does indeed look like
 mutton, and tastes like anchovy.

Apart from it being a bit too salty, mutton bird turned out to be surprisingly nice and I would eat it again.  Having said that, next time I’ll leave the cooking up to someone else.

New Zealand idyll

The trouble with writing this blog is that I feel compelled to eat ever more extreme things in order to titillate you.  I love weird food, so that’s not usually too much of a problem but I’ll have to confess my sense literary duty caused considerable trepidation when I attended last month’s Kawhia Kai Festival.

Our family first discovered the annual event a couple of summers ago and I had a great time trying all manner of Maori food – from the ubiquitous mussel fritters and hangi, to kanga wai (rotten corn) with whipped cream, and various items of bush food.

Some things appealed more than others but I tried as many as I could pack in, apart from one traditional delicacy - shark's liver a.k.a. ate mango (which I think is prounced atay mungo).

Apparently ate mango is prepared by carefully removing the gall bladder from the liver, then wrapping the liver in clean cabbage leaves and steaming it for an hour.  

I felt queasy at the thought of even looking at it, much less eating some but apparently ate mango was very popular and the stall owner assured me that it would be sold out within minutes once it arrived an hour hence.  I contrived to be at the other end of the festival site at the appointed time.

But this time would be different, I promised myself; this time I’d seek out ate mango and eat it.  All for your reading pleasure.  

On the long drive down from Auckland I fretted about what ate mango would smell like and whether I’d be able to eat some without spewing.  But I should’ve saved myself the worry because ate mango woman wasn’t there this year.  Which created a new challenge; what weird things could I eat instead?

As you’ll see, I did pretty well:

What's not to like about hot out of the pan fried bread
with lashings of golden syrup?  It's hardly traditional kai,
but who cares!

This chunk of king fern root may have looked disconcertingly
 like a horse's hoof but is as traditional as it gets.  In
pre-European times Maori struggled to include
sufficient carbohydrate in their diets and had to
resort to 'delicacies' such as this.

Cubes of cooked king fern root au natural. 
And some fritters.  It was pretty bland - a bit
like taro.

I've got to confess that my pikopiko purchase ended
up mouldering in the bottom of the fridge.  I've
had them before; they're a bit like
chewy asparagus.

Top: paua (abalone) fritter on rewena (Maori bread
made with a potato starter).  Delicious and
amazing value for $10.  Apart from a little onion,
the fritter was all paua.
Bottom: puha (sow thistle) and mussels.  Tasty.

Raupo (bullrush) pollin.  In pre-European days, Maori
would make a type of unleavened bread from raupo
pollin.  The stall owner selling this product used it
to add interest to cup cake icing.  I've yet to get
experimenting with my purchase.

Happy hangi munchers.

Rory on Kawhia wharf. Yeah, I know there's no food -
but isn't it a lovely photo anyway.

Food may have been the star of the show, but the Kawhia Kai Festival is about so much more than eating.  It’s always held on the nearest Saturday nearest to Waitangi Day and is  also a cultural celebration that has a full programme of Maori music and traditional performances.

As my New Zealand readers will know, there’s been considerable national debate and angst about what this country’s national day should mean and how we should mark the occasion. 

I hate what Waitangi Day has become and am happy to leave the official event at Waitangi's Te Tii Marae to the politicians, the protesters and the press.

To me, the Kawhia Kai Festival exemplifies how we should celebrate the anniversary of our nationhood - whereby Maori, Pakeha and people from all nationalities, ages and backgrounds come together to celebrate Maori food and culture in a low key, relaxed and fun way where the colour of one’s skin and the pedigree of one’s ancestry doesn’t matter a bit. 

Cucurbit surprise

As much as I love cooking, I’m no great fan of preparing weekday meals after a busy day at work – especially when dinner time looms large and I’m feeling distracted and/or completely uninspired.

Just such a dilemma presented itself the other day.  As much as I’d like to have blamed work pressures for my missing mojo, I’ve just returned from a month’s summer break, and am not especially busy at work.

I couldn’t think of anything I really felt like eating, much less cooking, which didn’t help.  All I knew was that I wasn’t in the mood for fish, chicken, lamb or beef.  And, as some of you know, I’m never in the mood for pork.

I’ve got two vacuum packed mutton birds in the downstairs fridge for a bit of rainy day experimentation, but I wasn’t feeling brave enough to give them a go.

And then it hit me; what about a cucurbit themed dinner?

Yeah, yeah, I know that's weird and probably a little too geeky but, thanks to my gardening prowess, I had lots of cucurbits lurking in the fridge and it seemed a shame to waste them. 

From left: courgette, Lebanese cucumber,
tindora (a mysterious vege I bought from an
Indian grocery store).

A blizzard of cucurbit cookery ensued.  I turned the Lebanese cucumbers into an old favourite: Eastern European sweet and sour cucumber, a recipe given to me by my uncle's Hungarian mother-in-law:

Eastern European sweet and sour cucumber salad

2 cucumbers
Salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup white wine or cider vinegar
Fresh dill fronds to taste (optional)

Peel cucumbers and remove the seeds.  Slice very thinly and place in a colander.  Sprinkle generously with salt and leave to drain for an hour. 

While the cucumber is draining, make the dressing by gently heating the water, sugar and vinegar until the sugar has dissolved.  Adjust sugar and vinegar quantities to suit your own tastes.  Cool mixture.

Squeeze as much of the liquid out of the cucumber as you can.  Most of the salt will drain away, so there is no need to rinse the cucumber.  Put the cucumber into a serving bowl and pour over the dressing, which will instantly be absorbed by the cucumber.

Add a little chopped dill to taste (I suggest going pretty easy on it as it can be quite overpowering).

Serve the salad lightly chilled.

That done, I turned my hand to the courgettes and decided to stuff, then bake them.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve eaten some stuffed courgette horrors in my time: bland, watery, boring.  What I’ve discovered is that they need to be really well seasoned, so worry about your arteries another day and use lots of salt if you decide to get stuffing.

I won’t give you the recipe because I made it up as I went along out of all sorts of leftovers lurking in the fridge, including cubes of roast lamb and cubes of walnut stuffed salted aubergines pickled in oil. 

This filling might look like the aftermath of a dog’s dinner, but was  delicious.  Even Rory liked it.














Baked, stuffed courgette. Fortunately
the end result looked far more
appetising than the filling would
have suggested.





Finally it was tindora time.  I’d never eaten tindora before and, until I bought them, hadn’t even heard of them.  But they looked cute and I was feeling adventurous, so into my shopping basket they went.

Fortunately there was no shortage of tindora recipes on the Internet.  Unfortunately I discovered that I don’t like tindora.  In their defence, they have an appealing crunchiness (a bit like a crisp dill pickle in texture) and their blandness makes them a good carrier for whatever flavours you want to cook them with.



Tindora innards.

But they had a background bitterness that I disliked, and I knew my family would also dislike, so I didn’t bother serving them up.

So there endeth my cucurbit extravaganza...or so I thought.  A rare and welcome run of fine weather saw my cucumber and courgette plants burst into another reproductive frenzy and I’m back to square one again.

No prizes for guessing what’s going to be featuring heavily on our dinner menu this coming week.