The New Zealand local food

  Introduction

New Zealand is an island nation with its waters containing a large variety of fish and seafood. New Zealanders love their food.New Zealand's cuisine has been described as Pacific Rim, drawing inspiration from Europe, Asia and Polynesia. This blend of influences has created a mouth-watering range of flavours and food in cafes and restaurants nationwide. For dishes that have a distinctly New Zealand style, there's lamb, pork and cervena (venison), salmon, crayfish (lobster), Bluff oysters, paua (abalone), mussels, scallops, pipis and tuatua (both are types of New Zealand shellfish), kumara (sweet potato), kiwifruit, tamarillo and pavlova, the national dessert.

 

  What is maori cuisine???

 Maori cuisine is a old-fashioned cookery and contemporary dishes. Maori is a mixture of tradition. One of Maori famous food is a hangi, which is likely to contain foods brought to New Zealand by Maori. There are degraded as distinctly Maori are the food boil-up of pork, potatoes, kumara, dumplings, and also puha which is combined, introduced and indigenous foods. The distinct is "Rewena" or " Maori bread ", which is made with fermented potatoes.

 

The ingredients to making Maori Bread

Maori bread is a tradition recipe. This bread has a doughnut texture but none of the sugar.

3 1/2 cups self rising flour  1/2  teaspoon salt    

cold water, to mix   

oil, for frying


The tutorial to making Maori Bread

1. In a large bowl measure the flour, then add salt. Then, add enough cold water to make a soft dough and mix through with a wooden spoon.

2. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and push or roll dough out to 1 1/2 cm thickness.

3. Cut into any preferred size, then place each piece into the preheated hot oil and fry till golden on both sides and double the size.

The Hangi Cuisine

Hāngi is a traditional Māori style of cooking which is still commonly practiced throughout New Zealand today. It is a process where steam is used as a medium of cooking the food while it is beneath the ground. Interestingly, this style of cooking can be found all around the Pacific with slight variations. New Zealand, Māori cuisine is using heated rocks buried in a pit oven still used for special occasions. To “lay a hāngi” or “put down a hāngi” involves work to digging a pit in the ground, placing heating stones in the pit with a large fire, placing baskets of food on top of the stones, and covering for several hours before   
uncovering.

The ingredients to making Hangi

4 medium potatoes, cut in half

4 small sweet potatoes, cut in half

1 head cabbage leaves

1 fresh pumpkin, cut in 8 small pieces

4 chicken tights, cut in half

8 small lamb chop or 8 small pork chop

4 slices smoked pork

The tutorial to making hangi

1. To make smaller servings use banana leaves or tin foil. It would look cute though.

2. Put cabbage leaves down first, then veges, meat and stuffing (if you would like to) together on top of the cabbage.

3. Put another cabbages leaves over the top of veges.

4. Wrap everything up nicely in the tinfoil or banana leaves, preferably encasing everything with the cabbage.

5. Put into crock pot.Add water to bottom of crock pot.

6. Cook on high for approx 6-8 hours or until cooked through.