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Wild? They were livid!

Even opossum meat was blasé this Saturday (10th March, 2001) as the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival got even wilder. Foodies, chefs and fun lovers crammed into Cass Square to enjoy the day, the sunshine and gorge themselves on game, sample the myriad of morsels, delve into the delicacies or dare each other with the weirdest food they could find and they were not disappointed for choice. The thronging crowd seen here from the air (that's me in the bottom left hand corner!! ) had so much to choose from.

With a record 91 stalls, the 20,000 crowd could choose from such delicacies as:

Insects

• wasp caviar
• lightly sautéed wasp grubs with Moroccan spices
• bubu sea snails
• garlic garden snails
• huhu grubs (live or fried)
• chocolate/worm truffles
• garlic worms

Poultry/game birds

• muttonbirds
• ostrich kebabs
• emu
• ostrich omelets

Meats

• venison
• wild boar
• feral bacon sandwiches
• chamois
• thar (a Himalayan animal)
• beef-brain fritters
• mountain oysters (sheep’s testicles)
• kangaroo
• opossum

Seafoods

• smoked eel
• conger eel
• crayfish
• paua (abalone)
• whitebait patties
• Shark penis soup

Vegetation and sweet stuff

• stinging nettle soup
• wild berry waffles
• wild chocolate banana bush whackers
• gold flake ice cream
• wild mushrooms
• fried fonds/ferns

. . . . and that could be washed down with the plain iced water (from the pure alpine springs), local Monteith's beers, deer velvet liqueur with real flakes of gold (said to be a great aphrodisiac), New Zealand wines, Moonshine and Billy-can tea.

Ever wondered how long it takes to hard boil an ostrich egg? Well this one took just over four hours! The shell of the ostrich egg is about 1.5 millimetres thick and is similar to bone china in texture and feel, which takes a long time for the heat to penetrate and cook it. Normally I would (and am this week with my students) going to drill a hole in one, blow the contents out and make omelets out of it. These omelets are magnificent . . . so creamy in texture, rich in taste and one egg is enough to feed at least six people!

Twenty thousand people from all over the world head here for the festival each year and the normal population of the town is only four thousand. It starts off a few days before hand with a celebration of everything else the West Coast has to offer; from local musicians and bands playing, local bards reading, artists displaying their wares: paintings, sculptures and of course our famous pounamu or jade and green-stone as it is known in the rest of the world. Not to mention New Zealand and International acts that come to entertain.

Why? Why you ask? Well this one day festival is to celebrate all the wild foods that can be picked, shot, netted, trapped, caught on a line, speared, etc. Oh yes folks, all the above foods are readily available and easily gathered here on the West Coast of New Zealand. So there is never any excuse here to starve as food is always readily available, where else can you head to the bush and shoot a wild boar or deer, go for a dive and grab some lobsters, scallops or abalone, gather juicy large mussels or plump oysters from the rocks and then pick some watercress, wild berries or stinging nettles for a wonderful soup . . . any more questions on why I decided to make New Zealand my home? All this and some of the best award winning wines in the world!!!

Not that I got to see much of any of this . . . actually next to nothing. As I was involved in the organisation, running, comparing and judging of the New Zealand Festival Chef of the Year. Nine chefs from all over the country came to compete for this title, they had one hour to prepare four portions of a dish of their own creation. They did not disappoint believe me, there was some wonderful creations and I would like to thank all the chefs who came to compete. The winner, however, was Chef Bruce Griffiths from the Christchurch restaurant 'Cooking with Gas', a seasoned competition chef who has won just about every New Zealand title.

For the most part with these types of foods it is really a case of mind over matter and what one is used to. The insects for example are just a smaller version of seafoods in most cases and are a very untapped food with a very high protein content that many people have been eating for centuries. Just to prove these types of foods are not as bad as they sound have a look at these creations of mine:

	White braised mountain oysters and roasted wild venison, served with a salad threadneedle mushrooms, chili and capsicum drizzled with an extra virgin olive oil and wild rosemary dressing
	Garden worm sushi, with New Zealand wasaabi, freshly pickled ginger slices and blanched wild fern greens

This is the festival that I took over to Singapore in 1999 for two weeks, a journal of that trip can be viewed at my culinary website: click here

So if you like to try new things and are heading to New Zealand at anytime, try to be on the West Coast of the South Island during the second weekend of March and join me for some fun and frivolity, not to mention some great 'bush tucker' as it is locally known. Failing that look out for the Carlton TV programme on New Zealand food, in which the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival features or join me each week for my regular weekly recipes and cooking tips on Hub-UK.

Best wishes from New Zealand