Wild Foods

The small town of Hokitika is host to an outrageous food festival that has been up and running for 17yrs. Locals and foreigners alike come from miles around to take part in the festivities. Over the years it seems the food has tamed, but you can still get your laughing gear around some wildfoods......

The festival was held on March 10 (2007) and seems always to be around this time from year to year. Each year is themed differently for culinary purposes and fancy dress. This year was a French theme, ooh ooh ooh say it frenchie, chowder! Do you think I found any, NO!

People were dressed in the traditional red scarf, stripped shirt, white pants and beret, the more outlandish took the Where's Wally approach. It's not just restricted to themed dress up however, there were clowns, sheep, devils and my favourite: (start wearing purple,wearing purple for me now Jada -see LAM friends) dressed all in purple, occasioanlly blowing the rickshaw horn, the number 1 jimmer, dazzled!

That sort of sets the scene now lets get to the food.

Hu Hu Grubs; a big attraction, available cooked or raw, they are a small native grub that tastes like hazelnut. Funny the way so far along my travels I have indulged in one grub or another, its seems every country has a worm they are proud to eat.

Pickled Fish Eye Sushi; a pink coloured eye of a large fish (maybe snapper or gropper) was placed on a sushi roll, wasabi and soy was your choice. TRUELY HORRID!

Paua Paddy; a flour, egg and possibly potato batter with paua folded thru was pipped onto a BBQ. It looked like a black pancake and tasted of saltwater and mushroom. Try as I did , I couldn't get the secret recipe out of the chef.

Smoked Boar & Mussel Skewers; possibly the nicest thing I ate all day. New Zealand's beautiful large green lip mussels, suprisingly tender for their size matched well with the slight gaminess of the boar and the subtle smokey flavour.

Horse Burger; I felt like I was eating PAL (dog food)!

Bull Tail Curry; tender pieces of meat with a more robust flavour than ox tail, was cooked roganjosh style, YUMMIE!

Possum Jerkie; a little under dried for my liking and quite a non-descript flavour.

Possum Pie; "Possums are seen as a pest in New Zealand, destroying huge amounts of native forest. When you sample our pie you are helping save New Zealand forests." (Possum Pete, Wildfoods Festival,2007) Possum pie is produced in Pukekura, population 2.
Unfortunately, I did not do my part.

Cow Utter; utterly weird! Rubbery,fatty bite size that tasted of nothing for a few seconds then an over powering unpasturized, off-milk flavour hit and lingered.

I also indulged in some specialised drinks from Fiji; Karva: tongue numbing and Fire Water: reminded me of Malibu rum.

In all, it's a great festival that the everybody really gets involved in. Don't miss the 100+ bonfires on the beach Friday and Saturday nights, in fact some people only come to the festival for interaction between fires.