I first tasted smoked eel last Christmas. Some friends hand-delivered the delicacy, wrapped in foil, and described their nocturnal adventures catching it from a stream about an hour’s drive from Auckland. “You mean you drove down there in the middle of the night?” I asked. “Sure – that’s where you find them”, they replied matter-of-factly. Give me a deli any day, I thought!  ..c

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In this post, my father-in-law Haare Williams, tells of his growing-up experiences catching eels with his Maori grandmother (kuia). This is Part 1 …

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“When are we going, e Ma?. I was anxious to get going.  The build up had been intense over the past few days, and I was excited about the prospect of catching eels on the banks of the Nukuhou River at Matakerepu, some eight miles inland.

“Apopo, a tahira ranei.”

“Why not tonight?”

“Ehara tenei i te po e ngau ai te tuna.  Kaua e kaika.  Koina te mate o te mokopuna pihikete.  Tuatahi me ata mahi nga noke hei mounu i mua i te haere tawhiti nei.  Taihoa.”

“When then?”

“When the night sky tells us.  She said. “You see, e moko, we have one night to do this, so we have to do it right.”

“We wait then?”

“Ae.”

We went to the bush and collected worms, not just ordinary worms, but large, snake looking, wriggly worms.  Rimaha and I dug them out of the layers of soil deep in the bush behind our whare.  These worms had thrived for many years in the rotting accumulations of leaves.  All we had to do was scrape away the top layers of soil and there they were.

My thing was to collect those wriggly creatures and place them into a wet bag.  They were covered over with wet leaves to keep them fresh. These crawlies were kept in their moist billets until the day before our trip to the riverbanks at nearby Matakerepu.

“So. e Ma when is the right time to fish for eels.”

Wairemana explained “No Whiro ke tenei po, ehara i te po e tika ana ki te haere ki te mahi tuna.”

“So this is Whiro’s night.  Does that mean that the moon is not yet right for the tuna(eels) to run?”

“Kao.  When the moon is in that new-moon shape, just a crescent, it means this is the night of Whiro when neither the night nor the day is good for anything.”

“We have all the worms we need in the bag, e Ma.”

“Ka pai.”

“Tomorrow e moko we will thread the soft muka through the bodies of the worms and then we will be ready for Oua, the fourth night of the moon when it’s the right time for us to go and catch them.”

“Do you put hooks on the ends of the muka?”

“Kao.  You see when the bait is dipped into the swirling water of the Nukuhou River, the eels will bite into them and their teeth get tangled in the muka, and all I have to do then is flick them ashore.  Once they’re airborne, they release and they land up on the dry land. Easy.”

“Can I do that?”

“Of course,” she smiled quizzically.  “But your job, e moko with your koro, is to chase them when I land them, give a sharp bang on the tail, and gather them up, before they wriggle back into the water. . .”

Part 2 of this story is on my next post …

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Related articles:

Maori diet of eel could help stop diabetes rise | NZ Herald
See Haare’s other story about cultivating Kumara

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It took me ages to make my own hummus but now there’s no going back! The commercial brands I used to love now taste salty and sloppy. Hummus is really healthy and really easy – so long as you have a food processor. Even blokes will eat it with crackers or instead of butter on bread. I love it with tuna and tomato in a grainy bread roll – yum!!!

This recipe is adapted from my friend Sarah who is a food stylist and cook extraordinaire.  We used to do cooking demos together (she did the cooking, I did the nutrition). At one of our demos to around 150 women we made this recipe and everyone loved it.

All you have to do is put these ingredients into a food processor – and blend! Drizzle in the oil last.

1 x 400g can chick peas

A fantastic food for fibre, folate, iron and protein.

2 tablespoons tahini

Tahini is ground up sesame seeds. It tastes awful on its own but tastes great in hummus. It provides lots of healthy unsaturated and essential fats. ‘Essential fats’ are essential for our body and the only way to get them is to eat them! Keep tahini in the fridge so all that healthy fat doesn’t go rancid.

4-5 cloves roasted garlic

I know this sounds like hard work but it’s not. Put a whole garlic head on a tray, drizzle with olive oil and bake for 10-15 minutes at 180C (350F). I often do it when I’m cooking something else. If you’re not making hummus immediately, you can store the roasted garlic in the fridge for a couple of days.

Juice of 1 lemon

I like plenty of lemon juice

3-4 tablespoons chopped parsley, basil or coriander

If you have herbs growing in your garden use more than this – I do!

Salt and pepper to taste

You shouldn’t need much. If you live in New Zealand use iodised salt – we need the iodine. Commercial foods usually use non-iodised salt so there’s another plus for making your own.

3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

The oil makes the hummus more creamy. I actually like it with less oil and more texture. I always use a really good quality (expensive) olive oil for foods that don’t need cooking. It really makes a difference to the flavour and nutritional value.

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Final photo of it, click here …

I found these digging through the www … all from down-under!

KFC dumps palm oil Yum! Restaurants, makers of KFC, will ditch palm oil for a healthier alternative, two years after the company stared down the Federal Government and refused to change its ways…

Cindy: Good news for KFC-lovers’ hearts but those deep fried delicacies will be just as fattening – and if the chicken skin is on there’s still a fair whack of saturated fat.  See my post on palm oil chocolate controversy.

Dramatic weight loss on Maori diet – Health – NZ Herald News A dangerously obese man lost 75kg in a year because he reverted to a “hunter-gatherer” diet, says a fitness expert …

Cindy: Good on you, Rob. Hopefully your example will inspire many to get back to basics – lean protein, lots of vegetables and moving your body every day. I bet he didn’t visit KFC – even with their fancy new ‘healthy’ oil!

Junk food TV ads reined in | National News | News.com.au AUSTRALIA’S fast food industry has agreed to a voluntary code to govern the way it markets products to children. The Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA)  welcomed the move as a “good start”.  “The DAA has been calling for regulation in relation to marketing to children, particularly during children’s television viewing hours, and we support any initiative to improve this,” chief executive Claire Hewat said…

Cindy: You know the thing that really jumped out at me about this story was the title of the review: The Australian Quick Service Restaurant Industry Initiative… I guess ‘The Australian Fast Food or Junk Food Industry Initiative’ just doesn’t sound nice enough! Oh, the power of words. No longer do we talk about ‘husbands’ and ‘wives’, we have ‘partners’, and now we don’t eat fast food, we go to the ‘quick service restaurant’. Doesn’t it make you feel like ‘dining out’ right now!

… Continued from part 1 &  part 2. (last of series).

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Rangiatea

“E kore au e ngaro

He kakano i ruia mai

i Rangiatea”

I will never be lost

The seed scattered across the Pacific

From my ancient home in Tahiti

(Old Maori saying)

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Postscript:

Funny how things come round again. I was recently (2004) in Te Kuiti at Oparure Marae where I met whanau who, a few weeks before came upon and unearthed an old kumara pit with its cache of perfectly preserved kumara, big and seed size. The find also disclosed that the families who lived on that site moved out in the early 1950s, and surmised that the abandoned kumara pit had remained untouched all that time. The tubers were covered in bracken fern and manuka brush and had remained untouched by moisture, sunlight or air. This information rang a bell for me. The next day, we shared our experiences with the students of the Raranga Diploma. The seeds were planted and germinated and I was handed a small collection to try out in my tiny Papakura garden. Yes, I still have seeds from that exchange.

Extraordinary!