Relax, relax. Isn’t that what we are meant to be trying to do in this hectic world we live in? I was doing exactly that a few weekends ago at the NZ Food Writers conference. After a hard morning of visiting food and wine producers, and having to choose between blue cheese wontons with pear and rocket salad or grilled mackerel on toast with harissa at Clearview Estate Winery, we were now at Millar Road – seriously stylish accommodation – tasting yet more wine and food. Oh well, someone has to do it!

Relaxing by the pool in the afternoon sun, lapping up the Hawkes Bay countryside and Pacific Ocean spread out below us, I summoned up just enough energy to ask antioxidant expert, Dr Carolyn Lister, “Do organic vegetables have any more antioxidants than others?” She replied, “It depends how stressed they are. The more stress, the more antioxidants.”

This is Part 2 of Haare’s story about going out and catching eels with his grandparents. ( Part 1 is here.  Also see added footnote at the bottom of this post, about my husband’s eel hunting experiences too) ..c

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It was late afternoon when we settled down beside a blazing fire with Wairemana positioning herself close to the edge of the river. Other kuia were settling down along the riverbank for some distance away.  We were positioned near a dark, swirling pool, which looked quite threatening.  Wairemana was adept and had great skill in catching the eels hungry for the bait with muka, threaded through its body.  The hand held muka line was suspended from her frail but anxious hand and as she dipped it into the water, the bite was immediate as dozens of eels rushed to grab the bait.

The swirl of the eels in the water and the rhythm set up by Wairemana meant that the eels, whatever their size, were flung with ease onto the shore.  With just a single effortless movement she flicked the line over her shoulder and with a quick flick, the eel let-go of the bait landing some way away from the river.  It was so quick; Rimaha and I had to work fast to recover the snaking fish in the dim light of the fire.

It was a joy to watch her in action.  So rhythmic and composed.  She had done this so many times before.  It looked second nature.

Yes, during the night she let me have a go as well.  But I could not flick the eel over my shoulder.

She held her position all night and by dawn we had several sacks of the choicest eels in the river.  All dead.  The smaller ones were put back.

As they lay stretched out on the ground, I was a little scared to even touch the gleaming black and grey yields of the river.  Eels everywhere.

Rimaha and I then cleaned the slime off them by passing them through the ashes of the dying fire.  And then clean them.  A job I hated.

Wairemana had earned the right to sit and rest with her torori tobacco pipe in her mouth.

Further along the river others were gathering around and cleaning their cache.  It looked like a great night for everyone.

After the karakia we said goodbye to the river and headed home.  Lady, our trusted old horse had a very satisfying load to take home.

Pawhera tuna (eels) everywhere.  They were opened up from the belly across its spine and along the back. It was then smothered in salt, rubbed in and hung out in the sun to dry.

This is tuna pawhera.  Each night the hundred or so eels were gathered in and put out again the next day. They took up every vantage spot around our kainga. And after a week of drying in the sun, the delicacies were ready to be stored away for special occasions and for our meals over a long winter.

“Mauria mai he tuna pawhera e moko kia tunutunua ki runga i te ahi o te kauta nei. Kei te rongo koe i te kakara, nera?”

“Tino rawe tena e Ma,” showing my enthusiasm to slowly smoke pawhera tuna above the smouldering embers of the open fire in our kauata.

What a meal.  Oil under the thick skin of the smoked tuna running down my cheeks and arms.  I can still savour its unique and special taste. Still taste it now.   ..Haare

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* Cindy’s footnote: My husband recalls his eeling days as a teenager on his tribal farm, Mangatu …

“I’ll never forget it!” my husband started. “I was about 15 or 16, and staying with my cousins on our farm – 50,000 acres of rugged sheep farming country in my tribe’s Mangatu farm blocks, Whatatutu, near Gisborne (you can see how rugged the country is on this google map). Freezing cold – a night just like tonight”  – at the moment we are sitting warm and cosy at home on a cold New Zealand winter evening as he tells me this story of his teenage eel catching adventures.

“We got up at 3am mid-winter and drove in the old Land Rover beside our river until the road ran out. We then walked inland another couple of kilometres through the river’s freezing water and up over cascading waterfalls in the pitch dark (no moon), except for light from our kerosene lamps. I’ll never forget seeing the eels (NZ long fin variety) once we arrived at our posy – the water was teeming with them, attracted by the lamps.”

“They just lie there on the bottom of the stream, blissfully unaware what’s going to happen next. You sneak up to them, whack the metal hook under their bellies, jerk up and fling them up onto the bank. It took four of us – Uncle Tiny, my cousin Laurie, another cousin and me – about two hours to catch 60 or 70 eels – huge black slimy monsters.

I’ve never been so cold in my life, frozen to the bone.”

“I’ll never forget that cold and carrying those massive eels back on my shoulders – thick bodies, and this long.”  He stretches his arms out as wide as they can go.

“How did four of you carry so many back?” I ask.

“I don’t know how we did it, but we did. We threaded them with No. 8 wire through their mouths. They were so heavy. And we had to trek back down those treacherous waterfalls and through the river. We got home about 7am – soaking wet, freezing cold, knackered! We dried and smoked the eels the next day for a wedding celebration at our marae (Tapuihikitea) that was coming up – all the trouble we went to, to get them, was worth it.”

My husband’s whanau (family) on the farm are strong, tough as, rugged types, Maori – if we all had to work that hard for our food we sure wouldn’t need gyms, weight watchers or protein powders! ..c

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Related articles:

For the nutrition part, read this: Maori diet of eel could help stop diabetes rise | NZ Herald
See Haare’s other story about cultivating Kumara

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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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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!