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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Super-heroes move over – here comes the potato! No more Mr Humble Potato. He now has his own World Potato Congress. And at the 7th congress in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March he had renowned food writers and even politicians calling him a food hero. Why?

• Potatoes are nutritious
• Potatoes are cheap
• Potatoes taste good and are incredibly versatile – think baked, boiled, mashed, scalloped and gnocchi (like pasta but it’s potato).
• Potatoes need little water to grow. One kilo of potatoes needs 75 litres, a kilo of wheat needs 500 litres and a kilo of rice needs 3000 litres of water to grow. If you are into saving the world’s water, choose potatoes!
• Potatoes are easy to grow. The Maori people know all about this. When Europeans brought the potato to New Zealand, life became sweet. No more toiling over the sensitive, tropical kumara that struggled in our cold, wet Kiwi climate. Potatoes were tough and hardy, and quickly became a staple food.

I’ve just got one little problem with potatoes. It’s when they are sliced really thin (or worse, crinkle cut, where there is more surface area) and deep fried in fat. Don’t kid yourself that a feed of fries is a great vegetable meal; there’s more fat than vegetable in there.

Now that he’s been elevated to food hero status, I think even Mr Humble Potato would only want to be associated with the more gourmet thick chunky chip – preferably ‘lightly fried in a heart-healthy oil’. Ah – that sounds so much better!

Professor John Birkbeck, a highly respected nutrition icon in New Zealand, was very busy last week. If you’ve moved jobs and homes at the same time you’ll know what it’s like. But he still made time to spend an hour and a half with a reporter who wanted to interview him about his life and his career. Two stories came out of it: one about his life and career ‘The truth is – size matters’ NZ Herald 31/5/09, and another titled ‘Expert – it’s your fault if you’re a fatty’ NZ Herald 31/5/09.

It’s the second story that grabbed people’s attention, causing apparent ‘outrage’ and creating an ‘individual versus environment’ fat fight.

Here’s what I think happened. A second reporter read the original story and picked up a couple of potentially controversial and non-PC statements. She phoned the two obesity organisations mentioned in the story and said, “Professor Birkbeck said this. What do you think of that?”

The same thing happens in the playground and in the workplace – a comment used out of context – and it can blow things way out of proportion.

Sensible healthy eating stories don’t make ‘news’. There has to be some controversy, conflict or an ‘est’ – latest, greatest, first or worst. (I know the last two aren’t ‘est’ but I’m sure you get what I mean.) It’s even better if you have an ‘expert’ quote – either a person or the latest study.

As readers we tend to skim stories, picking up meaning from the heading and the first paragraph. Often the real balance in a story lies in the last few paragraphs where many of us don’t read to, or embedded in the story where a light skim may miss it.

This story is a great example of media sensationalism and it trivialises an incredibly complex question – why are we getting fatter and how can we stop it? As Professor Birkbeck said, “If I had the answer, I’d be rich!”

Follow-up story in NZ Herald 7/6/09 – “Fat chance of tough love on the obese”

You may have seen the movie “Once Were Warriors”. Well the Maori people were not just warriors they also ‘once were gardeners’! Before the Europeans arrived they worked hard cultivating kumara – a delicious purple root vegetable with sweet golden flesh. Kumara was their main carbohydrate source, along with ferns, kanga wai (fermented corn) and other native plants. They had a diet high in protein from birds and fish, low in fat and low in carbohydrate. This was especially so over summer when the last year’s kumara stores ran low and the people had little to eat. Everyone would hang out for Potuterangi – the star that appeared in March and told them that they could eat the first kumara.

In less than 100 years we’ve gone from gardening to driving, and from kumara to KFC! It’s no wonder that our Maori people die younger than Europeans and even our children are getting Type 2 diabetes – once only seen in older people. All those cheap chips, pies, fried bread and fatty meat is the exact opposite of what the Maori of a few generations ago ate. This food flip has happened in many people but it is especially tragic to see the drastic change in health of a once lean, muscular, fit people in such a short time.

The colonising of New Zealand, as in all countries, brought good and bad. The bad was the decimation of Maori land, mana, wealth, and subsequently health. Many Maori still carry the hurt of the injustices of the past and, like any emotional wound, it often affects physical health and habits. How do we get past this?  Acknowledge what’s happened. If you are European, ask Maori for forgiveness on behalf of the earlier generations. If you are Maori, forgive. This breaks the bonds that tie you to past hurts so you are free to move forward. Then together, as Kiwis, we can restore health – not just through nutrition knowledge but also through re-building confidence and self esteem.

“A heart at peace gives life to the body”

Related post: Recollections of Maori food