Oops, its already Tues­day.  Too busy at WOAP Pecha Kucha Imbibe last night!

I have to start this week with lunch on Sat­ur­day at Haya café, and in par­tic­u­lar the galak­to­boureko (an expe­ri­ence for the tongue in many ways!).  A greek sweet with semoli­na-based cus­tard in phyl­lo, often served with lemon, orange or rose.  On this occa­sion it came with orange syrup and slith­ers of can­died orange, and was pret­ty damned fine (as was the gluten free choco­late cake I’m reli­ably informed).

Haya is a small deli/café in Aro Val­ley doing deli­cious hand­made food Wednes­days to Sun­days and sim­ple BYO-wine din­ners on Fri­days.
Zealandia entree

And then came Kai and Kakapo as part of the WOAP whirl. Because this one is done for the year, I shall tell you about it, but please feel free to skip to the end if this isn’t your cup of kawakawa.

An evening mini-tour inside the fence to meet Siroc­co the kakapo (who’s become the spokes­bird for kakapo sal­va­tion) was fol­lowed by din­ner using native ingre­di­ents through­out.  And done very nice­ly.  Siroc­co spent the time with us wan­der­ing along the win­dow and check­ing us out so not real­ly sure who won that mea­sur­ing con­test.

The din­ner start­ed with kawakawa pesto with crut and piko piko fronds, fol­lowed by horo­pi­to smoked fish with roast­ed kumara, taro (we appar­ent­ly have a NZ-spe­cif­ic one) and Maori pota­toes in a kawakawa coconut sauce, with a sal­ad of water cress, baby rock­et and native greens of rareke (puha), piri­ta (sup­ple­jack) and ti kou­ka (cab­bage tree), and a manu­ka hon­ey dress­ing, and to fin­ish, a native flaxseed and manu­ka hon­ey cheese­cake with a horo­pi­to and lemon truf­fle, a kawakawa short­bread wafer and a shot of home­made kawakawa tea on the side.

Phew!

The tru­ly remark­able bit is that the kitchen team have been grow­ing all these plants and har­vest­ing all the com­po­nents over recent months in prepa­ra­tion.  All accom­pa­nied by a sus­tain­ably pro­duced Kaimi­ra Estate chardon­nay or Bee’s Bless­ing Elder­flower mock­tail (soooo good that they made an effort for the non-drinkers), this expe­ri­ence was tru­ly home grown and very smart.

Zealan­dia are exper­i­ment­ing with this type of food for their Rata café, so def­i­nite­ly anoth­er place to keep an eye on (and Siroc­co is there until 3 Sep­tem­ber if you fan­cy meet­ing a spokes­bird).
orange and ginger jam

And to fin­ish this week, a fine jar of orange and gin­ger jam from the win­ners of the high schools 2013 Lion Foun­da­tion Young Enter­prise Scheme Drag­ons Den com­pe­ti­tion (go Tawa Col­lege!).  Although not yet test­ed to sup­port label claims, the group decid­ed to make a jam that had vit­a­min C nutri­tive val­ue from oranges, aloe vera, lemons and gin­ger (and the oblig­a­tory sug­ar for body and preser­va­tion).

They’re con­sid­er­ing alter­nates to the use of sug­ar and are aim­ing for Massey Uni­ver­si­ty nutri­tion test­ing for their nutri­tive con­tent.  Man there’s some smart young­sters out there.

I’m hav­ing a han­ker­ing for scones, jam and cream now.  Until next week…