Traditional Māori feast gets new twist for Matariki
12 May 2009
Māori New Year celebrations launched in New Zealand at the weekend with a hugely successful gourmet hangi that tickled traditional taste buds, and may have changed attitudes towards the customary Māori feast forever.
The Matariki event saw 700 guests sit down to a gourmet meal, crafted by New Zealand celebrity chef Peter Gordon and a team of helpers, at Turangawaewae marae - home of the Māori king - in Ngaruawahia near Hamilton.
Designed to raise funds for the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre set up by singer Hinewehi Mohi to help handicapped children, the gourmet hangi was followed by a show of Māori culture and entertainment that featured a line up of New Zealand’s top musicians.
New style hangi
High profile guests included the Māori King, King Tuheitia, government ministers and Māori elders who are well used to the more conservative traditional hangi of plain meat and vegetables cooked with super-heated rocks buried in an underground pit oven.
But Peter Gordon and other high profile Kiwi chefs, including the Māori ‘Queen of Cuisine’ Anne Thorp, devised a new twist to the usual hangi fare with a fusion approach featuring local ingredients, native herbs and Asian spices.
Gordon, who has restaurants in London and at Auckland's Sky City, treated guests to marinated pork loin with kawakawa (mint-flavoured native herb); pork belly stuffed with apples, walnuts and sage; marinated chicken with New Zealand manuka honey; whole baby lamb, and marinated beef with peppery native horopito.
King Tuheitia dined on wagyu beef ribs braised in oven bags in soy, miso, horopito and star anise.
Gordon who?
Some said the new hangi looked "too flash to eat", but Glenda Raumati - who like her mother before her has worked in the Turangawaewae marae kitchen most of her life - said everyone was excited by the new take on an old favourite.
She said kaumatua (respected elders) were a bit worried when they heard celebrity chef Peter Gordon was going to be in their kitchen.
"Some of them thought Gordon Ramsay was coming here," she said.
They had the wrong Gordon, but Ms Raumati was sure her team could have handled the famously bad-mouthed and volatile British television chef.
"It would have been pretty funny if he came here and carried on like he does on TV. We would have given as good as he did."
Celebrity show
The event entertainment organised by Hinewehi Mohi featured a who’s who of Kiwi music, and included Dave Dobbyn, Boh Runga, Nesian Mystik, Maisey Rika, Hinewehi Mohi, Moana and the Tribe, Tama Waipara, Whirimako Black and Pania Papa.
Organisers say the idea behind the gourmet hangi and concert marking the start of Matariki was to create a celebration that reflected today’s Aotearoa New Zealand.
"This event provides a unique opportunity to modernise the traditions of Matariki focusing on Māori traditions, music, food and the sharing of ideas," Mohi said.
Matariki celebrations
Matariki is the Māori name for the group of stars - also known as the ‘Pleiades’ cluster or The Seven Sisters - and is referred to as the traditional Māori New Year.
The pre-dawn rise of Matariki can be seen in the last few days of May each year, and the new year is marked at the sighting of the next new moon which occurs during June.
Matariki has special significance in terms of food and hospitality with celebrations timed to fall at the end of a harvest when food stores are full.
The official 2009 Matariki festival runs from 24 June to 24 July and, as well as public events throughout the country, New Zealanders are encouraged to mark the event by making a new year wish, getting together for a feast with family and friends, planting native shrubs or traditional Māori food, gathering food from their garden to share with others, flying a kite and taking part in a concert.
More information:
Matariki - Māori New Year
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