Kiwi chefs rise to wild food challenge
03 Jun 2010
Monteith’s Beer and Wild Food Challenge 2010
4 June - 18 July, 2010
Kiwi chefs will work their magic with traditional Māori ingredients and wild foods at the 13th Monteith’s Beer and Wild Food Challenge - whipping up dishes using wild game, seafood and indigenous plants to spice up adventurous palates.
Bars, restaurants and cafés nationwide will compete to create New Zealand’s ultimate wild food dish, matched with the perfect Monteith’s beer. Consumers can vote for their favourite dishes on the ‘wild food’ menus.
More than 100 top Kiwi chefs have entered the annual challenge - in which they have to source wild food to use as ingredients in unique dishes.
Wild food is defined as anything not raised on a farm, and must be from within a 100km radius of the kitchen.
Chefs are also challenged to come up with an original, humorous ‘wild’ name for their inspired concoctions.
Traditional kai - modern influences
Each year more Kiwi foodies take up the Wild Food Challenge, and some of the innovative mouth-watering dishes created for the competition go on to become menu staples.
Many chefs base their dishes on traditional Māori kai, blended with international flavours to suit modern tastebuds.
Regional ingredients that have inspired chefs include crab, wild boar, kina / sea urchin, venison, karengo / sea kelp, horopito pepper, manuka honey, Māori potato, harakeke / native flax, kawakawa / traditional medicinal plant, and tamarillos / tree tomatoes. Wild duck, mountain tahr, and rabbit are also on the menu.
Challenge dishes range from pan-fried hapuku in a classic Asian hot and sour broth garnished with kina, smoked wild pig cutlet, Caribbean-style wild goat curry, wild rabbit stew, roast duck pizza, vine-smoked quail, mussels wrapped in smoked conger eel, and Maungakiekie pheasant with dehydrated tomatoes in kawakawa oil.
Novice chefs on the wild side
Novice Kiwi chefs also submit unique recipes to the Monteith’s Wild Recipe Competition - in which entrants are asked to prepare a dish based on locally grown wild food, as always matched with a Monteith’s beer.
The winning recipe, chosen from three finalists, will be created by Kiwi celebrity chef Mark Gregory during a cook-off in Auckland on 23 August.
Monteith’s marketing manager Russell Browne says the challenge of pairing beer with wild food offers amateur and professional chefs something a little bit out of the ordinary.
"There is certainly plenty of great food to be utilised around the regions and of course, a beer style from Monteith’s to suit all dishes."
Recipes uploaded on the Monteith’s website include miso-seared pigeon on puha / sow thistle, Bendigo black beer stew with wild Central Otago goat, hot smoked salmon or snapper in watercress pancakes, tantalising mountain tahr, and parcels of wild pork pate with mushroom sauce.
Monteith’s beer - a Kiwi story
Monteith’s beer originated in the West Coast region of New Zealand’s South Island, and is still manufactured locally in Greymouth.
The Monteith family started brewing beer in 1868 to meet a growing demand from thirsty Kiwi pioneers caught up in the mid-1880s gold rush.
The brewery was originally named Phoenix Brewery, before it was merged into a bigger family of small boutique breweries to form Westland Breweries Ltd. It was later bought by New Zealand’s DB Breweries.
Monteith’s won the Grande Gold prize at the prestigious 1999 Monde Brewing Awards in Brussels, and was voted best brewery in Australasia at the 1999 Australian International Brewing Awards. Monteith’s Celtic Beer won a gold medal at the 2002 Brewing Industry International Awards.
More information
Kai - traditional Māori food
Indigenous Māori food ingredients
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