Auckland Museum blog

This Wednesday night we have a very special guest, Dr Hamish Campbell from GNS Science coming to speak on earthquakes. It seems of late you can’t watch the news without headlines of a natural disaster striking. From the safety of our couches we sit and watch these strangers have their homes, their schools, their churches washed away/reduced to rubble/ravaged by fire. But when we see the faces of our own countrymen pulling away rubble in a rescue effort it starts means something else.

On Friday the 11^th of March as I sat on the couch watching live the Japanese tsunami and the footage of the earthquake that preceded it, I suddenly felt this fear that the world was ending. There were stories rolling in that Japan as a land mass had shifted and the tilt of the world’s axis itself was affected. As a catastrophic thinker I of course I couldn’t help but think ‘is this the beginning of the end?’ How can we all sit at our desks and carry on when this could strike at any time? Why is the world shaking?

But are the earthquakes increasing? Are we somehow responsible? Is the earth crying out? According to Wikipedia there have been 1057 earthquakes which have measured from 5 to 9 on the Richter scale in 2011 alone. This is half of what 2010 experienced in total. Will we continue to have them at this scale? What does this mean?

To answer these questions and your own we will have Dr Hamish Campbell, Geologist from GNS Science come and help us make some sense of this world on Wednesday night at 7pm. Campbell will discuss the geological causes behind these natural disasters, whether there is any relationship between the events in NZ and Japan, the fallout effects of the quakes including liquefaction in Christchurch and what Aucklanders could expect based on the city’s geology. 

This country which is used in the world’s biggest budget films for its stunning location that will transport you to another time, this country with its breathtaking mountain ranges, its clusters of volcanoes, its hot geysers – this country has a life of its own. In fact it sits over two tectonic plates which have held a grudge with each other since long before our time. This beauty comes at a price.

Last night there was an earthquake that measured 6.4 on the Richter scale which occurred in the Kermadec Islands. All reports confirm the permanent residents of Raoul Island are fine. The quake took place 1100km off New Zealand and could felt by some on the north east coast. Could you feel anything?

My morning routine revolves around coffee. As soon as I arrive at the Museum I make myself a cup of instant. Nothing special here – just a quick spoonful of powder and hot water; a triumph of technology. I doubt there will any of this at the Coffee Festival this Sunday.

Then moving around the Museum I see objects that remind me of another period in time, when a cup of coffee was not something to be rushed – it was to be poured from an elegant ceramic pot, for instance, while you were reclining in the elegance of a Robert Adam chair.

I love real coffee – you just can’t beat the scent of freshly roasted beans or the sight of the perfect crema on a short, sharp, deliciously thick espresso.

A few years ago I took my coffee obsession to another level by learning how to roast my own coffee beans at home! There is something magical about the transformation of the pale, aroma-less green beans into the dark, aromatic, hissing and popping coffee beans that we recognise and adore. They come alive during the roasting process. Green beans keep much longer than roasted ones and are cheaper to buy too.

Roasting beans can be an exact science but not for me. I prefer to rely upon my eyes, ears and nose when roasting – no need for thermometers or timers. My cheap popcorn maker does the job for me.

I roast outside (it’s quite messy once the beans start to shed their outer layers!) I use my trusty sieve to catch the hot beans (you can’t touch them as they will burn you) as they leap out of the roaster and return them to the machine for some more heat.

All the time I am listening for the first crack – the sound which is produced when the bean reaches a certain temperature and they really do make a cracking noise at this stage.

Now you begin to make your choice about the amount of roasting time that you want the beans to endure – lots of jargon exists to describe the various roast levels,  Viennese, City, French right through to burnt! I personally wait for a second crack to be heard a few times then I switch off the machine but let the beans continue smoking and jumping about for a few more minutes. I like a dark roast.

Once second crack has been reached and the beans have sat for a few minutes I start to cool the beans down by transferring them between sieve and bowl over and over again until they are cool enough to touch.

Finally I take them inside and leave them to cool further and release their gasses for the rest of the day. Then I seal them up ready to make my espresso. So much better than the instant I have at work!

Tomorrow, Thai community leader  Maneeka Campbell will be preparing a classic Thai dish for Kai to Pie. A key ingredient is the ground roasted rice, which Campbell says adds a subtle texture and flavour. Traditionally eaten as a snack or part of a main course, Laab Setthee is best served with plenty of fresh vegetables. “My family likes to spoon the mixture into fresh lettuce leaves”. Sounds delicious.

Laab Setthee
227 grams ground pork (can also use chicken)
1 tablespoon ground toasted rice
1 shallot, thinly sliced
Juice of half lime
1/4 tablespoon ground dried chilli
2 tablespoons fish sauce

3 spring onions, sliced.
Handful of fresh Thai mint leaves, chopped fine.

Handful of chopped coriander.   

To make ground toasted rice, place uncooked rice in a dry wok/frying pan over medium-high heat.  As the rice heats up, shake the pan back and forth or stir with a spoon. After a few minutes, the rice will turn a light golden brown and will begin to pop (like popcorn). When it begins to pop, transfer the rice to a coffee grinder or pestle and mortar.  Grind down to a course powder.

Then place the ground pork in heated pan and stir until cooked. Turn off the heat and add the ground toasted rice, shallot, lime, fish sauce, spring onions, mint leaves and coriander.  Gently toss the mixture. Serve with sliced cucumber and sliced cabbage.  Serves 2.

Hi Michael here from Meredith’s restaurant. I’ll be preparing this ceviche dish at the Museum at 11am for this Saturday’s for World on Your Plate: Samoan. I have included the recipe below for you to try.

Ceviche (vegetarian), with citrus and coriander (serves 4)

Ingredients:

1 green coconut

2 pink grapefruit

2 limes

3 shallots finely sliced

2 radishes sliced

Baby coriander

Chopped chives

Salt

Celery stalks, finely sliced

Cucumber, finely sliced

Method:

Crack the coconut open, reserved some juice for the dressing, use a spoon and scoop out the flesh.

Place flesh with the citrus in a bowl, add shallots, cucumber, celery and dressing, let stand for 5 min to marinade, add herbs adjust seasoning and serve garnish and coriander

Dressing 200ml coconut juice 100ml grapefruit juice Lime juice Coconut vinegar 200ml coconut oil or olive oil Sugar Salt to taste

Method for dressing

Mix juices with the vinegar, whisk in oil then season with sugar and salt.

Jaqueline here from Savour and Devour. At this weekend’s World on Your Plate, I will be cooking three dishes for you to try: peixe moqueado, acarajé tradicional and sagu. Here is my recipe for peixe moqueado, a dish that originates from the Brazilian state of Amazonas.

Peixe Moqueado (serves 4)
Fish: nice white fish, cut into large pieces not fillets.
Marinate in: fresh lemon juice, white ground pepper (just a sprinkle) and bay leaves. {reserve}
Meanwhile make the sauce
1/2 kilo very ripe tomatoes (skinned/ peeled, seeds in)
1 stalk of celery diced
1 tsp crushed garlic
Olive oil
200 ml of good quality coconut cream
Freshly chopped coriander
Sprinkle brown sugar
Salt & pepper

Method
In a pot fry the onion, garlic, celery till soft. Add diced tomatoes with the seed and keep stirring it in a medium to low heat then back to low heat. Cook for about 20 minutes then add the sugar, salt an pepper. {reserve}
In a frying pan heat 2 tbsp of olive oil + 1/2 tsp crushed garlic and the fish, fry both sides slightly, not until brown, just to create a nice coat around the fish, add sufficient sauce to cover the fish together with the coconut cream. Adjust salt and pepper, add fresh coriander and its done!
Serve with long grain basmati or jasmine rice.

It is 31 years since I left The Netherlands and in 1979 when we arrived here you literally could not buy anything remotely similar to traditional Dutch food. Now you buy anything you can over there. There are large supermarket chains that have overseas delicatessens, there are Dutch shops around Auckland, one in Bulls, one in Foxton which now also has a traditional Dutch-style windmill.

The things we like and missed were patat met mayonnaise (chips with mayonnaise), zuur kool (sauerkraut/cabbage), boeren kool (farmers cabbage), frikandel (a sausage or frank), pannekoeken (pan cakes) and kroketten (croquettes)

It does not matter how long one is in New Zealand and we love the unique foods here, you always have that craving for some traditional foods but it is also magic to enjoy the food from many cultures.

I hope you will be here on Saturday to enjoy another traditional Dutch treat: Poffertjes (fluffy baby pancakes – pictured right) which will be prepared by Willem van der Velde of the restaurant Dutch Delights. I have included his recipe below:

Ingredients:

500 grams self raising flour (buckwheat is even better)

1 litre milk

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of oil

Pinch of salt

50 ml vanilla essence

Mix all the ingredients together, except the oil, until you have a nice smooth thick liquid. Warm the poffertjes pan (a non-stick pan for baking pancakes) and brush some butter, or spray the oil, into all the cups in the pan.

Put the poffertjes mix in a squeeze bottle and squeeze the mix into all the cups. Cook until they’re golden brown on both sides and be sure that the inside of the poffertjes are cooked through. Place the poffertjes on a warm plate, put some butter in the middle of the plate, and liberally sprinkle some icing sugar at the top of them.

While there is honey in Every Flower, no doubt
It takes a Bee to get the Honey out
A poet’s proverbs by Arthur Guiterman (1924)

Bees symbolise industry and persistence. In that way they can be compared with what we observe of Library users. Usually we see them as industrious pursuers of knowledge. What we do not observe until much later is the rich sweet product – the thesis, the book, the article, the television series, the exhibition.

Our Museum Library is one such beehive. And the honey produced by our researchers comes in flavours of local and natural history, genealogy, anthropology, art, medicine and more.

We are mostly familiar with the honey and bumble bees (the social bees), but did you realise there are at least 28 native bee species?

We have been farming bees in New Zealand from at least the early 1840s. Missionary William Charles Cotton wrote A manual for New Zealand bee keepers in 1848 and in the following year it was published in Maori as Ko nga pi.

Another missionary, Richard Taylor, noted 60 hives at the Paihia mission station in 1848. These had been created by Mrs Williams and she gave Taylor one to take one back to Wanganui. He describes the reaction of a local Maori mission teacher in his journal held in the Museum Library’s manuscript collection.

Here is a small selection of honey oriented recipes from New Zealand cookbooks, which I found when preparing for a recent Library tour for Kai to Pie. You will be brave to attempt the first 120 year old recipe for Honey Wine, but the Honey-Ginger cookies sound very pleasant.

Honey Wine [1891]

To 10 gallons of water put 10lb of honey and 1/4 lb of good hops, boil for 1 hour, and when cooled to the warmth of new milk, ferment with yeast spread on toast. Let it stand in a tub for 2 days, then put it into a cask. It will be fit to bottle in 9 months. Honey a year old is better for the purpose than new.

from: The New Zealand cookery book and colonial household guide, compiled to suit New Zealand by a Colonial (1891)

Pear and Honey Compote [1952]

Serves 3-4

Ingredients: Pears; lemon; honey; golden syrup; arrowroot; raisins; nuts

Step (1) Halve and core 1 lb pears – they need not be peeled. Cook in ¾ cup water until soft. Add the juice and grated rind of 1 small lemon. If the stems of the pears are added while cooking, the flavour is improved – but remove them before serving.

(2) Lift pears out with a slotted spoon and place in a dish. To the syrup in the saucepan add 1½ tablesp. Honey and 1 tablesp. Golden syrup. Mix 1 ½ level teasp. Arrowroot with about 2 teasp. Water and stir in. Cook, stirring constantly, until slightly thick. Taste and add more honey if not sweet enough.

(3) Pour over the pears in the dish. Fill the hollows with raisins and chopped nuts.

from: The hostess cook book by Helen M Cox (1952). Helen Cox was a popular New Zealand broadcaster and who worked during the war as a cookery demonstrator for Auckland Electric Power Board.

Honey Fruit Salad [1964]

Quantities for 4.
4oz honey (4 Tbs)
½ Tbs lemon juice
¼ pint water (½ cup)

Dissolve the honey in the water and add the lemon juice.

8oz dessert apples (2 medium)
2oz chopped walnuts (¼ cup)
4oz chopped dates (½ cup)

Peel and core the apples and cut into small dice. Add to the syrup at once. Add the dates and nuts and mix well. Chill before serving.

from: Pears family cookbook by Bee Nilson (1964). Mrs A R (Bee) Nilson was born and trained in New Zealand. She moved to England in 1936 and in 1964 was Senior Lecturer in nutrition at the Northern Polytechnic, London.

Honey-Ginger Cookies [1968]

4oz butter
½ cup honey
½ sugar
1 egg
1 ¾ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon ground ginger
½ cup chopped walnuts

Melt the butter and allow it to cool. Stir into the butter the honey, sugar and lightly beaten egg.

Sift the flour, baking powder and ginger into the honey mixture.

Stir in the nuts and mix thoroughly.

Drop in spoonfuls onto a greased oven tray, allowing space for spreading.

Bake at 375 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

Makes about 3 dozen.

from: Tui Flower’s cookbook by Tui Flower (1968)

Honey Buttered Beets [1974]

M McLew, Kennington

Serves: 4

2 cups cooked diced beetroot
1 cup beetroot juice
2-3 tablespoons honey
1½ teaspoons cornflour
2 tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar
1½ teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons butter

Heat beetroot and juice thoroughly.

Add honey. Blend cornflour and lemon juice to a smooth paste.

Add to the beetroot with salt and butter. Simmer for five minutes.

Serve as accompaniment to cold roast lamb, silverside, pickled pork or ham salads.

from: The N Z radio and television cookbook by Alison Holst (1974)

Enjoy!

These popular, mouth-watering snacks originated in India.  The fried, crispy savouries are most often served as appetizers or snacks.  My earliest memories of food are about pakoras. As with most Indian family celebrations, everything revolves around the food, from planning to preparing to cooking (remember the samosa production line in Bend it Like Beckham?).

Our family shared many special occasions with my Aunty Amaro’s family in the small Waikato town of Ngaruawahia.  Every festivity I can remember  whilst growing up (dinners, weddings, birthday parties, Diwalli, Christmas and New Years days) – featured the pakora.

Arriving at my aunt’s house, the delicious aroma of pakoras being freshly prepared wafted from the kitchen. Kids were promptly propped up at the table and served drinks while the adults enjoyed copious cups of cha (tea). There were always enough pakoras to fill a rather large roasting dish so they were freely consumed by all, and astonishingly, we seemed to still have room for the Indian sweets that followed like burfi, ladoo and besan that my mum was good at making.

Food often provides that important connection with “home”. My mum and aunt went to extraordinary lengths to replicate dishes and sauces from India and ‘made do’ with the available ingredients from IGA, 4 Square and then later the local supermarket.

In India the usual accompaniment for pakoras is tamarind sauce but it wasn’t readily available in New Zealand during the ’70s.   Our neighbour gave my dad a “handed down family recipe”, which he used to make a great homemade (spicy) tomato sauce and it became the replacement for tamarind sauce (imli) in our wider family.  To this day…even though tamarind pulp may be found in many shops to make the sauce …it’s kiwi tomato sauce I reach for first when I’ve got a plate of pakoras in front of me!

Back to the present day…depending on where you live there are many pakora variations such as macchi pakora (fish), paneer pakora (cheese), gobi pakora (cauliflower) and even bread pakoras.  The most popular in our family is the vegetable pakora.  I share with you my own kiwi-style recipe for vegetable pakoras, which I cooked this week for my workmates at the Museum to celebrate World on Your Plate.

Vegetable Pakoras

1 large onion
2 large potatoes
1 bunch silverbeet
1 cup frozen peas
700 grams chickpea flour (also known as chana flour or gram flour)
1 level tsp baking powder
2 litres Canola or Olive Oil

Spices
4 tsp salt
1 tsp garam masala
2.5 tsp ground coriander (or you can use hara dhanya- Green coriander)
2.5 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp chilli powder
1 tsp curry powder

Finely slice the onions and potatoes.  Shred the silverbeet.  Place all the vegetables in a large bowl and add flour and baking powder.  Use enough warm water to make a very thick batter.
Add spices and mix well.
Heat oil in deep pot or fryer.  When oil is hot drop large spoonfuls of the pakora batter into the oil.   Don’t overload the pot or they will stick together as they cook. Deep fry for a few minutes, then turn over to cook evenly.
Fry until a deep golden brown.  Remove with a slotted spoon let cool on paper towels to drain excess oil.
Serve while hot with tamarind sauce, yoghurt or tomato sauce.  Pakoras can be kept in the warming drawer until ready to eat.  If reheating from cold best to use the oven rather than microwave.
Serves about 8-10 people.

Ma’ara here, Pacific Educator at Auckland Museum. This Saturday at World on Your Plate, you will have a chance to taste Pai varaipani (Fried sweet banana pie).

Pai varaipani is a traditional Cook Islands food which in European terms may be categorised as a dessert. It is made from very ripe bananas (Musa sp) mixed with arrowroot / cassava (Manihot esculenta) starch.

The two are mixed well and then fried (like a pan cake) for some 6 minutes. It is common for Cook Islands food to be eaten straight from the hand

Ingredients

(makes three servings)

10 x very ripe bananas

Half cup arrowroot starch

Water

Olive oil

Procedure

Skin the large bananas and place in a bowl. Mash well.  To the mashed bananas add half cup arrowroot starch and 1 tablespoon water. Mix well

Scoop 1 cup of the mixture and place into heated frying pan. Flatten out and cook for about 2-3 minutes. Turnover and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Once golden brown in colour you know it is cooked. Scoop onto a plate and enjoy.  Option: Serve with sliced bananas.

Kia ora. Ko Jacqueline Snee taku ingoa. Ko Ngati Porou me Ngati Kahungunu oku iwi. Ko ahau te kaitiaki o nga pukapuka raupapa kei Tamaki Paenga Hira.

Ko te Moa Tipua, kei te papa tuatahi taku taonga e noho ana.

Aue e hika maa tona taroaroa hoki! Ko te Moa Tipua te manu tiketike rawa atu i te ao katoa! Ka hoki mahara ki nga tipuna me ta ratou kitenga i tenei manu hautipua ara te Moa. Rokohanga ka kitea ai nga wheua kaitaa o tenei tu momo manu! Ko aua wheua i hahu ake patata ki toku ake wa kainga ki Takapau.

Kare e kore i tupono oku tipuna ki tenei momo manu!

“Hold fast to your language and culture, least they become extinct like the Giant Moa!”

The giant Moa is the tallest bird in the world. When I look at this replica I think of my ancestors and the first time they saw it. According to the korero we ate the Moa. Giant Moa bones have been found on the Takapau plains which is close to my home town in the Hawkes Bay. This is the connection to our ancestors the first peoples of Aotearoa.