Traditional Kai - Karengo

Karengo is a member of the Porphyra species of edible seaweeds and is eaten throughout the world. It is closely related to Japanese nori and Welsh laver and is highly prized by South Island Māori. It is listed as a Ngāi Tahu taonga in the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 and during World War II, dried karengo was sent to the Māori Battalion in the Middle East and soldiers chewed it while they were on the march.

 I visited Onuku marae, near Akaroa recently, where karengo is a seasonal delicacy.

Every spring, between July and september, the locals on the kaik, go down to the rocky shore and gather the brown seasweek off the rocks. A bulk harvest of karengo was traditionally dried in the sun. But if they want to eat it the same day, they pan dry it. To cook it hinu (mutton fat) or butter, is added and it's cooked slowly,  with small amounts of water added over a two hour period. “Karengo is not easy to cook. It’s tough and it takes a long time to make it soft but it’s worth the effort,” the locals say.

The day I visited, they added cream to the cooked karengo mixture for extra richness and flavour and this is placed in the tiny filo cases and set aside.

Eel, or tuna, was also on the menu, along with titi (mutton bird), and both were given a modern twist in sushi.

Many of the Onuku whanai have been going to nearby Te Roto o Wairewa between March and May since hthey were young and they're  familiar with all the old ways of tuna gathering.

“We hook them out of the canals into the pararu and on a good night we’ll get around 200. They’re gutted, washed in the sea and then hung by flax threaded through their gills. With their tails cut off they bleed out; then they’re deboned, salted and dried on hooks in the whata above the beach by the marae. These days the eels are then frozen or smoked and stored ready for use,” they say.

Eeling at Wairewa

I stopped at Wairewa’s pretty Mako Marae on my way to Banks Peninsula last week and took these photographs through the fence – I LOVE that traditional style fence by the way. The marae sits on the edge of Little River Village about 30 minutes from central Christchurch and I last visited when I was writing the kai (food) series for Ngai Tahu’s TE KARAKA magazine (which is now free online by the way). As always, drawing memories of traditional hunting and gathering methods from the kaumatua (elders) was a delight – so much information about the old ways is fading and it’s important that as much as possible be saved before its gone.

One person who was generous with his memories was John Panirau, who has been eeling at Wairewa since 1948. He remembers around 30 family drains but he says the barrier between Lake Wairewa and the sea was much narrower then.
“The width of the bar has trebled since then and the sea no longer comes over all of it. The eels were much more plentiful too and it was nothing to catch five or six hundred in a night – and there was still plenty left for other whanau. “I remember one tangi we had, three of us lads were sent down to the drains and we were back in an hour with a hundred eels. The tuna were so keen to get to the sea they’d slither across the shingle in broad daylight and we’d just rake them up.

“You don’t see that now,” he says. As kids, he and his friends had to help prepare the drains and learn how to make the parua. “And if we made it too deep we were told off – and we were always sent home if we stepped over the drains. All those rules have been broken over and over since then. Nowadays people actually put bridges over the drains and that’s very upsetting for the old people. Tuna and the whakaheke is still a very important part of our community but as the elders disappear, the young ones change the tikanga. Many of them have not been brought up here so they don’t have the same feelings that the old people instilled in us. If you’ve been steeped in the protocols you’ll follow that pathway but when our kids are brought up in the cities the values are different,” John says.

Francis Robinson, 81, remembers the days of the horse and gig – days when his job was to run the bags of eels from the drains. It was his job to look after the horses and at twelve, he often joined in the catching and listened to the stories the old people told. “There’s always been a lot of mystery about where the tuna go and what they do and when it comes to catching and preserving them I’ve seen a lot of different ways. But it all comes back to one thing – hard work.” John Panirau agrees: “Learning to catch tuna is one thing but learning how to prepare and dry them was something else altogether,” he says. Francis says the job of preserving a catch of 500 tuna was a huge task that could take several weeks.

“We had to wipe the tuna clean, bone them and then string them up by their heads with harakeke to dry. Then the salting and curing would start. That was hard work and I’d always run and hide to avoid the job,” he laughs.The Wairewa kaumatua all agree that their local tuna are the best in the country.“When you’ve eaten eels from all the different parts of New Zealand, you know that these are definitely the best,” says Francis. The environment is different here; maybe that’s what makes our tuna taste so much better. Our tuna are definitely sweeter. www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz www.tekaraka.co.nz

A Tasty Dried Snack

When I visited Tuahiwi Marae near Christchurch recently, to write about the big hangi – the final in the set of kai features for Ngai Tahu’s TE KARAKA magazine – I got these great shots of Grenville Pitama smoking and preparing tuna (eel) for a snack for the men who had helped lay down the hangi. Once the prepared food had been safely laid on the hot rocks and then buried in earth and left to cook for four hours, Grenville hauled out his tin smoker and set it over the hot embers that had been removed from the hangi fire pit. He tossed a little manuka ash in to flavour the fish, laid down the pawhared (dried) Wairewa tuna and left it to cook for around ten minutes. “You wait,” he said with a grin, “That will cook up beautifully in just a few minutes.” And it did – golden, chewy, flavoursome.

A couple of years ago, one of our kai features had taken us to Lake Wairewa ( east of Christchurch, close to Little River. I spoke with many of the kaumatua (elders) about their traditions of eeling and one I remember was Naomi Butler, who was just ten when she started learning the tikanga of tuna gathering. It was always an important part of her life and by the time she caught her first eel at sixteen, she was well versed in family traditions and gathering practices.Then in her early eighties she talked to me about how eeling had shaped her childhood.
“I was the third eldest of fifteen children and during the war years we’d always be out gathering tuna and kaimoana. But Mum and Dad only ever took two of us at a time when they taught us how to catch tuna.

"Back in the 1920s and 1930s families had their own drain and we’d go and sit there at night and wait for the eels to come in. Everyone had to be very quiet and we’d listen for their tails flapping in the water. We had torches to spot them but you weren’t allowed to turn them on until someone gave the signal. The best time for tuna was when the sky was dark and a norwester was blowing. The eels would be thick then – hundreds of them, writing about in the drains,” she says.
“We’d gaff the eels in their hundreds and toss them into the shingle parua (pit) beside the drains. I’ve been there when over 700 tuna were caught in a night.”
Tuna migration has always had an element of mystery and strict tikanga has surrounded tuna harvest. They have traditionally been caught between February and April during the last quarter of the moon (hinepouri) when the nights were darker and the eels had begun moving down the streams and into Lake Wairewa, ready to migrate out to sea to spawn in the Pacific. Local whanau adhered to strict rules – food, drink and smoking were all banned from the drains and stepping across drains was equally frowned upon. I’ve written about tuna (eels) here before and shown the drying process at Rapaki, which you can see by clicking on traditional foods below this post. www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz

Creative Kai

Eel Tacos, Wairewa. 2007. Ajr

It’s some time since we visited the Wairewa Runanga at Mako Marae at Little River near Christchurch to spend the day with chef Jason Dell (Ngai Tahu, Ngati Wheke) and runanga kaumatua, cooking and talking about tuna (eel) for one of Te Karaka magazine's kai features. There’s been a long tradition of tuna harvest at Wairewa; and there’s always been an element of mystery about the tuna migration and strict tikanga has surrounded tuna harvest. They have traditionally been caught between February and April during the last quarter of the moon (hinepouri) when the nights were darker and the eels had begun moving down the streams and into Lake Wairewa, ready to migrate out to sea to spawn in the Pacific. Local whanau adhered to strict rules – food, drink and smoking were all banned from the drains and stepping across drains was equally frowned upon. When it came to producing a modern eel meal, Jason managed to surprise most of the kaumatua that day - they’ve been brought up with baked or boiled eel – perhaps some curried eel, or smoked – but never anything quite as exotic as warm eel salad with watercress, Maori potatoes and bacon; and never anything as tasty as smoked eel in parmesan tacos with shredded lettuce and vanilla mayonnaise (pictured above). Their decision was unanimous though – “it was all delicious, a real treat” – and as they reached for the last of the eel and roast pumpkin butties, they promised to go home and try something new with their own tuna. If you want to read more about traditional methods of drying eel, you can read a piece I wrote last week by clicking here.

Eel Drying

Eel Catch, Rapaki. March 2009. Ajr

It was a perfect, sunny, early autumn day in Christchurch today, so I drove over the hills to check out building progress on the new Rapaki Marae – more on that in a day or two. When I got there I was delighted to find local Maori woman, Marianna Phillips busy preparing her eel catch down at the very cute Rapaki jetty. Once she had washed and gutted the eel, she strung them up by their heads with a strip of harakeke (flax) and suspended them from the jetty. Local Maori have been doing that for decades – the old nails are still in the jetty timbers to prove it. They’ll be left to dry for a couple of days before she starts the next part of the process – filleting them and re-hanging them.

Everyone has different ways of drying tuna (eel) but there’s no question that the salting and curing of them is a long and involved process. Generally, once the tuna had been hung up their tails were cut off to help them bleed before they were left to dry further. Once they had been filleted, salt would be rubbed into the flesh and they’d be re-hung. The tuna would be rolled every day and hung out again. Depending on the weather, that process could take two weeks. After that the rolled tuna would be boiled for about ten minutes, laid out, unrolled and left to dry for the last time. Many Maori made a tent-shaped manuka whata under the trees and the tuna would hang over the manuka rails for three to six months – or until they had all been eaten. Other people kept them in a pataka, or a store room of some sort. For Rapaki locals though, the jetty has always served as the ideal whata – and these juicy specimens are destined for the modern-day freezer to reappear at the opening celebrations of Te Hapu o Ngati Wheke’s new marae in November.