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.

Titi Territory

When I was at Takutai o te Titi Marae in Colac Bay in Southland a few weeks ago for the Ngai Tahu Hui-a-Tau, I was reminded again of what this pretty place is famous for – Titi, also known as muttonbird. I had visited before a couple of years earlier, with Ngai Tahu chef, Jason Dell and photographer Phil Tumataroa in the course of preparing another of the Te Karaka magazine kai features and despite Jason’s best culinary efforts, I wasn’t won over to the taste of titi. Those who are however, seem to love it with a passion and kaumatua from the Oraka-Aparima Runaka were happy to share their memories of titi gathering, or, as it is known in these circles, birding.

Titi, muttonbird, sooty shearwater, Puffinus griseus – they’re all the same – is a migratory seabird and the young birds caught by Maori as an annual delicacy on the Muttonbird Islands, southwest of Stewart Island, are fat with the oils of the fish eaten and regurgitated by their parents. The parent birds come home every night, having eaten pilchards, shrimps, sprats and small squid and the young birds gobble down their oily dinner and grow very, very fat. It’s no wonder they smell on cooking. Kaumatua, Robin Thomson leaned back in her chair and drew in the kitchen aromas. She remembered her 1940s childhood and the excitement of travelling down to Murderers Cove on Taukihepa Island on the old ferry, Wairua.
“In those days our family had a round, thatched wharerau on the island, with a pit fire in the floor and a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. We’d put ferns on the floor and our kapok mattresses on top for sleeping.”
Arrival on the Muttonbird Islands was always two weeks prior to the official start of titi hunting on April 1st. It was a time used by each family to tidy up their house, chop wood and make repairs. They would have gathered kelp from the beaches back home, dried it and taken it with them to the islands where it was made into pouches to preserve the titi (see above). When April 1st dawned, everyone would be up early, walking through the bush to their own area, their manu. “We’d get down on our stomachs and reach into the nest holes. In my grandfather’s day, he used a strip of fern and he’d turn it in the nest and entangle it in the young bird’s feathers to tug it out,’ says Robin.
“As kids it was our job to cart all the birds and do the plucking with mum. On an average day we’d get about 100 birds so that was a lot of plucking. In those days we bagged up the feathers and they were sold as down for mattresses, but they don’t do that now.”

A favourite method of preserving the birds is to tahu them – “that’s how they were done in the pre-European days before salt. The katu, or balls of fat inside the birds were removed and rendered down and the birds were cooked and preserved in that. (See second image from top). They’ll last a year preserved that way and locals say they taste very different-greasier and not salty and definitely delicious. Most say the whole titi tradition was and still is, important to family. It’s special. It’s spiritual they say. That day, Jason Dell has worked his culinary miracles and served up twice-cooked titi in a hearty winter boil-up, confit of titi, little titi pies and salad of titi confit. It all looked a picture but seemed a world away from the freshly cooked tahu titi, potato chips and fried bread that Robin Thomson used to enjoy with her family on the wilds of Taukihepa Island. www.tekaraka.co.nz www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz

Down by the Sea

Rimirimu or parengo is the Maori word for seaweed and karengo for the specific Porphyra species that was commonly eaten. Rimurapa is the word for the bull kelp, which Maori used for storage – the fleshy inflatable blades of bull kelp were used as bags for preserving food. These kelp bags, or poha, were made by splitting the blades open and inflating them. They were then hung to dry, then deflated and rolled up. Then, southern Rakiura Maori would take them to the Titi Islands around Stewart Island, where they would be used for the storage of muttonbirds. An average-sized poha could hold up to 50 birds and when the bag was full, hot fat was poured in to exclude air and seal the birds. Birds are said to have remained safely preserved for up to five or six years in this way.
Maori traditionally used a number of red and green seaweed species as food, which they pulled off rocks in winter and spring. After it had been dried, the seaweed was stored and used as a good source of protein during the leaner winter months. It should be noted that the photographs I have used here may not be any of the species traditionally used by Maori. I photographed these off the wharf on Stewart Island simply because of their spectacular patterns and shapes moving in the clear water. A number of seaweed species are still protected by customary fishing law for tribal use.

Birding on the Titi Islands

I’ve never been to the Titi Islands and I’m never likely to get there – certainly not for ‘birding’ – the annual harvest of titi or muttonbirds. You have to be a descendant of Rakiura Maori to be able to do that. Rakiura Maori are the sole kaitiaki (caretakers) of the Nga Moutere Titi, the 21 Titi Islands scattered around much larger Stewart Island in southern New Zealand waters. I did however get a few photographs of some of the more northern of the Titi Islands when I was crossing Foveaux Strait on the ferry recently on my return from Stewart Island.

The Titi Islands are one of the few places where customary harvest of birds has continued since Pakeha arrived and the customary rights of Rakiura Maori are now recognised in law. Titi, muttonbird, sooty shearwater, Puffinus griseus – they’re all the same – is a migratory seabird and the young birds caught by Maori as an annual delicacy are fat with the oils of the fish eaten and regurgitated by their parents. The parent birds come home every night, having eaten pilchards, shrimps, sprats and small squid and the young birds gobble down their oily dinner and grow very, very fat. (It’s no wonder they smell on cooking). Generations of families make the annual pilgrimage to the islands on April 1st and capture bird by reaching down into the bird’s underground burrow.

Photograph of display at DOC Information Centre, Stewart Island. Ajr

In the old days, titi were often preserved in a poha like the one pictured here. Inside the poha is a waterproof bag made of bull kelp. The birds were cooked and then placed in the bag in their own (cooked) fat (a process known as tahu). Air pockets were squeezed out by hand to create a vacuum seal that kept the food fresh for 2-3 years. That bag was protected by an outer wrapping of harakeke (flax), tied together with the bark of the totara tree.

Meet the People - 3

At Hokonui Marae, Feb 2009. Ajr

Meet the People – Contemporary Maori Doing Ordinary and Extraordinary Things – Margaret Bragg of Bluff is 75 years old and in all of those years, she has never once missed an annual titi (mutton bird) harvest. Margaret was just eight months old when she was first taken to Big Island, which is one of the mutton bird islands to the south-west of Stewart Island; and in the one year she missed visiting the island, she was actually ‘birding’ on another of the Titi Islands. Titi - also called muttonbird, sooty shearwater, Puffinus griseus – is a migratory seabird and the young birds caught by Maori as an annual delicacy on the Muttonbird Islands, southwest of Stewart Island, are fat with the oils of the fish eaten and regurgitated by their parents. The parent birds come home every night, having eaten pilchards, shrimps, sprats and small squid and the young birds gobble down their oily dinner and grow very, very fat. For Rakiura Maori (the only people permitted to hunt muttonbird on the islands), arrival there was always two weeks prior to the official start of titi hunting on April 1st. It was a time used by each family to chop wood, tidy up and make repairs to their little houses. And traditionally, they would have gathered kelp from the beaches back home, dried it and taken it with them to the islands where it was made into pouches to preserve the titi in. Like most ‘birders,’ Maureen eagerly awaits the titi season – she’s already booked her helicopter flight to the islands in fact; and she’s taken an active part on the Titi Committee. She has also worked as a Department of Conservation volunteer in the Saddleback Recovery Programme and takes great pride in the fact that the 29 saddlebacks released on Big Island back in 1964 have flourished and the programme has since re-distributed nearly 800 birds around the South Island.