Festive fare for the adventurous
Seafood treats served by Paula Beck. Photo: Maria Polglase.
Revenge may be sweet, but it was an unexpected inclusion on the Collingwood Summer Food Fair menu. After years of chasing pukekos off my vegetable garden, I finally got the opportunity to bite one back.
Pukeko was one of the day’s top surprises, according to many of the 600-strong crowd, who mellowed out on hay bales and picnic tables to the folksy rhythms of three live bands. Pukeko meat looks benign enough—beeflike with an obvious grain and a pinkish tinge. Don’t think too hard; force aside the images of parasites and fetid swamp mud and dive in. It’s mild at first, with a firm texture, and a long, strong, complex aftertaste.
By my survey (taken while meandering between the goat chops and the pancake stall), the People’s Choice award went to the stingray bacon, made from the flaps of a four-footer caught and smoked by Brian Gilbert and his mate Rod Baigent. It was a tender treat strongly like sweet pork with sea-salt overtones, and served by Garth and Steven Strange.
“Good old stingray, eh?” said Garth. “We all thought they were just a bloody nuisance, now everybody’ll be after them.” Including Neil Batten, who was pondering whether to go and catch one when he got home.
The wind quivered with the aromas of wild pork and hare, curried rig, cockles, and Speed Robinson’s 60-pound groper infused with lemon. For the more cultured palate there was wild venison and duck stew with chickpeas, apricots and white wine.
A patient queue waited for scallops, whitebait patties, and mussel sausages. Visitors were taken aback to find the “Pakawau Pony Patties” sign referred to their supposed contents, not a riding club. If the rugby club had a buck for everyone who asked “Is it really pony?” it would have been a mighty fundraiser indeed.
Facing plates of liver, kidneys, testicles and eyeballs is like finding you’re a participant on Fear Factor (but without the bikini), but not everyone had turned up for a wild food adventure.
I asked Elda Heywood if she’d pushed her food boundaries at all. “Oh no, I had a bit of something and they told me it was pig snout and I spat it out,” she exclaimed.
Chris Mitson hadn’t asked what he’d been fed, “and I don’t want to know.” Lois Jukes tried pukeko and stopped at pigs’ balls; Em Hofstede loved the scallops but drew the line at offal.
The whole event was a protein-lover’s paradise. In the three hours I was there, I didn’t see a single bloke with a salad, and only one confessed to eating any. The hangi though, at 5.30, had vegetables with chicken and pork and pulled the biggest queues of the day.
No drink on offer was as memorable as Bill Climo’s “1080” rum and kiwifruit wine with its alarming glow of green food colouring, and which he cheerfully dispensed to passers-by from an applicator syringe. The heavier imbibers went home with green tongues.
For kids there was horizontal bungee, a soapy waterslide that left them all squeaky clean with bubbles up their noses, and ball games. The stallholders worked hard, and the crowd left the problem-free, down-to-earth event full and happy. It’s what country life’s all about.
“Don’t let on, but I’d have paid more,” said one local.
All food was eventually eaten, according to Pete Watkins, who organised the event together with members of the Collingwood Rugby Club, which hopes to upgrade the club entrance and get some new gear with the funds.
“We’ve been doing it for three years and we’ll keep it going,” said Graeme Miller, who spent the day on the working end of a seafood spatula. “For a couple o’ three days’ hard work it’s certainly worth it.”
Maria Polglase
