First, catch your pukeko

I’ve been reading Tony Simpson’s A Distant Feast : The Origins of New Zealand’s Cuisine, looking at the sort of food our immigrant ancestors might have been eating. For someone who sticks to basic beef, pork and chicken, the vast number of recipes for offal and game has just about given me nightmares. Those Victorians ate anything and everything.

Despite the complaints about food on the immigrant ships, for many of the steerage passengers, the food in the embarkation depots and on ships was better than what most of them had seen in a long time. Many immigrants grew quite stout on board ship; children often became ill at the quantities of food their loving parents stuffed into them.

On arrival in New Zealand, the immigrants discovered that beef and pork were generally plentiful and cheap. Maori had enthusiastically adopted the practice of raising pigs and cattle, and growing fruit and vegetables, for sale or trade to the Europeans. The New Zealand climate made growing vegetables pretty straightforward, and veggie gardens flourished at most early Wellington homes. Raw vegetables were still regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, and most people preferred them to be thoroughly cooked to remove any lingering trace of the poisons they were thought to contain. Even my grandmother’s cookbook from the early 1900s recommends boiling cabbage for 20 minutes – and adding a piece of washing soda to ensure it retained its green colour. Mmmmmm…..

In Britain, fish had been regarded as food for the poor – it was free for the catching, after all. It seems most settlers also avoided sea-fish – whether because the taint was of poverty or the raw sewage in the harbour is not clear. Chicken wasn’t eaten much either – chickens were kept for eggs rather than for food, and only the old ones that had given up laying found their way into the pot.

Then there was game and wild food – pheasants, rabbit, hare, wild pork, eels, koura – if Dad could catch it, Mum would cook it. Even, if you were short of cash and the larder was bare, the ubiquitous swamp hen :

Pukeko Cream Soup

Prepare the bird and set in a large saucepan and cover with water. Add three kumaras and one onion and salt to taste. Now simmer until the bird is tender [this may take some hours] then remove from stock and vegetables. Sieve kumaras and onion and add to stock with half a pint of milk. Heat again and thicken with one tablespoon of cornflour. Before serving, add a small quantity of cream and garnish each serving with chopped parsley and freshly-ground pepper. [And presumably, throw away the pukeko?]