“Bubble, bubble, toil and … “ No trouble. Just a fanciful vision of the Macbeth witches dancing around the bubbling cauldron, kitted out as old Maori spirits, when I first see Shane Beattie engulfed in clouds of steam, sweat running in rivulets from beneath his white chef’s cap. He looks like he’s fishing, using rope for line and woven grass bags for bait.
In fact, the bags he’s casting into the furiously roiling water are filled with green lipped mussels, prawns and corn on the cob.
“Our Maori people are one of the few people in the world who still cook using the geothermal waters from deep down within the earth. We’ve done this for 600 to 700 years,” says Te Taru White, chief executive officer at Te Puia, the Maori Arts and Crafts Institute on the outskirts of Rotorua on New Zealand’s North Island.
“And this,” he says pointing to Chef Beattie and probably the world’s hottest and weirdest cooking pot, “might be regarded as the world’s most unique cooking cauldron. It’s called Ngararatuatara. The ‘tuatara’ is the native lizard of New Zealand. The name refers to the colour and the skin-like forms around the edge of the pool. Our people looked at it and said, ah, that looks like the tuatara, so they named in Ngararatuatara — ‘the place of the tuatara’.”
The ‘lizard’s’ temperature gets up to 99ºC, adds White, “so you wouldn’t want to dip your toe in there. But we can cook all sorts of foods. When the president of Italy’s Academia Barilla (a Parma-based culinary centre dedicated to the development and promotion of Italy’s gastronomic culture) came here to dine we cooked him pasta.” He was, apparently, blown away.
My culinary quest was to experience an authentic Maori hangi and to eat Pavlova — the meringue-based dessert topped with dollops of whipped cream and fruit, often kiwi, created in the 1920s for Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova — where it was invented.
“Traditionally the hangi is how the Pacific Island people, the Maori ancestors, prepared their food,” says White. “You dig a pit, heat rocks inside, put the food on the rocks, cover it over with leaves and soil. Two or three hours and it’s cooked.”
We came to Te Puia expecting a hangi lunch. “Around the rest of Rotorua where they don’t have this geothermal feature, they cook the hangi and we cook that way at night. But our people, when they came to this particular valley and discovered the geothermal pools, it made sense to use them for cooking too.”
Chef Beatty, after cooking the mussels, prawns and corn, piles them onto platters. The folks at Te Puia harvest their own mussels from a coastal spot about an hour away, says White. But the green-lipped mussels we’re eating — famous throughout the world — have been brought in fresh from South Island.
“Ours are about three times this size,” says White. While the shells are used in the weaving process, they are not too tasty. “The green lipped are sweeter and smaller and better tailored for international tastes.”
We wash them down with Maori beer, Taa Kawa, made from the leaf of the KawaKawa, an indigenous plant reputed to have spiritual and medicinal qualities known to clean toxins from the body. We have a salad of chopped cucumber, onion and blue-lipped mussels. We break pieces of rewena – a kind of sour-dough flat bread that resembles a ciabatta loaf. “(It’s) traditionally made from fermented potatoes,” says White.
We also have moe moe, which are creamy (mottled purple) potatoes with patterned flesh. And a Maori-style hummus made from chick peas mixed with kumara, a sweet potato, and hiropita, a natural peppery herb. And there’s a chutney made with spices, sugar and tamarillo (a tree tomato).
For an after-lunch digestif, we take a walk. Te Puia – located in the Te Whakarewarewa Geothermal Valley, which spouts, hisses, bubbles and gurgles with hot springs, mud pools and geysers – was set up by legislation in 1963 to foster Maori arts, crafts, culture and traditions. It is a training centre for weaving, carving and “kapa haka,” Maori performing arts.
The traditional Maori war dance inspired the All Blacks’ pre-match haka.
The most famous Te Whakarewarewa valley geyser, Pohutu, erupts throughout the day, shooting up to 30m, displaying the awesome powers of nature.
The city of Rotorua sits beside a lake in a region (also Rotorua) that has in total 17 lakes. Thanks to the hydrogen sulphide emissions from the geothermal activity in and around the city, which results in bubbling mud pools and numerous hot thermal springs, the place has a pungent “rotten eggs” smell.
I was surprised to find how quickly I got used to it and people living there told me they don’t notice the smell except when they have been away and return.
The city markets itself as the adventure hub of New Zealand and we whet our appetites for our Te Puia lunchtime visit with some of Rotorua’s adventure attractions.
The most fun was the Zorb, which had us dive individually (assisted by some friendly pushes) through an entrance hole that leads into a giant inflated ball containing a good slosh of warm water.
You get zippered in with the water. Then you’re pushed from the outside – and you run to push yourself from the inside – until you’re rolling and zig-zagging down the side of of a hill, being flung every which way inside.
It’s hilarious. “A Zorb a day” someone decided would be a good antidote for stress.
Rotorua’s Agroventures, near where we zorbed, specialises in what I came to think of as New Zealand’s passive-extreme thrills.
With many of the do-if-you-dare options, including bungee jumping, you just show up, give yourself over, get tied in (or otherwise secured), and you’re off. No expertise needed. No training required. All equipment provided.
Best not to throw up, so eat a small breakfast and go, as we did, before lunch.
One that required some physical activity was the Shweeb, a capsule attached to an overhead track where you actually pedal, raise the heart rate and a sweat, and compete, singles or doubles, with an opposing individual or team.
The Swoop, a more passive thrill, involved being secured in something like a sleeping bag (three of us Swooped together in three joined sleeping bags).
You get hoisted 40m into the air, one of you pulls a ripcord, and you swoop (and scream and laugh at yourself for screaming).
A couple of us also did what they call Freefall Xtreme where you “fly”, held aloft by 180km/h winds hitting you from below, while two assistants throw you about.
You also get drool all over your chin – rather gross – I discovered on landing.
I never did get to try a hangi in New Zealand. But once in South Africa, at a Herman Charles Bosman event, I ate a heavy loaf of white bread and a pumpkin cooked using the hangi method.
Apparently it was a pre-stove Boer style of cooking here too. The Pavlova? I had that a couple of times. But for novelty it didn’t beat the food cooked in the boiling “lizard”. - Sunday Tribune
l For more information:
Visit Te Puia online at www.tepuia.com/
See more on x-treme sporting options online at www.agroventures.co.nz/
See more on Rotorua online at www.rotoruanz.com/