4 Bites: Tastes of the Wairarapa

Arriving in central New Zealand at the same time as one of the largest storms in history heightens Warren Elwin’s appreciation for country cuisine.

The weekend of June 20 was a wild and woolly one in the Wairarapa. Our flight from Auckland to Palmerston North was quick and easy, if a little hairy on landing, and what was supposed to be a leisurely scenic tour through the epic Manawatu Gorge became an intensely focused drive through torrential rain to our accommodation at The Copthorne Hotel and Resort Solway Park in Masterton. But we arrived safe 'n' sound —and somewhat exhilarated after our travels. We cosied up in the bar for a whiskey tasting and a local cheese platter before dinner and enjoyed a couple of bourbon cocktails that led me to create a wintry bourbon buck back home in Auckland.

Wintry bourbon buck

Makes 2 cocktails

60ml Kentucky bourbon
20ml sugar syrup (equal parts sugar and water heated until sugar melts and then cooled)
Juice from 1 grapefruit
Ginger ale

1. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add bourbon, sugar syrup and grapefruit juice, shake well and pour into two glasses. Top with ginger ale.

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Dinner at The Grill introduced us to Wakanui beef, which is grass-fed, grain-finished, native to Mid Canterbury, aged to tender and full of flavour. The menu re-tweaking my interest in old school recipes with its seafood chowder, salt and pepper squid, a surf 'n' turf of scotch fillet and prawns and the ubiquitous pork belly, served crispy and homely with a kumara mash, sweet broad beans, and a tasty cauliflower cheese.

Salt and pepper squid

Serves 4-6 as a snack

Use calamari tubes scored and cut into strips, or cleaned baby octopus, or both.

1 Tbsp black peppercorns
1 tsp Szechuan peppercorns
1 tsp rock salt
⅓ cup potato starch (or use cornflour)
¼ cup self-raising flour
2-3 squid tubes, scored and cut into strips

1. In a dry frying pan, heat peppercorns and rock salt until fragrant. Cool and grind to a fine powder. Mix together with potato starch and self-raising flour.
2. Dip squid into egg wash, coat in the seasoned flour mix, then deep fry in hot cooking oil until golden and crunchy. Drain and serve with lemon wedges.

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Up early Saturday and full of baked beans, bacon and breakfast sausages from the hotel buffet, I snuck in a quick recce of the Masterton township. It's a proud rural centre full of beautiful old municipality buildings, good roadside coffee from streamlined trailers, black pudding at the butchers, and the best takeaway name ever — The Crying Onion.

Heading south on SH2, we took a scenic ride with Amalgamated Helicopters for a wicked overview of the Wairarapa valley (that's it at the top of the page). The Ruamahanga river had burst its banks, flooding farmland, orchards and the road to Martinborough. Turning into the weather we flew up the Waiohine river, into the Tararua ranges. The misty vistas looking down on to our native, deep green canopies were stunning (a little thankful we didn't chop it all down, eh).

Back on the road south, we stopped in at the Clareville bakery (housed in an historic church near Carterton), to try the winner of 2014's NZ Supreme Pie award. A sweet combination of lamb and kumara mash, with the lamb cutlet bone poking out through the pastry. It was a fine pie, as was the salted caramel banana cream sourdough doughnut.

Detouring north east to avoid closed roads, we spent the rest of the day in the surrounding charm of Martinborough. A wine tasting at Poppies was accompanied by a moreish lunch platter that included dolmada, a pumpkin hummus, sauvignon blanc-cured salmon, sliced pork belly, pepperoncini, marinated mushrooms, tapenade and brinjal.

The weekend-long monster book fair in the town hall offered up a 1976 Woman’s Weekly page for beef wellington as inspiration for my recipe below.

Individual beef wellingtons

Serves 2-4

One of these will feed one big fella, or can be sliced to serve two.

2 x 250g scotch fillet steaks
Butter, for frying
1 small onion, finely chopped
7 button mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2.5cm knob ginger, grated
1 Tbsp mixed herbs
250-300g chicken livers, finely chopped
Zest and juice of 1 orange
50ml bourbon
Handful finely chopped parsley
2 sheets puff pastry
1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)

1. Season steaks with sea salt flakes and black pepper, then sear in a little hot butter to just colour each side. Remove and rest to cool.
2. To make a quick pate mix, add the onion, mushrooms, garlic, ginger, mixed herbs, and fresh black pepper to the steak pan and saute slowly until soft. Increase heat, add chicken livers and quickly fry. Add the orange zest and juice and bourbon and cook until liquid is evaporated. Remove and rest to cool then whizz together with the parsley to form a chunky pate. Season to taste.
3. Place a steak into each piece of pastry, smother with spoonfuls of the pate, egg wash the edges and tuck, fold and roll into pastry parcels. Prick with a fork, generously egg wash, and bake in a 200C oven for 20 minutes until golden and crisp.

The midwinter night market in the Martinborough town square was full of local food purveyors, artisans, craftspeople and musicians. Many olive growers were in attendance, with lots of really good extra virgin oil as well as flavoured oils to try and buy. Food highlights were olive leaf teas, a vegan barbecued black bean burger with roast onions, pickled jalapenos and a herb mayo, Greytown Butchery's pink beef and horseradish mustard Po' boy, Crooked Cider's mulled cider that took the damp edge off right away and Stewart Island smoked salmon, which I'm still raving about.

Olive oil citrus cake

Adapted from Quickenberry Lodge’s recipe, using Olives NZ’s extra virgin olive oil

⅔ cup caster sugar
3 eggs
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
Zest and juice of 2 clementines (or 1 orange)
½ tsp vanilla paste (or the seeds from ½ vanilla bean)
⅔ cup flour
⅔ cup semolina flour
160ml extra virgin olive oi
Pinch salt

1. Grease and line a 20cm round springform cake tin. Heat oven to 170C.
2. Beat caster sugar with 3 of the egg yolks and 1 egg white (reserve the other 2 whites for step 4) until pale and ribbony.
3. Stir in lemon and orange zest and juice and vanilla paste.
4. Sift in both flours, and fold in to incorporate. Slowly fold in the oil to form a smooth batter.
5. Beat the remaining egg whites with a good pinch of salt to form stiff peaks. Gently fold into the batter, a spoonful at a time.
6. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes until golden and firm to touch.
7. Remove from tin, leave to cool and serve with a yoghurt and mascarpone cream and clementine segments.

Also top-notch were Prodigal Daughter's salt 'n' pepper squid and their pork belly baguette with plum sauce, Pascal's traditional French Original Preserve Porc Pate (a little awesome), Goodbuzz kombucha, and everything from the Fire Truck, especially the brawn dog (a little genius corn-battered barbecued brawn on a stick, with chipotle mayo).

Sunday was calm and sunshiny bright, so we were determined to check off everything else from our list. Aratoi: Wairarapa Museum of Art and History in Masterton is a great contrast of the history of the area and modern artworks both past and present. We peeped into cool secondhand stores in Carterton before stopping for a good look around Greytown. The bustling, revitalised Victorian town includes Food Forest Organics — a new deli owned by Hollywood's James Cameron — and Schoc Chocolate. We met a couple of great local craftsmen who make incredible hand-painted toy soldiers (imperial productions) and print traditional woodblock-type posters from a letterpress.

We ate tapas for lunch at the Bar Salute, enjoying pork and mozzarella arancini, kumara and pistachio falafels, crunchy tempura mussels, and small bowls of harira, a traditional Moroccan soup of lamb, chickpeas, lemon and herbs. Washed down with a glass of Mac's sassy red.

Our last stop was the Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre, to see the only white kiwi in the world (a little bit special), real live tuatara, and the beautifully inquisitive kokako. Alas, there was no time for the tour or a frosty cold one at theTui Brewery, as the highways were all closed and our detour looked dodgy.

It turned out to be a cool climb over the saddle road from Woodville, through the turbos of a wind farm, winding down to Palmy North, and home. Good deal, Destination Wairarapa, and thanks again for the excellent hospitality.

Find out more at Destination Wairarapa.