The chef uses hessian sacks to trap the heat in the steam box hangi at Rotorua's Te Puia. Photo / Alan Gibson
The chef uses hessian sacks to trap the heat in the steam box hangi at Rotorua's Te Puia. Photo / Alan Gibson
What does our food say about us as Kiwis? In part two of a five-day series, reporter Jamie Morton and photographer and videographer Alan Gibson discover the naturally-steamed delights of Rotorua’s Whakarewarewa Valley.
Ngatoro-i-rangi, so Maori legend goes, was an ancestor of the Ngati Tuwharetoa people who journeyed to this land from Hawaiki.
Setting foot on our shores, the powerful high priest was immediately chilled by the extreme cold of a place called Onetapu and cried for the help of his sisters, Te Hoata and Te Pupu. They sped to his aid in the form of fire, creating the geysers, hot pools and volcanoes of the central North Island.
At the Whakarewarewa Thermal Valley, tourists huddle together, iPads outstretched, as the siblings' legacy surfaces at its most furious.
The Pohutu geyser is firing high, casting its steam and boiling water in a mass of white and grey against the brilliant blue of a cloudless Rotorua morning.
The guidebook favourite we are standing in, Te Puia, was named after a formidable fortress that stood in this 40,000-year-old valley for hundreds of years.
The villagers found that fire or hangi pits weren't necessary for cooking; the valley provided amply.
Image 1 of 10: Visitors hook-in to their tucker after it has been cooked in the steambox hangi at Te Puia in Rotorua. Photo / Alan Gibson
"And this hangi at least, kore pakapaka - it never burned," Te Puia's visitor experience general manager Taparoto Nicholson tells us.
Taparoto has learned everything there is to know about the valley since he came here as an apprentice carver more than three decades ago.
"Te Puia would have been settled by one of the hapu of Ngati Tama ... and they would not have settled here had there not been the resources to cook and to wash."
Today, Taparoto has decided lunch would be brought from home and heated up at work, but not in any communal microwave in the staffroom.
He'd just driven a golf cart through the trails that wind between the bubbling wonders of the scrub-covered valley. The box he'd placed his fish in was quickly set down beneath a cover upon Puapua, a popular ngawha, or steam vent.
Puapua, pumping out constant 90C heat, could always be relied on to do the rest, so Taparoto had time for a quick chat while he waited.
The valley, as he first saw it in the 1970s, was as it had been for a long time - a bare geothermal field pocked with mud pools and criss-crossed by rough walking tracks.
There were palisades, some of which had been constructed using trees from the Ruawahia peak on Mt Tarawera, which was stripped bare by the devastating eruption of 1886.
Back then, Pohutu's boiling, 30m-high columns of water and steam could be viewed by visitors from a perilous distance of mere metres.
"There were no railings ... you could basically roam free."
A decade before that, the valley's geothermal state was much more lively than it is today.
On winter mornings, all of the geysers could be seen spouting through the fog.
The most spectacular of them all, Waikite, reached a height of 20m.
Many of them have fallen silent, but scientists now believe that the contentious closure of about 300 bores around Whakarewarewa is finally seeing justification: Waikite is showing renewed signs of life.
Over time, scrub had also crept across the valley.
Taparota, knowing where not to literally get into hot water, has began a bush-whacking mission to have long-hidden features such as the Ngapuna Tokotura mud pools and the dormant Papakura Geyser on display again.
All had been treasured by the hapu that once lived here, finding among its pools easy ways to cook and preserve food, bathe, wash clothing and develop paints and dyes.
"Our people experimented far and wide and they knew which pools were okay for cooking," he said. "The scientists would tell you a suitable pool needs to be clear of minerals, with no acidity, but these people already knew where they were and utilised them."
He says that down in the local village, about 500m from where we stand chatting, nearly every resident family once had a steam box.
"They were communal steam boxes, so all you needed to do was check if the lid was off - if it was, you put your kai in there; if the lid was on, you just went to the next one."
His first taste of it was the day a banquet had to be laid on for a large group of visitors.
"When we had big groups coming to the marae, a lot of the cooking was done in steam boxes; we'd chuck all the vegetables and meats that needed good cooking, right through."
To blanch vegetables, locals looked to Parekohuru, the so-called champagne pool.
"They came up really bright green, and you now that they came from Parekohuru because they tasted beautiful."
Taparoto has a liking for seasoned wild pork, which tends to fall off the bone after steaming for a long period.
At this point, Te Puia's chefs arrive at the vent with the boxes we'd earlier filled with chicken, corn, kumara, pumpkin, potato, cabbage, watercress, and bread stuffing.
We wonder how the Queen might have felt about it when she visited, and whether it compared to the fare of Europe's finest eateries.
"I couldn't tell you," Taparoto answers.
"I don't think she had time to stop and have a kai."
It's not long before we get to try the hangi. A combination of geothermal pressure-cooking and clever placement had infused stuffing with the chicken and vegetables, making for an unforgettable wallop of taste.
Savouring every bite of the tender, still-steaming chicken, we understand how the valley is so treasured by its mana whenua.
"I think you've just got to look at the name that was given to this region - Waiariki, the area of waters blessed by the gods," Taparoto says.
"How significant is it? I don't know. But it's a way of life. Take it away, and there will be some grumbling."
Rotorua's steambox lunch
Unless you have an active steam vent constantly pumping out temperatures of 90C at home, you'll be able to try this only at Te Puia - the New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua.
1 Begin with a provided box that you can fill with a selection of raw foods, including chicken, corn, kumara, pumpkin, potato, cabbage, watercress, and gourmet bread stuffing.
2 You can enhance the flavour by placing the stuffing on or under the food.
3 The box is then placed inside a hangi basket, which is positioned above Nga Wha Puapua, Te Puia's vent of choice for steambox cooking.
4 Following a two-hour tour around the geothermal valley, lunch is served in front of Pohutu, the Southern Hemisphere's largest active geyser.
The series Yesterday: A snapper safari in a mussel town Today: Hangi the Rotorua way Tomorrow: Smoking on the Tongariro Thursday: The barbecue capital of New Zealand Friday: Kaimoana on the coast.
