Last weekend (nothing wrong with a time delay), we attended the annual Wild Food Cook Off. It's the third time it's been held amongst a group of our extended friends and it's great light-hearted rivalry and lots of fun. We have three judges who allocate points on taste, presentation, effort (hunting and gathering), expertise/skill, and originality.
Rules: Endangered animals not allowed, you lose points for cooking your neighbours pet or spilling the judges drinks, you're disqualified if you give anyone food poisoning..... ;)
We had roast wild pork with taro.
Possum stew.
Now this may look like seaweed, but it's actually woodsear fungi with sweet chilli.
Wild peacock - well they assured us it was wild!
These won second place. Seafood skewers - scallop, paua, mussel, crayfish......mmmmmm!
Nasturtium leaves wrapped around a creamy filling I think was cream cheese and salmon.
You can read what this one was and it was quite yummy too.
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| Creamy Lemon Balm Pudding - sorry, it was getting dark by then! |
I decided not to enter this year, but I encouraged the kids to enter instead, just to get them involved and interested. We went for a foraging theme rather than a hunting one (considering they are 8 and 5) and so they foraged lemon balm from my garden (it was pretty wild - they had to avoid the stinging nettle I'd planted next to it and they also climbed their Grandmother's lime tree (wildness factor: mild, there were a few scratchy twigs).
Then they helped make Lemon Balm Cookies, Creamy Lemon Balm Pudding and LemonBalm Limeade. I was really proud of how hard they worked and then they were great with the judges too, answering questions and mostly remembering how they made things.
And they won first-equal in the hurriedly created junior category....there were only two entries, but the judges were so impressed to see kids entering that they wanted to give them some acknowledgement! Both kids were ecstatic!
Next year I'm thinking they could get even with the nettles and make nettle soup.
Looks like lots of fun - but I'm not sure if I would have been brave enough to try the possum - sorry I'm a bit boring like that.... I still have hangovers after having to eat offal as a kid! Good on you for getting your children involved - it sounds like they had a blast.
ReplyDeleteAny chance of a lemon balm recipe - it grows madly here :)
ReplyDeleteGood on them for doing this. BTW How is it that toes always end up in our photos....or fingers but they are usually holding stuff :) I do like the runner though - and the quilt! (I'm catching up after a few days in Arrowtown visiting mother-in-law for early Christmas).
viv