DIY Food
Turn your kiwifruit harvest into a sweet, spicy hot sauce.
Kiwi with a kick
When I was in my first year of university, I went to Katikati with a bunch of mates for a holiday break. They were going to work in an orchard as kiwifruit pickers and graders for two weeks. We slept on Waihi Beach, pooled our money for bread and jam for breakfast, and played lots of loud music (on cassettes) as we drove through the Waikato and into the Bay of Plenty.
The farmer who erected the kiwifruit vine supports was quite a bit shorter than me (I’m 185cm or just over 6ft). After two days of stooping, I was stiff and sore from twisting my head upwards to locate the little blighters.
They moved me to the grading table where a never-ending trundle of brown, fuzzy fruit rolled by. My job was to remove any 'odd' fruit from the crop.
I nearly went half-mad from the monotony. I dreamed about kiwifruit at night, rolling impossibly fast so that I couldn't hope to do the job well.
I learned I'm not a production line kind of woman.
There was another important lesson on the first day at lunch break. I asked my supervisor what they did with all the 'odd' fruit. She pointed out the back door to something I hadn't noticed before: a huge, rotting, fly-infested heap of kiwifruit.
I was shocked. Even then, I was a 'waste not, want not' person. The supervisor allowed me to take a large crate of oddities, something greeted with moans by my friends who never wanted to see another kiwifruit in their lives.
It was the beginning of my love affair with these fuzzy brown fruit. I labored to perfect a rich hot sauce and this recipe (see page 35) has been a family favourite ever since.
She pointed to a huge, rotting, fly-infested heap of 'odd' kiwifruit