GOING BUSH

Home-grown food is just the ticket for a Waitangi picnic

Back in the late 1970s I lived in the bush for the best part of two years, making a living catching possums and jumping out of helicopters for the live deer recovery business.

A small, rough hut in the middle of Te Urewera was my makeshift home, with a red setter to keep me company (the dodgy boyfriend who had wheedled me into this off-the-beaten-track life liked to work solo).

I loved the bush, in all its infinite greens, browns and greys and the way the landscape was ever-changing. Scrambling through supplejack and bog, fern and cutty grass, I might chance on a glorious ridge of tawa forest. The ground here was free of undergrowth, the brownish-black tawa trunks rising up in majestic lines from a carpet of golden leaf fall, and walking between them felt like being a cathedral. In early summer the kereru would arrive in droves to gorge on the berries.

I kept a keen botanical eye on the bush but it never occurred to me at that time that there was a lot here that I could be eating. Robert Vennell’s book, The Meaning of Trees — The History and Use of New Zealand’s Native Plants, has opened my eyes to the place of plants in early New Zealand culture, medicine and diet.

Heart-shaped kawakawa leaves (Piper excelsum) have long found their way into pots of tea, puha (Sonchus kirkii) often gets boiled in a soup in the late winter and spring when other greens are scarce, and I like to use horopito (Pseudowintera colorata) to prepare a peppery marinade or rub for meats.

But what of the tips of supplejack (Ripogonum scandens), which apparently taste like raw asparagus, as do the tips of the pikopiko (Asplenium bulbiferum), aka fiddlehead fern (don’t go eating bracken fronds though, they are known to be carcinogenic).

The cluster of undeveloped leaves that forms a fleshy artichoke-like heart in cabbage trees (Cordyline australis) is known as koata and can be served cooked or raw. Cabbage tree roots are sweet and can be chewed like sugar cane. The white, fleshy flower bracts and the pineappleshaped fruit of kiekie (Freycinetia banksii), a type of pandanus, were once prized food sources, while New Zealand celery (Apium prostratum) helped early explorers evade scurvy. The kernels of tawa (Beilschmiedia tawa) kernels can be boiled, roasted or steamed and the pollen of raupo (Typha muelleri) is usefully baked into a cake.

A wander in the bush is so much more interesting with the knowledge of some of the ways our native plants were once used. This Waitangi Day, pack yourself a picnic using my recipes below and go bush — it’s a great chance to rediscover the magic that surrounds us.