HARVEST FESTIVAL

Celebrate the bountiful season with these potluck performers

Acouple of Sundays ago I found myself manning the grill in a little catering caravan looking out over Lake Wanaka, transforming small mountains of broccoli and zucchini into piles of sweetly charred goodness. It’s a long time since I’ve cooked food for more than 100 people but luckily I was just one of a small team of volunteers working to help produce the Wanaka Harvest Long Lunch.

Held at the Rippon Hall, this brilliant community event was conceived by my good friend and clever chef Brona Parsons (of Federal Diner fame), back in 2019 as a way to celebrate homegrown produce, sustainable living and zero waste. Last year the event had to be cancelled due to the Covid lockdown but this year things were back up and running and so here I was, dripping sweat in this tiny cooking space as I shuffled slices of zucchini and florets of blanched broccoli over the hot plate until they were nicely caramelised (I could easily have been there all morning had I not figured out that weighting them down with a heavy tray dramatically speeds up the process).

The premise of the Wanaka Harvest Long Lunch event is that all the ingredients are donated, whether from people’s home vegetable gardens or from local farms and commercial growers. From these bountiful offerings, Parsons works up a delicious harvest menu.

My charred broccoli was combined with fresh strawberries, baby kale and roasted hazelnuts and dressed with a reduction of apple juice (pressed from the previous day’s Apple Drive here). This was served as a starter, with fresh sourdough and locally produced olive oil.

For the main course, local merino lamb shoulders were slow-cooked with a rich kasundi sauce and served topped with a salsa of fresh heritage tomatoes and mint. The chargrilled zucchini sat in a pool of parsley and walnut pesto and were finished with a sprinkle of oven-roasted tomatoes. There were bowls of roasted potatoes, beetroot and carrot with rosemary and garlic, a dish of braised silverbeet, leek and kale and a fresh salad put together with fresh cos, red cabbage, spring onions, paper-thin slices of granny smith apples and a simple dressing made with reduced apple juice, local olives and one of the two lemons that had been donated (lemons are like hen’s teeth in this part of the world).

Dessert featured poached black peaches, plums and pears, topped with a scoop of intense black peach sorbet.

All this deliciousness for a ticket price of just $45 a head, from which all proceeds raised went to the local (very worthy) charity, Food for Love. Diners brought along their own plates, cutlery and drinking vessels so there wasn’t a load of dishes to deal with. A tribe of local kids helped serve and Rippon Wines were available for purchase.

It was all so good and so very simple, a wonderful idea that showed how, from very little, you can create a nourishing delicious meal that’s light on the planet and your purse, while at the same time bringing the community together to raise money for a good cause.

Kindness rules, aided with a good dollop of seasonal vegetables. Here’s my take on some simple ideas to enjoy the season’s harvests. Get together with some friends for a potluck harvest fest of your own — and why not add a donation to it and give the money to your own local worthy community charity? Every little bit helps.