Genuine Maori Cuisine

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 05:41:02 +0200

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GENUINE MAORI CUISINE
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What did the Maori eat. Compare those foods consumed by Maori in the far south as in comparison to those in the North?.

What food items were there from the 1700 and back.
What impliments were used to gather food,
What impliments were used to cultivate food, cook the food,...etc??

What animals were there to hunt?.

How did they survive during the four seasons of the year?.

What was involved in the preparation, cooking, preserving, and even eating the foods.

What styles of cooking methods were used?
Was food even cooked at all?

Have comprehensive studies been done on this subject?. If so by who?, Where?, when?.

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INTRODUCTION
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I am Maori. I grew up living in a communal setting where we all shared resources, man power living a lifestyle you never realy appreciate until its gone.

My name is Hamuera Orupe McLeod, 47 years old, I grew up in the the heart of the "Urewera's" The largest native forest in the North Island of New Zealand.

By tradition, my mountain is "Maungapohatu" my river is "Tauranga", my "Iwi"(tribe) is "Tuhoe" (Children of the Mist) and my sub-tribe is "Tamakaimoana".

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MY EXPOSURE TO THE WORLD OF MAORI FOOD
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In my youth, we would gather pikopiko (Native New Zealand edible fern throng)and cook this as a vegetable, same with Puha (sour thistle), watercress, and stinging nettles,

My grandfather planted potato, corn, cabbages, silverbeet, pumpkins, kamokamo, kumara, rhubarb, Swede, turnips, carrots, onions, garlic, leeks, cucumbers, peanuts, and were others but these were the main ones.

In the orchard we had raspberries, blueberries, kiwifruit, coxs apples, braeburn apples and grannysmith apples and jumbo pickling apples, oranges, grapefruit, Lemons, passionfruit, table grapes, red plums, doris plums, yellow dap plums, loquarts, persimmons, tamarillo's, black-boy peachs, pumpkin peachs and white peachs.

Native bush foods we would collect were tawhara, teure, pikopiko, kiokio, tiotio puha(this is the hardest of the three) , rauroa puha, pororua puha, ongaonga, rerewai (grows after soils has been prepared for potatoes, corn, hakeke (pig-ear mushroom), harore..another mushroom, maiharu, makaika(my favourit), Kotukutuku berries, rewarewa flowers, miro berries, tawa berries and tawapou berries, kawakawa leaves but the berries were my preference,

A lot of these native plants we lived on on a regular basis. To some it would require a bit of getting used to.

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MY MISSION
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I am a chef by Profession, a lifelong Maori food historian gathering books through the years, notes, audio and video recordings from the many functions I catered for and family gatherings

More importantly I managed to hold onto actual footage of food festivals my people experienced deep in the forests of Tuhoe

I now feel honour bound to preserve what I know and to make this available online. Therefore I aim to build a website about my experiences as an international chef with the core content of the site based entirely on Genuine Maori Cuisine.

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MY DREAM
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My dream is to build the Worlds Largest E-Video Library and information Center based on Genuine Maori Cuisine for my people, the Maori of New Zealand sharing my personal experiences and those of the many family members from around New Zealand for the world to share with us

The Launch date for this Site will be February 2006.

http:www.genuinemaoricuisine.com

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Comments

I welcome any comments, suggestions, introductions to people who may have an interest in my mission negative and indeed positive so that my dream can be shared for anyone who may desire information about my peoples cuisine worldwide...............

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