Culinary delights of New Zealand

Has to be a fern stencil in NZ!

Spoiler alert: there is nothing in this blog about lamb, venison, crayfish or other seafood of any kind. And I'll deal with the famous Maori hangi feast in a couple of words: 60's school dinners.

The first foodie surprise I got in New Zealand was the veggie burger. After a few hours drive over from the Bay of Islands (Paihia) to Omapere and checking into the unique and very luxurious B and B Kokohuia Lodge all we wanted was a quick takeaway so we drove round to a local chippy. I was pleased to see vegetarian burgers on the menu, but what came was a burger with vegetables (cheese in batter, avocado, tomato, beetroot) and a fried egg in it. Not a quorn or veggie burger in sight! Nice enough, though. (The beetroot had to go; can't stand it!)

My first recommendation, though, (not surprisingly) is a non-savory one. We were driving from Abel Tasman to Kaikura and ready for a coffee when we got to Nelson. There was a good-sized car park just off the main road next to the Railway Cafe and Store in an ex-railway station. Our eyes were snagged by a pile of large cookie-shaped items labelled "Afgans". Now I'd seen something called Afgans in a mini-supermartet in Auckland. They looked like interesting biscuits but were packaged in bags of 20 or so, completely unsuitable for snacks for two people, so they were not sampled. In the Railway Cafe we were told "Oh if you haven't tried them, you're in for a treat!"

We weren't disappointed. They are basically big chocolate cookies. They kind-of crumble in your mouth but not in the same way that shortbread crumbles.There's a crunch to them that, I find out later, is due to crushed Cornflakes in the recipe. These particular Afgans had also been coated in chocolate and were utterly yummy. Kept us going all the way to our lunch stop at funky "The Store" by the coast at Kekerengu, when predictably we weren't very hungry. Though we looked in many other coffee shops and cafes we never saw Afgans of this quality anywhere else on our travels.

Next up: the hokey pokey ice cream. You can get it in tubs but the locally-made version, e.g. as sold by Poppy's on Kaikoura main street, is something else. It's a vanilla ice cream with small bits of honeycomb crunch embedded in it. After tasting Poppy's exceptionally creamy version we went back the next day for more. It was almost worth staying on another day for.

And that, friends, is my culinary review of New Zealand. I had plenty of good pub and restaurant meals, but nothing else that was specific to the country.