Fifteen years ago, 12 adventurous chefs in
restaurants along Auckland’s Ponsonby Road took a culinary plunge by agreeing
to participate in a competition that would test their ability to firstly create
two unique and unusual dishes and then pair them with beer.
As
with so many things in the kitchen, there was an extra catch; in this case, two
catches. The first was that the significant ingredient in their creations had
to be something from the wild waters, mountains or forests of New Zealand. The
second was that the successful suitors to their dishes, the beer, had to be
selected from those produced from a small West Coast brewery then unknown by
most — Monteith’s.
Fifteen years later, the Monteith’s Beer
and Wild Food Challenge has become a stalwart of the New Zealand food scene.
This prestigious national challenge sets restaurants, bars and cafés competing
against one another to create New Zealand’s ultimate wild food dish.
Monteith’s Wild Kitchens contains the best recipes from the past 15 years of the challenge,
along with innovative new recipes from well-known New Zealand chefs.
All the recipes have been adapted for the
home cook by writer and beer aficionado Kerry Tyack, making them easy to create
in your own kitchen along with a few more challenging recipes for the
experienced home cook.
Some of the ‘wild’ recipes in this book
include Best of the West: thyme-marinated venison with Monteith’s Celtic Red
cabbage, dauphinoise potato and brandied Blackball bacon glaze; Bugs Bunny
Comes to Matamata: pan-roasted wild rabbit with kumara and feta, accompanied
with Monteith’s Crushed Pear Cider; and Taste of Southern Seas: ceviche of
snapper and young coconut accompanied with Monteith’s Radler.
The book also includes an easy-to-use beer
and food matching guide, emphasising one of the simple principles of the
challenge: if you choose the right beer to accompany the right food, your
enjoyment of both will be enhanced.
Another book for Fathers Day!
About the author
Kerry R Tyack (left) is chief judge and creator of
the Monteith’s Beer and Wild Food Challenge that sees restaurants and home
cooks competing for major prizes by producing the perfect food and beer match.
He has edited a number of Hospitality trade
publications and has been a judge of the New Zealand Cheese Awards, the Cervena
Plates, BrewNZ, the Corbans Wine and Food Challenge, The National Restaurant
Association Restaurant of the Year and the New Zealand Sausage Competition well
as being for many years an assessor for the Beer and Lamb Marketing Bureau. He is the author of five previous books
including The Beer Book and New Zealand Beers: A Tasting Guide.
Monteith’s
Wild Kitchens: The Best of Monteith’s Beer and Wild Food Challenge
By
Kerry R Tyack
Published
by HarperCollins Publishers August 2012
ISBN
9781869509910; Paperback RRP $44.99
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