What's Wrong With Our Maori Foods? He aha te he o nga kai Maori? by Riki Erihi Open in a book before me there is a beautiful coloured advertisement for a well-known New Zealand firm's brand of frozen corn. It is a delightful picture, and it makes me long for a cob of hot buttered corn. Try as I may, whenever I have a meal of corn now it does not taste anything like the ones we had when I was small. Is it because in those days, my people were struggling to establish themselves on their newly acquired Maori Affairs farm? We appreciated what little we had, for it was achieved through hours of long laborious toil, with back aches and heart aches by the dozen. Nowadays I have acquired a taste for oriental, mostly Chinese cooking. I have learnt to appreciate continental-style foods, and the sharp flavoursome tang of garlic; in fact, garlic and green ginger are now included in practically everything I eat. But every now and then, I long for a Maori meal, or the nearest thing to it. This brings to me a question: why do we not have more well-known national dishes? It is certainly not for the lack of good cooks. Why, then? Do we as a race lack imagination? Hardly, but the fact remains that if we are to create a national dish, we must make better use of our native foods.

Puha and Brisket Now back to my longing for a Maori meal. Puha is picked and got ready, while a good piece of brisket is put on to boil. Kumara and potatoes are peeled. Sometimes I add some light puffy doughboys about ten minutes before the meal is ready. Served with green peas or beans, this makes a very nice meal. Maoris like myself, or let's say most of them anyway, like their brisket fatty, but those people who do not like this can always select a leaner cut of meat. When I have been introducing meals of this kind to Pakehas and others for the first time, I have found that they like it much better when the meat is lean than when everything is served swimming in a bowl of greasy fat. I think that the older generation of Maori mothers, like their Pakeha pioneer sisters, were far better cooks than the women of today, with all their scientifically prepared ingredients and modern aids. Who is to blame for so many of our younger girls being such poor cooks: the society we live in today, or the parents? Personally I blame the latter. For with today's modern gadgets, pre-cooked foods, instant liquids, soups and desserts, etc., I think we tend to become rather lazy in our preparations of meals.

Over the Hills for Kai Moana It wasn't always like this, though—why, when I think back to the times we rode many miles over the hills to gather kai moana to supplement our everyday diet. There were paua, kutai, and kaura, big and red, when they were in season. This entailed a whole day's journey, and more often than not we stayed half the night also, netting for fish at the narrows of the bay. We would return home with our pihau bags laden heavy with shellfish and fish. The fish, mostly mullet, were sorted, cleaned, gutted and then smoked. Fat plumpy kutai were shelled and bottled. Sometimes paua was half cooked, and preserved in clean rich fat. At other times it was hung on threaded wire and left to dry in the sun or in some dry place. Like dried shark or mako, this was relished by the old and young alike in those days.

Eeling After Heavy Rain There were also countless nights when, after heavy rain, the streams rushed angrily down from the bush-covered mountains, covering the flat fertile valley with swirling dirty brown water. During the day we youngsters would swim and play, pretending that some floating log or tree was a canoe, and we were warriors once more. At night, when the waters had begun to recede, my uncles and I would go out to rama tuna. We used flares made from sacks, rolled up into jar or baking powder tins, held