The Cook and the Chef

New Zealand Kumara + Venison (3x20)

Data de estreia: Jun 25, 2008

This week Maggie and Simon show us more beautiful produce from the Land of the Long White Cloud. Maggie finds some delicious Kumara, a Maori word for sweet potato while Simon discovers New Zealand Venison. In Australia most of the sweet potato we buy is the orange variety. It's a different story in New Zealand and on the North Island, near Dargaville, grower, Andre De Bruin, introduces Maggie to two new varieties of sweet potato. In New Zealand sweet potato is known by its Maori name, Kumara, and Maggie decides her favourite is the golden Kumara with its creamy white texture. She is not able to find it in Australia to cook with but in New Zealand Maggie enjoys a lovely feast of all three varieties with Andre and his wife. In the kitchen simplicity reigns as Simon and Maggie celebrate the texture and flavour of good sweet potatoes. Maggie's red sweet potato is baked and then stuffed with candied olives and haloumi cheese. The saltiness of the cheese with the sweet fluffiness of the potato and the complexity of the olive combine perfectly to make a complete vegetarian meal. Simon is more than a little surprised to discover that the white sweet potato he selected is actually very purple on the inside! Despite the surprise he likes the texture and flavour and decides to combine it with a choux paste to make a very "chefy" Duchess potato. With a lot of hard work and through the development of good farming practise New Zealand has built a Venison industry to the point where it now supplies almost ninety percent of the world market. On the South Island, just out of Christ Church Simon visits Graham Brown on his farm that runs the beautiful, graceful Red Deer, and Graham manages to convince Simon that the venison meat is so good that normal braising cuts can be treated like prime cuts of meat. In the kitchen Simon crusts his venison with a mix of seasoning that includes Horopito, a New Zealand pepper. A quick cook and the succulent venison is onto the plate with a bea