Fed up with the winter dark, Doughboy announced just now, while dragging his suitcases out of the door, that he needs a holiday and is off to where the pepper grows, as the Finnish saying has it, meaning somewhere very far away. Small wonder, since in Helsinki these days the sun rises only at about half past nine and is down again by a quarter past three, while in New Zealand it is midsummer.
For the three-week hiatus Anna of Harmless Kitty has promised to stand in for the doughboy. She is a walking gastronomic dictionary and, when she has the time, a brilliant cook and baker. Anna blogs from Manhattan, so she is sure to bring Doughboy some much-needed variety.
I shall try to keep my eyes open on the trip and note down interesting dishes. The laptop is coming along, and I expect to get online now and then along the way, so there will be some travel posts too. Into the rucksack also went Lonely Planet's Australia, a Christmas present from my little brother, which I had already started leafing through on Christmas Eve. The traditional wombat cutlets so favoured by the Aborigines, kangaroo pouch soup and the Maoris' kiwi omelettes cooked on lava stones will no doubt get particular coverage.
Joking aside: unlike only ten years or so ago, neither New Zealand nor Australia is any longer a culinary backwater where people eat "lamb and spuds". In his splendid travel book Down Under, Bill Bryson tells how in Australia, as recently as twenty years ago, ordering wine even in a fair-sized town might get you asked in return whether it was some sort of drink for fancy types.
New Zealand is my first stop. The flight goes via Frankfurt and Singapore to Auckland, and I should be there in a little over a day. There the flavours of Asia, Europe and the Pacific have been finely combined with plentiful local produce. Kiwi cuisine offers, among other things, the following delicious-sounding dishes: lamb burgers with vegetables and prosciutto, tuna, wasabi and caviar salad, pork loin stuffed with kumara and apple with rice and spinach pilaf, paua risotto and lobster bisque, oysters in a seaweed tempura batter and, for pudding, perhaps kiwi fruit ice cream. Kumara, I gather, is the Maori name for the sweet potato, and paua is an abalone gathered off the New Zealand coast. So there are tasty moments in store.
In Australia I shall spend most of the time riding in a four-wheel drive, camping round a campfire in the evenings and sleeping under the stars. Instead of the usual round of city sights I have booked myself onto a ten-day safari that runs from Sydney across the outback to Alice Springs. A flame-grilled kangaroo of my own hunting is on the wish list. I have hunted in Finland too, and the thought of a kangaroo hunt is tempting, but I do not think it very likely. Australia's gun laws are strict compared with Finland's, and I assume they get in the way of hunting tourism.
Goodbye for now, and you will be hearing from me!
