Mussels, Pies and Mussel Pies

(I wrote this a couple of weeks ago on the train from Sydney to Broken Hill, but only now, at Vienna airport waiting for my last flight, have I managed to get the laptop online.)

Happy New Year! There has been hardly any time for blogging these past weeks, and admittedly it has not been much on my mind either. Just under a week in New Zealand is behind me, and my experience of Kiwi cuisine did not quite square with the Lonely Planet guide, which raved about the most outlandish fusion dishes. Even so, I found something good to eat every day.

A tip for would-be smugglers: Auckland airport seems to employ the most suspicious, the slowest and the most thorough customs officers I have come across on my travels so far. On my arrival card I truthfully put my occupation as student and declared that I was bringing in walking boots. Kiwis are downright paranoid about foreign biohazard bugs, so boots with a deep tread have to be declared just like anything edible or of animal or plant origin, on pain of heavy fines and confiscation. That was enough to land me in the customs inspection area, where bags were unpacked down to the last item. Waiting my turn for at least 45 minutes, I watched people's carefully packed belongings being taken out one by one and anything a little larger X-rayed, while the passengers were questioned. When my turn came, the greatest interest was in my plane ticket and in the fact that I had said I was a student. After staring at my tickets for a quarter of an hour, the dawdling officer asked, "How can you afford a trip like this?" Only just keeping my temper, I managed to explain that I had worked for years before going back to university. Once that was cleared up, the ordeal was over in a few minutes. In the end nobody even looked at the dangerous tread of my boots, and the rest of my things were given only a very cursory glance, without being taken out of the rucksack.

I hired a car at Auckland airport, and having driven on the left only twice before, for a couple of minutes each time in Dublin, I nearly crashed at the very first big junction. For someone used to automatics it did not help at all that the car was a manual, with the gear stick on the wrong side as well. I got used to driving on the left surprisingly quickly all the same, and soon it felt completely natural. Everyone who has been to New Zealand praises it to the skies, and now that I have seen it with my own eyes I have to join the chorus. It is lovely everywhere, and the country could have been made for touring by car. If you put together the well-kept Swedish countryside, the rolling tropical landscape of Puerto Rico and the Austrian mountains, the end result would be something like New Zealand.

On the first evening, after a night slept on a plane, an 11-hour time difference and a three-hour drive, I could not be bothered with the food side of things and settled for a dependable Subway tuna sub. The next day I was in better shape and found a pleasant-looking place to eat in Taupo, where I ordered Beef and Guinness. It was a hearty plateful of beef stewed tender in stout, with vegetables and garlic bread. Filling, but in no way a memorable experience.

Pies, small puff pastry parcels usually filled with meat, are hugely popular fast food, sold everywhere from restaurants to supermarkets and petrol stations. They were very cheap too, 1-2 euros each, and one made a lunch. Pies are very common in many other former British colonies as well. I ate them several times and was never once disappointed.

The other fixture on every supermarket shelf was the Cornish pie, an oval bake with a mince filling inside a pastry crust. The whole thing struck me as a little dry and heavy, but then I did not eat mine drowned in ketchup, as an Aussie girl advised when I asked one evening how they should be eaten.

In America I loved chicken wings above all else, and the highest level in the craft of making them has been reached by Tennessee's Barbeque in Framingham, west of Boston. Their barbecue-seasoned wings, slow-smoked for hours, simply melted in the mouth, but were plainly bad for you. So I was quite surprised to find greenshell mussels (or green bearded mussels, as they are also called) in every supermarket in New Zealand, flavoured in all sorts of ways. My favourites were smoked mussels in barbecue sauce, which even cold tasted very much like the wings I so dearly love. And I dare say a plate of mussels makes a healthier lunch than a plate of chicken wings. Anna, who works in the field, can confirm or refute that claim.

The other flavours I tried were garlic and plain smoked, and they were all equally good. On my last evening, in Thames, I met a Brit who had come to New Zealand long ago and never gone home. When I told him I liked the mussels, a big smile spread across his face, because he was addicted to them too, he said. A pleasant conversation about mussels followed, and before long he had conjured up from somewhere the business card of a smokehouse in the north of the island and told me to ask them how smoked mussels are made. I mean to take that on as soon as I am back in Finland, since blue mussels are cheap there almost all year round, even if they are a touch small for the purpose.

Since I already knew I liked both mussels and pies, and both were national favourites, it was only a matter of time before I found a pie filled with mussels. Once I knew to look for one, they turned out to be easy to find. The creamy mussel filling and the moist puff pastry made the mussel pie a real treat, and it certainly did the taste no harm that I put it away sitting beside a vineyard.

Finally, a short little recipe. I have never liked marshmallows on their own, but these were good.

Recipe card

Toasted Marshmallows

Print

• Toasting about five minutes

You will need

1 bag	marshmallows
	thin wooden sticks, 30-40 cm long
	a big campfire
	a crowd of good people from all over the world
	the clear starry sky of the southern hemisphere
	a perfect sandy beach on a calm Pacific
	a guitar and someone who can play it

Method

1. Light the fire in good time so that it gives off heat, and gather round to sit by it for a while.
2. Send the bag of marshmallows round.
3. Toast a marshmallow on the end of a stick for about five minutes, or until it is slightly blackened and melted soft in the middle.
4. Eat at once, enjoying the warmth of the fire, the stars and the good company.

So the trip is more or less behind me now, and Australia yielded a few food stories too. Not quite as many as I expected at the start, though, as there was so much else to do. But once I have had time to settle in at home and get my sleep back on track, there will be, among other things, a kangaroo-hunting story.