It’s been a great celebration of Gamebird cuisine this hunting season. Since the beginning of May, twenty seven of New Zealand’s premier chefs have transformed duck, pheasant, quail, swan, pukeko and Canada goose into specially crafted dishes for delighted hunters. We’ve discovered a number of new recipes for Swan and Pukeko and a number of our festival chefs will be cooking at the Fish & Game Kitchen at the Hospitality NZ culinary show from 23-25 August 2009 in Auckland.
There is still time to ”take your birds out to dinner” at a number of our festival restaurants. See links below.
Fish & Game NZ have developed this excellent pack in order to assist new and returning hunters. Only $5 - available from your local F&G regional office, Hunting and Fishing New Zealand and other good hunting stores around the country.
Preparing Your Gamebirds
We have put together some guidelines on how to prepare your birds to get the best dining experience. Click the image to download a PDF.
I'm sure you know the old tale about boiling a pukeko with a stone and veges for 2 days then throwing out the pukeko and eating the stone? Don't you believe it! Gamebird recipes have moved on from duck, duck and the occassional pheasant.
A classic NZ recipe (in both ingredients and linguistic style) is Pukeko and Paua Soup recipe from Keith Stewart’s blog. It’s worth a read for the style of the writing alone!