This article was first published on RNZ.
The winner of this year’s Burger Wellington hopes more chefs take up the wero, or challenge, of putting a modern spin on Māori cuisine.
“It came from the desire to celebrate kai Māori and bring the traditional flavours into a modern experience.”
That’s how Te Papa Café head chef Hitesh Bhoir describes their pork boil-up inspired burger: Āhuru Kai Kōhua Poaka. The first-time entrants took out the top prize in the 16th year of Burger Wellington.
It was about sharing the taste of a culture, the aroha and the connection through something as simple as a burger, Bhoir said.
He said it was exciting to see chefs bringing a modern spin to Māori cuisine, but he would like to see even more people try it out.
“It shows a real respect for the traditions, even in this competition I saw there was 268 other entries [in Burger Wellington] ... out of that hardly four or five chose a Māori [inspired] burger.”
His goal was to give the dish a modern twist without compromising on the essence of Māori culture, he said.
“As a chef I like to work with the history behind the ingredients and give it a modern twist, so that’s why I like Māori cuisine. Māori cuisine has a few nice flavours of the land, a few flavours in the sea, so for example you have horopito, kawakawa, pikopiko, then pūhā, then wild watercress... they have different unique textures and flavours.”
Inspired by the Māori food tradition of a boil-up, Āhuru Kai Kōhua Poaka is made up of traditional boil-up pork roulade, with Pagro lettuce and tomato, puha mousseline and horopito aioli in a toasted Brezelmania watercress milk bun. This is paired with hand-cut kumara fries, manuka honey aioli, and a shot of bone broth. For dessert: a vegan heart-shaped raspberry framboise dessert.
“So many components, so many elements involved in this complete burger,” Bhoir said.
“It’s really hard to find [these ingredients], specifically you have to give a nice notice to the supplier and I ask them ‘hey I need a pūhā’ or ‘I need a pikopiko’, they said ‘we need two week’s notice or one month’s notice’, [it’s] hard to find like a kawakawa or a horopito, but if you found it they have a unique texture.”
Bhoir said there was a lot of hard work involved in preparing the burger, in order to get the rich clear flavour of the broth you had to cook it for nearly six hours before leaving it in the blast chiller overnight.
Another challenge was holding on to the soft and tender meat boil up is famous for while keeping everything inside the burger, he said.
People really loved the burger and how the team at Te Papa managed to present the boil up in a new way without compromising the taste, he said.
The Āhuru Kai Kōhua Poaka burger was a hit with the public rising to first place over 200+ other burgers in competition with over 21,000 ratings. After gathering the top five finalists out of consumer ratings, these burgers underwent assessment by a panel of independent judges.
Bhoir said it felt absolutely incredible to be named the winner, especially as a first time entrant. The entire team at Te Papa had come together to celebrate the victory, he said.
“I would say this is not like a normal burger, this is a proper New Zealand traditional burger using all the New Zealand native traditional ingredients.”
By Pokere Paewai of RNZ.
