Watch Sachie’s Kitchen: Foraging through Christchurch’s red zone
Tuesday, 2 July 2024
There are over 2000 fruit and nut trees in Christchurch’s red zone - and they’re free for the public to forage from.
In this week’s episode of Sachie’s Kitchen, chef Sachie Nomura heads to Christchurch for her first visit since before the 2011 earthquakes. The Japanese-born Kiwi-raised personality runs Sachie’s Kitchen cooking school in Auckland and is on a culinary tour around New Zealand, inspired by local produce from the regions.
Each Tuesday, a new episode of her foodie road trip series is released here on Stuff Travel, showcasing the best food and drink of each NZ region.
You can also find her recipes online inspired by the series published each week, such as this gin-cured salmon with beetroot.
In the latest episode, Nomura travels to Christchurch and heads to the red zone, meeting with Kirsten Fox of cooking school Riverside Kitchen to forage for fruit, and visits the New Brighton community garden. The red zone is the former residential area deemed unliveable after the earthquakes. However many of the residents’ fruit trees are still there, providing food for the public.
“This is an apple tree that would have been in someone’s back garden. I wonder if they ever come back here?” Fox says in the episode as they wander through the red zone. She says the city is definitely moving forward.
“Working out what we can do to to have an amazing city again is close to all of our hearts. We don’t want to lose sight of the fact that some people were very badly affected by the earthquakes, but as a city we can move forward. It’s great to come together and create some really cool things from the rubble.”
Together, Fox and Nomura create a polenta-crumbed fish with foraged fruit salsa.
The Auckland chef also gets a chance to try South Island delicacy tītī/muttonbird, the salty seabird that can only be harvested by Māori from Rakiura and has long been a source of food and nourishment for families through the generations.
Meeting up with Food by Fire’s Josh Hunter and Mathew Johns, Nomura helps prepare the muttonbird on the grill. The bird’s key diet is anchovies, so the meat is known for its salty, oily taste.
Hunter says his grandfather taught him how to cook.
“The way that he cooked was heartfelt. I remember the fish pies, curries and stew were very soulful, there was a lot of love put into it. My dream is to pass on the knowledge so future generations can see it,” he says in the episode.
“I love telling people stories. I love going out with Matty. We go out and cook with fire. The energy about cooking food with fire, the whole process, I think it’s so raw.”
The final stop on Nomura’s road trip is to free-farmed pork Patoa Farms, about 60 minutes north of Christchurch, where she teams up with project manager Tjaart Grove to create spicy BBQ pork chops with South African boerewors sausage.
At the end of each episode, Nomura creates a dish inspired by the local producers she meets and this week she shares the recipe for her pork sausage roll with plum sauce.
Watch the full episode of Sachie’s Kitchen at the top of this story and tune in every Tuesday for a new episode.
Watch Sachie’s Kitchen Episode 1: Marlborough
Watch Sachie’s Kitchen Episode 2: Rotorua