Bashing Fonterra in the media is so prevalent it’s almost a national pastime; farmer shareholders keen to share that phone call they got from the chairman, commentators sticking the boot in at the behest of their dairy processor clients and any politician looking for some airtime will happily have a crack.
If the payout is low it’s due to the incompetence of directors and management, if the payout is high it’s because Fonterra is screwing the scrum and forcing their competitors to pay more for milk than it’s worth.
While there are legitimate criticisms to be levelled at the Co-op, and they’re not above scoring own goals in that department, it’s so easy that writing a column panning them is almost lazy. I make no secret that I’m a fan of Fonterra’s new direction; the honesty that is largely on display at shareholder meetings, the way they now engage with the government instead of the ‘Fortress Fonterra’ mentality of old and their willingness to show leadership and vision in areas that affect their farmers.
When this newfound engagement and sense of purpose draws praise, who ever thought we’d see headlines from a Green MP commending Fonterra for their leadership, it also draws a barrage of criticism: bloody Fonterra is cosying up to the Government!
An agricultural journalist recently tweeted that Tatua “… will pay out $8.50, $2.15 more than Fonterra”. While I’m a huge Tatua fan and am happy to celebrate their success, that sort of linear and uncritical comparison is pretty unhelpful.
“Imagine,” I replied, “if Tatua had the same regulatory constraints as Fonterra and had to accept milk from everyone who wanted to supply them.” Unfortunately it seemed the journalist couldn’t imagine this scenario and the point I was making was somewhat lost on him.
I think the point has been lost on a lot of people, with all the noise about fresh water and emissions and Zero Carbon, the fact there is a very important issue under consideration by parliament at this very moment has slipped under the radar.
The continuation of the Dairy Industry restructuring Act (DIRA) in its current form runs the very real risk seeing New Zealand with too much milk processing capacity. Fonterra is obligated to supply new processors with at-cost raw milk, essentially subsidising the competition and allowing them to enter the market with almost no risk. This subsidised supply doesn’t benefit domestic consumers; the processed product is shipped offshore along with the profits.
In the face of a static or declining milk pool, excess processing capacity can only lead to one thing: plant closures like those we are seeing across the Tasman.
I don’t understand the reticence of successive governments to radically reform DIRA; after nine years in power and a bit of tinkering, National have finally promised to repeal DIRA. They did this after realising that Labour were more proactive with deregulation than they had ever been, but that doesn’t do us any good while they’re in opposition.
The Greens should support the wholesale reform of DIRA; it has had the unintended consequence of being the single biggest factor in driving land use to dairy by compelling Fonterra to take all of the new milk. Labour should support the reform of DIRA if only because Fonterra has a highly unionised and happy workforce whom they look after very well, and a strong Fonterra means a strong dairy worker’s union. Of all the parties New Zealand First should be leading the charge, subsidised foreign companies coming into New Zealand and exporting the profits is anathema to them.
Legend has it that Shane Jones once quipped every time he attacked Fonterra he went up in the polls, and he’s not the only politician to have had a crack in recent times. It’s time for the politicians to take a serious look at what’s holding Fonterra back and do something about it.
Taking action is not as easy as snide remarks and soundbites, but it’s their job, they can effect meaningful change and it’s time they did.
Twitter has given me the opportunity to write a monthly column for my local paper. This blog is a collection of those articles. @dairymanNZ
Wednesday, 16 October 2019
Saturday, 5 October 2019
My Nemesis, The Country -- October 2019
Roast beef has always been my nemesis; no matter how hard I tried it was either overcooked and chewy or an undercooked lump mocking me from its bed of crispy roasted potatoes.
Not for me the perfectly pink, tender slices of succulent goodness that the online recipes promised, my roasts of beef were garnished with sadness and regret and served with a side of wistful unfulfilled promise.
This was the case until one day a few years back I was watching a TV show where the host visited people’s houses and had dinner with them, and after he’d had dinner with them he cooked the meal they had served but he did it better. On this day it was roast beef and I watched intently. Reader, I even took notes.
The trick, he said, was a meat probe. A thermometer to measure the internal temperature of the roast, a device without which most roast beef is doomed to abject failure. A scenario with which I was all too familiar.
I rushed out and bought one. I defrosted a bolar roast, I pierced it and poked bits of garlic and rosemary inside, I massaged it with oil, I seared it, I preheated my oven and I inserted my meat probe. When the probe told me we had hit perfection I removed the roast and let it rest, it had been quite a journey and the poor thing deserved a wee lie down before the moment of truth.
Then I cut into it and OH LORDY! Faultlessly medium-rare! Instagramable af.
I instantly tweeted that I had finally mastered the dark art of roasting beef, part science and part black magic, I was finally in the club.
“Oh,” replied Trudi Bennett in the truly annoying way that only Trudi can, “I do mine in the crockpot. Never fails, perfect every time.”
What the actual what!? You can’t cook roast beef in a crockpot, it’s an abomination. It’ll never work, it’ll be horrible. Of course I had to try it.
The recipe is so simple it makes me cry. You take your crockpot, you empty a sachet of onion soup into the bottom and place your roast beef on top. Then you smear some cranberry jelly on top of the beef, put the lid on and set it on low for 9 hours. That’s it. Seriously. I weep.
Somehow when you lift the lid the meat has miraculously browned, it smells distractingly delicious while it rests and you make gravy from the large amount of liquid that has accumulated in the pot. Trudi just stirs in the onion soup, but I add butter and flour to thicken my gravy because I’m fancy like that. The meat is pink and tender, slightly sweet from the cranberry. I’ve taken to adding garlic as well, but the beauty of the original recipe is its simplicity.
If you’re on Twitter you should check Trudi out on @WardrobeFlair, she’s a personal stylist and fashion blogger, she may be annoying but she knows her way around a crockpot.
Not for me the perfectly pink, tender slices of succulent goodness that the online recipes promised, my roasts of beef were garnished with sadness and regret and served with a side of wistful unfulfilled promise.
This was the case until one day a few years back I was watching a TV show where the host visited people’s houses and had dinner with them, and after he’d had dinner with them he cooked the meal they had served but he did it better. On this day it was roast beef and I watched intently. Reader, I even took notes.
The trick, he said, was a meat probe. A thermometer to measure the internal temperature of the roast, a device without which most roast beef is doomed to abject failure. A scenario with which I was all too familiar.
I rushed out and bought one. I defrosted a bolar roast, I pierced it and poked bits of garlic and rosemary inside, I massaged it with oil, I seared it, I preheated my oven and I inserted my meat probe. When the probe told me we had hit perfection I removed the roast and let it rest, it had been quite a journey and the poor thing deserved a wee lie down before the moment of truth.
Then I cut into it and OH LORDY! Faultlessly medium-rare! Instagramable af.
I instantly tweeted that I had finally mastered the dark art of roasting beef, part science and part black magic, I was finally in the club.
“Oh,” replied Trudi Bennett in the truly annoying way that only Trudi can, “I do mine in the crockpot. Never fails, perfect every time.”
What the actual what!? You can’t cook roast beef in a crockpot, it’s an abomination. It’ll never work, it’ll be horrible. Of course I had to try it.
The recipe is so simple it makes me cry. You take your crockpot, you empty a sachet of onion soup into the bottom and place your roast beef on top. Then you smear some cranberry jelly on top of the beef, put the lid on and set it on low for 9 hours. That’s it. Seriously. I weep.
Somehow when you lift the lid the meat has miraculously browned, it smells distractingly delicious while it rests and you make gravy from the large amount of liquid that has accumulated in the pot. Trudi just stirs in the onion soup, but I add butter and flour to thicken my gravy because I’m fancy like that. The meat is pink and tender, slightly sweet from the cranberry. I’ve taken to adding garlic as well, but the beauty of the original recipe is its simplicity.
If you’re on Twitter you should check Trudi out on @WardrobeFlair, she’s a personal stylist and fashion blogger, she may be annoying but she knows her way around a crockpot.
Wednesday, 18 September 2019
Water, Protest and Engaging with the Process -- September 2019
The Ministry for the Environment is holding a series of meetings around the country as part of their consultation process for the discussion document Action for Healthy Waterways.
Once the consultation has finished and all the submissions have been summarised, the Ministry will pass their advice on to Cabinet who will then issue a National Policy Statement for Freshwater.
That’s it. There’s no select committee hearing and no need for a law change, the NPS will provide direction to regional and district councils as to how they should carry out their responsibilities under the Resource Management Act.
Realising I needed to learn a lot more about the proposals I attended the Ashburton meeting along with some three hundred other concerned locals, and I’m very glad I did because I learned a lot. Not from the officials giving the presentation, as you might expect, but from the well informed members of the audience.
From people like Ian McKenzie and Colin Glass I learned that the current NPS nitrate target of 6.9mg/litre represents a reduction of roughly one third for Canterbury, and setting a new target of 1mg/l DIN (dissolved inorganic nitrogen, which includes nitrate, nitrite and ammonium) is physically impossible if you want to continue farming.
I learned that the science behind the 1mg DIN target hasn’t been made public; I learned that the economic impact of trying to reach that target hadn’t been modelled, and I learned that the inclusion of that target had not been warmly welcomed by the Freshwater Leader’s Group.
Getting any kind of useful information from the panel was a frustrating endeavour: one person asked if Canterbury’s 3,000-odd kilometres of stock water races would be treated as rivers and therefore subject to a 5m fencing setback. The answer was “I don’t know.”
An industry representative stood up and, citing the definition of a river, said they would indeed be subject to the setback. I tweeted his opinion and was contacted the next day by a freshwater scientist who contradicted this assessment.
Getting information from the people who wrote the proposal shouldn’t be this difficult.
Above all I learned that farmers are annoyed. The crowd were polite and respectful but the underlying tension in the room was palpable. Freshwater, agricultural emissions, reducing waste, hazardous substance assessment and more are all happening at once, it’s little wonder that calls for farmer protest have been growing on social media. As one lady in the audience put it, “when is it time to start acting like the French?”
The obvious answer is never, it’s never time to act like the French.
People fondly recall Shane Ardern driving his tractor up the steps of Parliament in 2003 to defeat the proposed “Fart Tax”, and ask why we’re not doing it again. Apart from the security bollards and the high likelihood of the tractor falling through Parliament’s forecourt into the new subterranean carpark, there’s the small issue that the protest didn’t actually work. Sure farmers weren’t asked to pay for emissions research via taxation, but our industry bodies agreed to pay for it via levies instead, with the government reserving the right to reconsider the tax should payments ever stop.
Protest is most successful when you’ve got something the Government wants, which is why teachers and other unionised bodies protest and go on strike when Labour are in power, they know the Government is scared of losing their votes. A successful farmer protest would be one that happened when National are in power, Labour don’t have the rural vote and aren’t scared of losing it.
Protest can be harmful too, just look at the disastrous water protest in Morrinsville leading up to the 2017 election. I don’t know who organised it but they should be ashamed, it was pure muppetry in motion.
The protest drove a wedge deeper into the urban/rural divide and lifted Labour’s urban vote. NZ First got an easy win when they used the policy as a bargaining chip in coalition negotiations, and Labour were more than happy to drop the proposal because they knew charging for water was buying a war over water ownership that they weren’t prepared to fight.
Farmers were the losers from that fiasco, painted as greedy buggers who wanted to make a profit from resources taken for free, and forever remembered as misogynistic dinosaurs who thought the Leader of the Opposition was a “pretty little socialist”.
Forget the idea of organised marches, who wants to protest against protecting the environment anyway? Attend the meetings and fill the venues to overflowing, more than a hundred people sat outside the full bridge hall in Winton, and engage intelligently and respectfully with the process.
The consultation period has already been extended by two weeks, extra meetings are being scheduled and bigger venues found. Ministers are aware of how intently this is being watched and DairyNZ and Beef & Lamb are presenting a united front for the farming sector.
We can all agree with the high level objectives being proposed, and we’ve certainly let the Ministry know their first attempt at a plan to get there is sadly lacking. This is our only chance to mould the proposals into something we can all live with, and you only get to do that by talking to people, not shouting at them. Let’s not waste our opportunity.
Once the consultation has finished and all the submissions have been summarised, the Ministry will pass their advice on to Cabinet who will then issue a National Policy Statement for Freshwater.
That’s it. There’s no select committee hearing and no need for a law change, the NPS will provide direction to regional and district councils as to how they should carry out their responsibilities under the Resource Management Act.
Realising I needed to learn a lot more about the proposals I attended the Ashburton meeting along with some three hundred other concerned locals, and I’m very glad I did because I learned a lot. Not from the officials giving the presentation, as you might expect, but from the well informed members of the audience.
From people like Ian McKenzie and Colin Glass I learned that the current NPS nitrate target of 6.9mg/litre represents a reduction of roughly one third for Canterbury, and setting a new target of 1mg/l DIN (dissolved inorganic nitrogen, which includes nitrate, nitrite and ammonium) is physically impossible if you want to continue farming.
I learned that the science behind the 1mg DIN target hasn’t been made public; I learned that the economic impact of trying to reach that target hadn’t been modelled, and I learned that the inclusion of that target had not been warmly welcomed by the Freshwater Leader’s Group.
Getting any kind of useful information from the panel was a frustrating endeavour: one person asked if Canterbury’s 3,000-odd kilometres of stock water races would be treated as rivers and therefore subject to a 5m fencing setback. The answer was “I don’t know.”
An industry representative stood up and, citing the definition of a river, said they would indeed be subject to the setback. I tweeted his opinion and was contacted the next day by a freshwater scientist who contradicted this assessment.
Getting information from the people who wrote the proposal shouldn’t be this difficult.
Above all I learned that farmers are annoyed. The crowd were polite and respectful but the underlying tension in the room was palpable. Freshwater, agricultural emissions, reducing waste, hazardous substance assessment and more are all happening at once, it’s little wonder that calls for farmer protest have been growing on social media. As one lady in the audience put it, “when is it time to start acting like the French?”
The obvious answer is never, it’s never time to act like the French.
People fondly recall Shane Ardern driving his tractor up the steps of Parliament in 2003 to defeat the proposed “Fart Tax”, and ask why we’re not doing it again. Apart from the security bollards and the high likelihood of the tractor falling through Parliament’s forecourt into the new subterranean carpark, there’s the small issue that the protest didn’t actually work. Sure farmers weren’t asked to pay for emissions research via taxation, but our industry bodies agreed to pay for it via levies instead, with the government reserving the right to reconsider the tax should payments ever stop.
Protest is most successful when you’ve got something the Government wants, which is why teachers and other unionised bodies protest and go on strike when Labour are in power, they know the Government is scared of losing their votes. A successful farmer protest would be one that happened when National are in power, Labour don’t have the rural vote and aren’t scared of losing it.
Protest can be harmful too, just look at the disastrous water protest in Morrinsville leading up to the 2017 election. I don’t know who organised it but they should be ashamed, it was pure muppetry in motion.
The protest drove a wedge deeper into the urban/rural divide and lifted Labour’s urban vote. NZ First got an easy win when they used the policy as a bargaining chip in coalition negotiations, and Labour were more than happy to drop the proposal because they knew charging for water was buying a war over water ownership that they weren’t prepared to fight.
Farmers were the losers from that fiasco, painted as greedy buggers who wanted to make a profit from resources taken for free, and forever remembered as misogynistic dinosaurs who thought the Leader of the Opposition was a “pretty little socialist”.
Forget the idea of organised marches, who wants to protest against protecting the environment anyway? Attend the meetings and fill the venues to overflowing, more than a hundred people sat outside the full bridge hall in Winton, and engage intelligently and respectfully with the process.
The consultation period has already been extended by two weeks, extra meetings are being scheduled and bigger venues found. Ministers are aware of how intently this is being watched and DairyNZ and Beef & Lamb are presenting a united front for the farming sector.
We can all agree with the high level objectives being proposed, and we’ve certainly let the Ministry know their first attempt at a plan to get there is sadly lacking. This is our only chance to mould the proposals into something we can all live with, and you only get to do that by talking to people, not shouting at them. Let’s not waste our opportunity.
Friday, 13 September 2019
F@#k Haloumi, The Country -- September 2019
Food is a great flashpoint on Twitter, a lightning rod attracting people holding passionate views that they are willing to defend in the face of all opposition. Unlikely alliances have been formed on the basis of whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza (it most definitely does), and I will assert it as my Kiwi birth right that putting a slice of pineapple on anything makes it Hawaiian.
Christmas mince pies are another source of great division both online and in real life: I still vividly recall the sense of utter betrayal when, as a small child, my mother offered me a mince pie. I eagerly took the proffered treat, not noticing the tell-tale dusting of white on its crust, bit deeply and immediately spat the offending pastry on the floor. I have tried to like them, sampling them again as a teen and as an adult, but they continue to be a blight on the taste buds of any right thinking person.
I think we can all agree that sponge cakes are pretty good and custard is sometimes the only thing that hits the spot, fruit is universally loved and who has ever turned down jelly? But some people insist on combining these four things and end up with trifle – the only dessert in the world where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Despite these deeply held beliefs of mine, I can still accept there are divergent opinions; some people have the stomach for minced up fruit in inedible pastry, others cannot appreciate the sweet delight of cooked pineapple, and some even unpatriotically choose Vegemite over Marmite! While I can bring myself to accept all of these differing views, I have to draw the line at my friend who keeps their Vegemite in the fridge, that’s just weird.
While I can understand these differences and accept people might have an opinion that doesn’t match mine, there is one food that I simply don’t understand: Halloumi, the pointless cheese.
For those of you fortunate enough to have never come across halloumi, it’s a cheese with a high melting point that’s made to be grilled or fried. Presumably the next logical step is to put it in the bin, but if you do decide to bite into it, it squeaks. I’m not even kidding, it squeaks at you in pitiful protest as if to say “haven’t we all suffered enough already?”
Apart from the fact you shouldn’t be putting anything described as “semi-hard” in your mouth in the first place, it just seems so senseless; there are plenty of bland, rubbery foods out there already without introducing one that yelps as you eat it.
“But you haven’t tried the original cheese from Cyprus,” defenders of halloumi will tell me. Well, no, I live in Ashburton. “It’s a great carrier of flavour! Try the chilli one!”, they cry. You know what else is a great carrier of flavour? Steak, that’s what.
It’s not as though I haven’t given halloumi a chance: I’ve put it in salads, eaten it in restaurants, I even ordered halloumi from a street vendor in Germany and at all times the reason for this most pointless of cheeses eluded me.
I can only conclude that halloumi is an ancient Cypriot practical joke that the modern world has fallen for, and all I can ask is that if you’re going to insist on eating it then please buy the one that Fonterra makes. At least that way I can have the last laugh.
Christmas mince pies are another source of great division both online and in real life: I still vividly recall the sense of utter betrayal when, as a small child, my mother offered me a mince pie. I eagerly took the proffered treat, not noticing the tell-tale dusting of white on its crust, bit deeply and immediately spat the offending pastry on the floor. I have tried to like them, sampling them again as a teen and as an adult, but they continue to be a blight on the taste buds of any right thinking person.
I think we can all agree that sponge cakes are pretty good and custard is sometimes the only thing that hits the spot, fruit is universally loved and who has ever turned down jelly? But some people insist on combining these four things and end up with trifle – the only dessert in the world where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Despite these deeply held beliefs of mine, I can still accept there are divergent opinions; some people have the stomach for minced up fruit in inedible pastry, others cannot appreciate the sweet delight of cooked pineapple, and some even unpatriotically choose Vegemite over Marmite! While I can bring myself to accept all of these differing views, I have to draw the line at my friend who keeps their Vegemite in the fridge, that’s just weird.
While I can understand these differences and accept people might have an opinion that doesn’t match mine, there is one food that I simply don’t understand: Halloumi, the pointless cheese.
For those of you fortunate enough to have never come across halloumi, it’s a cheese with a high melting point that’s made to be grilled or fried. Presumably the next logical step is to put it in the bin, but if you do decide to bite into it, it squeaks. I’m not even kidding, it squeaks at you in pitiful protest as if to say “haven’t we all suffered enough already?”
Apart from the fact you shouldn’t be putting anything described as “semi-hard” in your mouth in the first place, it just seems so senseless; there are plenty of bland, rubbery foods out there already without introducing one that yelps as you eat it.
“But you haven’t tried the original cheese from Cyprus,” defenders of halloumi will tell me. Well, no, I live in Ashburton. “It’s a great carrier of flavour! Try the chilli one!”, they cry. You know what else is a great carrier of flavour? Steak, that’s what.
It’s not as though I haven’t given halloumi a chance: I’ve put it in salads, eaten it in restaurants, I even ordered halloumi from a street vendor in Germany and at all times the reason for this most pointless of cheeses eluded me.
I can only conclude that halloumi is an ancient Cypriot practical joke that the modern world has fallen for, and all I can ask is that if you’re going to insist on eating it then please buy the one that Fonterra makes. At least that way I can have the last laugh.
Saturday, 24 August 2019
Watching My Meat Rotate, The Country -- August 2019
Last summer my friend Wayne helped me build a deck. When I say “helped” I mean I provided the concept and Wayne made sure everything was straight, level and square. And then he built it. Turns out I’m more of an ideas man than a handyman.
I flooded Twitter with progress reports of the build and everybody loved Wayne and my #DeckPics. The project was finished just in time for the farm’s Christmas dinner and, with a brand new deck complete with a paved barbecue area, I really had no choice but to buy myself a new barbecue.
Buying a new barbecue is a serious business, I’m not one of those “it’s summer let’s dust off the barbie” type of people. No, barbecue is a year round event no matter the season or weather. In fact I go through so much LPG I took Labour’s ban of offshore gas exploration as a personal attack.
If there was one thing I knew about my new barbecue it was that it wasn’t going to be a Weber. I’m pretty sure the Venn diagram of Weber owners and iPhone users is a perfect circle and I wasn’t going to be the one to upset that delicate balance.
Obviously I bought a Masport, a good Kiwi brand that’s been around for over a hundred years, and of course I bought a stainless steel model, the hardest known substance to keep clean when you live in the country on a gravel road. More importantly, dear reader, my stainless steel Masport barbecue has a hood, and in that hood there is a window, and through that window I can watch my meat rotate and sizzle on the rotisserie that came as an added extra.
“Put it on Trade Me,” my father said,”you’ll never use it.”
Never use it!? That rotisserie is my go to method for cooking 24-hour marinated rolled roast beef. I’ve cooked pork belly on that thing, I’ve cooked chicken, I’ve cooked lamb and I’ve even googled “what can I rotisserie next?”
There’s just something about impaling a couple of chooks on that stainless steel skewer, tying them up with butcher’s string while making the obligatory dad joke (trussed me, I know what I’m doing) and forcing garlic butter up under the chicken’s skin that is so satisfying.
Of course we can’t stop there, all that juicy garlicky chicken-y goodness that’s going to drip down from the slowly spinning meat must be caught, and what better way to catch it than with a tray of cubed and par boiled potatoes? A tray of cubed and parboiled potatoes that have been coated with garlic seasoning, that’s what!
My cheap little rotisserie groans under the weight of two stuffed chickens (if they’re not stuffed I recommend putting whole lemons inside to give the skewer purchase), but the three hour cook time on the lowest setting gives me plenty of time to post progress videos to social media.
I’m not saying a rotisserie is the battery operated appliance in your house that’s going to bring you the most joy, but it’s surely got to be in the top five and I think you should give it a crack.
I hear you can pick them up quite cheap on Trade Me.
I flooded Twitter with progress reports of the build and everybody loved Wayne and my #DeckPics. The project was finished just in time for the farm’s Christmas dinner and, with a brand new deck complete with a paved barbecue area, I really had no choice but to buy myself a new barbecue.
Buying a new barbecue is a serious business, I’m not one of those “it’s summer let’s dust off the barbie” type of people. No, barbecue is a year round event no matter the season or weather. In fact I go through so much LPG I took Labour’s ban of offshore gas exploration as a personal attack.
If there was one thing I knew about my new barbecue it was that it wasn’t going to be a Weber. I’m pretty sure the Venn diagram of Weber owners and iPhone users is a perfect circle and I wasn’t going to be the one to upset that delicate balance.
Obviously I bought a Masport, a good Kiwi brand that’s been around for over a hundred years, and of course I bought a stainless steel model, the hardest known substance to keep clean when you live in the country on a gravel road. More importantly, dear reader, my stainless steel Masport barbecue has a hood, and in that hood there is a window, and through that window I can watch my meat rotate and sizzle on the rotisserie that came as an added extra.
“Put it on Trade Me,” my father said,”you’ll never use it.”
Never use it!? That rotisserie is my go to method for cooking 24-hour marinated rolled roast beef. I’ve cooked pork belly on that thing, I’ve cooked chicken, I’ve cooked lamb and I’ve even googled “what can I rotisserie next?”
There’s just something about impaling a couple of chooks on that stainless steel skewer, tying them up with butcher’s string while making the obligatory dad joke (trussed me, I know what I’m doing) and forcing garlic butter up under the chicken’s skin that is so satisfying.
Of course we can’t stop there, all that juicy garlicky chicken-y goodness that’s going to drip down from the slowly spinning meat must be caught, and what better way to catch it than with a tray of cubed and par boiled potatoes? A tray of cubed and parboiled potatoes that have been coated with garlic seasoning, that’s what!
My cheap little rotisserie groans under the weight of two stuffed chickens (if they’re not stuffed I recommend putting whole lemons inside to give the skewer purchase), but the three hour cook time on the lowest setting gives me plenty of time to post progress videos to social media.
I’m not saying a rotisserie is the battery operated appliance in your house that’s going to bring you the most joy, but it’s surely got to be in the top five and I think you should give it a crack.
I hear you can pick them up quite cheap on Trade Me.
Thursday, 22 August 2019
Not Just A Southland Issue -- August 2019
Last week the Minister of Agriculture announced the members of his taskforce that will investigate the practice of wintering cow on crop in Southland, their brief being to “do a stocktake of the multiple initiatives that are already underway to promote good winter grazing practices and identify why those are not currently working for all.”
The issue has of course been brought to a head by environmental campaigners in Southland releasing drone footage of cows up to their hocks in mud along with pictures of cows calving in similar conditions.
The reaction from farmers on twitter has been starkly divided; Southland farmers believe it is an issue for their region to tackle without interference from central government or advice from outside experts, let alone from the lone environmentalist appointed to the taskforce. They are not interested in the opinions of non-farming urbanites whose only experience with wet weather grazing was that one time they got caught in the rain during a picnic. They seem surprised by the swift reaction from the government after such a brief spell of negative publicity and feel as though they haven’t had time to address the issues before having conditions, presumable unreasonable, forced upon them.
Famers from outside the region, of which I am one, expressed surprise too. Our astonishment was that anyone could be surprised by the announcement and that it was Minister O’Connor taking the lead under the Agriculture portfolio rather than Parker leading the charge as Minister for the Environment.
David Parker travelled the length of the country prior to the election talking about water quality, during which he showed pictures of cows in Southland collapsing river banks as they crowded to drink, and mourning the lack of willingness from Regional Councils around the country to use the considerable powers at their disposal.
This is far from a Southland issue, it’s a farming issue. If the public perceive an issue with winter grazing practices then we all come under scrutiny. When irrigation was under the spotlight the public didn’t differentiate between irrigated and non-irrigated farms, every farmer was tarred with the same brush, and the same is true now.
If I knew prior to the election that winter grazing in Southland was a fight waiting to happen, then the Southland Regional Council must have known well in advance of that. David Parker is not the kind of man to keep quiet when something is annoying him.
The whole point of Regional Councils is to use their local knowledge and expertise to develop guidelines specific to their unique environmental conditions, and when they do that there is no need for central government to get involved.
That it has now escalated into an animal welfare issue as well as an environmental one is not just the fault of a drone flying busy body, nor is it the fault of the public for forming opinions without all the facts, the blame lies largely with the Regional Council for not taking steps to address issues that had been clearly signalled to them for a very long time, failing all their constituents in the process, farmers and urban dwellers alike.
I know too well the frustrations of wet weather wintering and calving, but the farmers who think it’s acceptable to keep cows in those conditions must also shoulder their share of the blame.
Putting aside the futility of convening a taskforce to look into a practice that is ending just as they start their investigation, I hope the people of Southland work with the team to get the best possible outcome for them, the environment and their animals.
The issue has of course been brought to a head by environmental campaigners in Southland releasing drone footage of cows up to their hocks in mud along with pictures of cows calving in similar conditions.
The reaction from farmers on twitter has been starkly divided; Southland farmers believe it is an issue for their region to tackle without interference from central government or advice from outside experts, let alone from the lone environmentalist appointed to the taskforce. They are not interested in the opinions of non-farming urbanites whose only experience with wet weather grazing was that one time they got caught in the rain during a picnic. They seem surprised by the swift reaction from the government after such a brief spell of negative publicity and feel as though they haven’t had time to address the issues before having conditions, presumable unreasonable, forced upon them.
Famers from outside the region, of which I am one, expressed surprise too. Our astonishment was that anyone could be surprised by the announcement and that it was Minister O’Connor taking the lead under the Agriculture portfolio rather than Parker leading the charge as Minister for the Environment.
David Parker travelled the length of the country prior to the election talking about water quality, during which he showed pictures of cows in Southland collapsing river banks as they crowded to drink, and mourning the lack of willingness from Regional Councils around the country to use the considerable powers at their disposal.
This is far from a Southland issue, it’s a farming issue. If the public perceive an issue with winter grazing practices then we all come under scrutiny. When irrigation was under the spotlight the public didn’t differentiate between irrigated and non-irrigated farms, every farmer was tarred with the same brush, and the same is true now.
If I knew prior to the election that winter grazing in Southland was a fight waiting to happen, then the Southland Regional Council must have known well in advance of that. David Parker is not the kind of man to keep quiet when something is annoying him.
The whole point of Regional Councils is to use their local knowledge and expertise to develop guidelines specific to their unique environmental conditions, and when they do that there is no need for central government to get involved.
That it has now escalated into an animal welfare issue as well as an environmental one is not just the fault of a drone flying busy body, nor is it the fault of the public for forming opinions without all the facts, the blame lies largely with the Regional Council for not taking steps to address issues that had been clearly signalled to them for a very long time, failing all their constituents in the process, farmers and urban dwellers alike.
I know too well the frustrations of wet weather wintering and calving, but the farmers who think it’s acceptable to keep cows in those conditions must also shoulder their share of the blame.
Putting aside the futility of convening a taskforce to look into a practice that is ending just as they start their investigation, I hope the people of Southland work with the team to get the best possible outcome for them, the environment and their animals.
Sunday, 21 July 2019
Meat Column, The Country -- July 2019
Is there a cut of meat more polarising than corned silverside? Whenever I tweet about corned beef, and to be fair I tweet about it quite a lot, I’m greeted with either nods of approval or disturbingly graphic approximations of people retching. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.
Some people don’t like the smell, others find it too bland or too salty and the detractors are universal in their disapproval of “boiled meat”.
If you’re fortunate enough to occasionally fill your freezer with an entire cattle beast, you’ll be familiar with struggle of utilising the least favoured cuts. For some it’s schnitzel and for others it’s stewing steak, but in my household it’s always been corned beef, possibly because I’m the only one who will eat it.
Even I have to admit that corned beef gets a bit boring after you’ve cooked your sixth or seventh for the year and there’s still more sitting in the freezer. I swear my butcher sometimes gives me other people’s just to mess with me.
In order to liven things up I started experimenting, adding chilli powder to the recipe for a bit of zing, substituting jam for the sugar component in a quest for fruitiness, even adding whole oranges to the crockpot when I thought nobody was looking.
My biggest corned beef breakthrough came when, after a party, we had a surplus of wine cluttering up the pantry. What the hell I thought as I tipped a whole bottle of sauvignon blanc into the crockpot, thus doing my bit to conserve water.
The result was amazing: rich, tender and fruity. I tweeted my discovery and twitter was soon abuzz with people experimenting with different wines, thank goodness for the $7 clean skin! If you’re thinking of giving it a go I highly recommend trying it with a cabernet sauvignon.
All these were merely variations on the same boiled beef theme and I wanted to try something really different, so the obvious solution was to build myself a smoker.
Most smoking recipes you find on the internet are American, and I soon learned that corned beef in America is made from the brisket, not silverside, but I’ve never been one to let details like that get in my way. Through twitter I also learned that American recipes calling for the use of chilli powder actually mean a chilli seasoning mix, this is not something you want to learn through trial and error!
The recipe itself is dead simple:
First, build your smoker
Defrost and soak your corned silverside in water for 2 hours
Mix together two tablespoons of ground black peppercorns, half a tablespoon of ground coriander seeds, half a tablespoon of onion powder, one teaspoon of dried thyme, one teaspoon of paprika and one teaspoon of garlic powder.
Remove the beef from its bath and pat it dry. I smeared the meat with mild American mustard as a binder, but that’s purely optional. Cover the meat with the rub and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
The next morning allow the meat to come up to room temperature as you fire up the smoker, I aimed for a temperature of 120 degrees C. Remember that smoking is inexact, my corned beef would be ready when the internal temperature hit 90 degrees, which in this case was about 7 hours.
Once off the smoker I wrapped it in foil and let it rest for another hour.
I couldn’t resist trying it hot and it was truly glorious. The fat had rendered out, there was a chewy smoky exterior and wow, aren’t coriander seeds a true spice revelation?
The true delight came the next day after the meat had spent the night in the fridge and the flavours had matured and set. The keen eyed amongst you may have recognised the rub as essentially a pastrami mix minus the sugar, I’m not claiming that’s what I made, but it’s close enough that I’ll never have to buy pastrami again.
Some people don’t like the smell, others find it too bland or too salty and the detractors are universal in their disapproval of “boiled meat”.
If you’re fortunate enough to occasionally fill your freezer with an entire cattle beast, you’ll be familiar with struggle of utilising the least favoured cuts. For some it’s schnitzel and for others it’s stewing steak, but in my household it’s always been corned beef, possibly because I’m the only one who will eat it.
Even I have to admit that corned beef gets a bit boring after you’ve cooked your sixth or seventh for the year and there’s still more sitting in the freezer. I swear my butcher sometimes gives me other people’s just to mess with me.
In order to liven things up I started experimenting, adding chilli powder to the recipe for a bit of zing, substituting jam for the sugar component in a quest for fruitiness, even adding whole oranges to the crockpot when I thought nobody was looking.
My biggest corned beef breakthrough came when, after a party, we had a surplus of wine cluttering up the pantry. What the hell I thought as I tipped a whole bottle of sauvignon blanc into the crockpot, thus doing my bit to conserve water.
The result was amazing: rich, tender and fruity. I tweeted my discovery and twitter was soon abuzz with people experimenting with different wines, thank goodness for the $7 clean skin! If you’re thinking of giving it a go I highly recommend trying it with a cabernet sauvignon.
All these were merely variations on the same boiled beef theme and I wanted to try something really different, so the obvious solution was to build myself a smoker.
Most smoking recipes you find on the internet are American, and I soon learned that corned beef in America is made from the brisket, not silverside, but I’ve never been one to let details like that get in my way. Through twitter I also learned that American recipes calling for the use of chilli powder actually mean a chilli seasoning mix, this is not something you want to learn through trial and error!
The recipe itself is dead simple:
First, build your smoker
Defrost and soak your corned silverside in water for 2 hours
Mix together two tablespoons of ground black peppercorns, half a tablespoon of ground coriander seeds, half a tablespoon of onion powder, one teaspoon of dried thyme, one teaspoon of paprika and one teaspoon of garlic powder.
Remove the beef from its bath and pat it dry. I smeared the meat with mild American mustard as a binder, but that’s purely optional. Cover the meat with the rub and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
The next morning allow the meat to come up to room temperature as you fire up the smoker, I aimed for a temperature of 120 degrees C. Remember that smoking is inexact, my corned beef would be ready when the internal temperature hit 90 degrees, which in this case was about 7 hours.
Once off the smoker I wrapped it in foil and let it rest for another hour.
I couldn’t resist trying it hot and it was truly glorious. The fat had rendered out, there was a chewy smoky exterior and wow, aren’t coriander seeds a true spice revelation?
The true delight came the next day after the meat had spent the night in the fridge and the flavours had matured and set. The keen eyed amongst you may have recognised the rub as essentially a pastrami mix minus the sugar, I’m not claiming that’s what I made, but it’s close enough that I’ll never have to buy pastrami again.
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