Central Otago

February 13

This morning Kevin drove us back from the Canterbury high country to Christchurch, and we flew from there to Queenstown, which is arguably the extreme-sport capital of the world. Bungee jumping was invented there, and the place is just lousy with opportunities for sky-diving, jet boating, power skiing and otherwise flinging yourself at nature.
I’m guessing at power skiing, but I bet you can do it there.
But Queenstown is also in Central Otago, a region that is gaining acclaim for its Pinot Noir.
That wouldn't have been possible without the flooding of a canyon to create Lake Dunstan as a source for hydroelectric power. As a concession to locals, they were granted permission to use as much of the water in the lake as they liked for irrigation.
That's what Mt. Difficulty winery in Bannockburn has done, and this picture shows the results. See how dry the unirrigated land is compared to the vineyard?
Difficult growing conditions are of course terrific for Pinot Noir, so the cold winters and dry summers of Central Otago are great for the stuff.
We had lunch at Mt. Difficulty winery — named for a mountain that proved impassable to shepherds seeking greener pastures — with Michael Herrick, of the winery, as well as with pavlova manufacturer Trevor Millar and Andee Gainsford, whose company makes pastries and béchamel sauce for foodservice consumption.
After lunch we had separate meetings with Trevor and Andee to learn all about their companies, and then we met Mt. Difficulty winemaker Matt Dicey, who took Bill, Michael Herrick and me down to the cellar for some barrel tastings.
Kevin went with us, but I don’t think he drank, as he was driving. This was an ongoing source of consternation for Bill and me, because we wanted to drink with Kevin.
Bill, who has lived in Oregon for the past couple of decades and so drinks a lot of Pinot, really loved the wines from the 2007 barrels, but I think I actually prefer the warmer-climate New Zealand Pinots of Martinborough and, especially, Marlborough.
Not that I disliked the Mt. Difficulty wines at all, some of which also had great names, like the Roaring Meg line, which is named for a river and other local landmarks which are in turn named after a favorite prostitute of the region's gold rush era.
We went to our hotel to rest and regroup, and so Kevin could arrange a taxi to take us to Arrowtown, where we had reservations at Saffron restaurant. The taxi was important as Bill and I considered it imperative that Kevin have wine with his dinner.
In Arrowtown we started at a really charming bar called The Blue Door, which is owned by chef and restaurateur Peter Gawron, who also owns Saffron and an Italian restaurant in the same alley.
I drank a Monteith’s Ale from the South Island’s West Coast, Bill had a Manhattan, and Kevin had a Hoegaarden, with which the bartender did a fascinating thing: He poured it into a glass, keeping the mouth of the bottle submerged just below the surface of the liquid, slowly raising it so that the beer emptied into the glass but the foam stayed in the bottle, then he lifted the bottle out of the glass, letting the foam stream out and form a nice head on top. I’d never seen that before.
Then we went on to Saffron, which has an eclectic menu including what seemed to me to be fairly traditional New Zealand dishes — or at least dishes with ingredients most Kiwis would be accustomed to, like venison with beet and juniper, which Kevin ordered — but also hard-core Asian dishes, like my Shanghai-style smoked fish, lightly poached and then crisp-fried with soy sauce, ginger, garlic and spring onion on lettuce and fried rice. That in and of itself wouldn’t be interesting, except for the fact that Kevin’s venison dish tasted very traditional and Western, and my dish was full-on, full-flavored Chinese. Bill's trio of curries tasted very much like they might in India and Malaysia.
I don’t know of any restaurants in the United States that can pull that off, or that even try to.
The lighting was bad for taking pictures, and amateur flash photography of food is generally ugly, so I tried to use the company camera’s image stabilization feature to take a picture in the dark. The result’s weren’t great, but I’ve seen worse.
Let me know what you think. To the right is a picture of my fish (which was hapuka, the local word for grouper).
For appetizers we all had white bait prepared three ways: lightly sautéed, flash fried and made into fritters.
Then I had duck and coconut rice fritters with lemon grass, kaffir lime leaf, eggplant and plum sauce.
Obviously we drank local Pinot Noirs with dinner, starting with a 2005 Mount Maude and then a 2006 Cornish Point.
For dessert I ordered an Eton Mess, which is meringue broken into chunks and served with berries and whipped cream. Bill had a crêpe with bananas and caramel and Kevin had deep-fried marmalade.

With or About?

“Theology has to do with culture because theology has to do with living religiously, which always takes place within the culture. Theology, by its very name, makes the great assertion that we can express a logos (word or reason) about a theos (God). Theology means talk about God, because it is first possible to “talk with” God, or to encounter revelation about God. Despite the airy claims of some theologians, then, there is no theology apart from life in the world, from life in culture.” Tom Beaudoin, Virtual Faith

I would suggest that we (The Church) have too often moved away from “talking with” God because we have for too long set ourselves apart from life or culture. We have in general stopped talking with God (and listening for God) as worship and ministry have moved more toward talking about God. Many I think crave an experience of rather than more knowledge about God.

Two subtle words perhaps, with and about, however, they were integral to Jesus’ ministry. Jesus lived in the midst of the culture and lived the concept “with God.” Tension arose when the Pharisees, Sadducees, and disciples attempted to talk about God without being with God, the disconnect most obvious as the people they encountered immersed in the culture were neglected, even denigrated.

Perhaps the experience of God we crave is to be found not in one great hour sheltered behind the opacity of stained glass windows but in moving beyond the walls of our supposed cathedrals to be with all of God’s creation.

Just a thought,
P.C

On Hearing

"The immediate person thinks and imagines that when he prays, the important thing, the thing he must concentrate upon, is that God should hear what he is praying for. And yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse: the true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person praying continuesto pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills. The immediate person, therefore, uses many words and, therefore makes demands in his prayer; the true man of prayer only attends."
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Danish theologian

Authentic Holiness

Paul Evdokimov, a Russian Orthodox theologian who lived from 1901-1970, wrote, "It is not enough to say prayers, one must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. It is not enough to have moments of praise. All of life, each act, every gesture, even the smile of the human face, must become a hymn of adoration, an offering, a prayer. One should offer not what one has, but what one is."

I do agree with that theology. That way of being is, I think, authentic holiness. However, it is certainly difficult to share with others. The reluctance for me comes from a fear that people will think me too pious or put me even higher on that false pedestal some have created for pastors.

There is also a layer of apologetics that is needed to counter the modern day Pharisees who have usurped what holiness in prayer is all about. For many who have been "burned" by the church Pharisees there is a sense that holiness is a shroud placed upon them in order to control or condemn rather than holiness being a baring of one's soul, a removal of the death pall.

Just a thought,
P.C.

The Shepherd's Tale

February 12

My journey through New Zealand continued with a flight from Blenheim to Christchurch in the region of Canterbury. We stopped by Hinton's, near the airpot, for lunch, where I had baked Parmesan-crusted lamb cutlets on a potato galette with a spinach, pancetta, lemon and spiced carrot salad and a mint jus.
This is as good a time as any to point out that the United States has no monopoly on gargantuan portions. I was served three double lamb chops (i.e. six ribs). My galette must have been eight ounces of potato, and believe me they didn't skimp on the pancetta.
It was a lot of food, something of which I was particularly aware since on the way to the airport we'd stopped by a butcher shop and I had my first steak and kidney pie. It kind of reminded me of a Jamaican beef patty, but without the spice and with a comforting earthiness that I think came from the kidney.
So I was full as Kevin drove us to Middle Rock in the Canterbury high country, where we visited the sheep farm of Bruce and Lyn Nell. We tooled around the 50-year old farm, which was given to the family as part of a land grant program to World War I veterans.
The Nells have 8,000 Corriedale sheep, a dual-purpose breed, which means they're used for both wool, suitable for baby blankets (young Corriedale lambs have wool as fine as 23 microns, although 27 microns is the norm for more mature animals) and meat.
The lambs are born in October, weaned in February and sold throughout their first year. Those kept for wool and breading are shorn once a year, in September.
Commodity lamb in New Zealand is normally "harvested" (a polite way of saying "slaughtered") before they're a year old, which is interesting, because I'm told that many New Zealanders contend that hoggets have tastier meat.
Hoggets are sheep aged between one and two years. Their meat would be more flavorful but somewhat tougher in structure — meatier if you will — than lamb.
At two years, they're mutton.
At the end of the tour we met dog trainer and entrepreneur Bernie Oliver, whom rugby fans, which, it seems, includes every one of the four million people in New Zealand, will be interested to know is the uncle of Anton Oliver, the former captain of the All Blacks, New Zealand's national team.
Bernie showed us how his dogs herd sheep. He sent a little one out to round up a small herd, which the dog did by running around the periphery of the field they were in and then running back and forth in sort of a shrinking arc that motivated the sheep away from him and toward us. At least that's what I think he was doing.
Then we visited with Bernie and the Nells in the Nells’ home, drinking coffee and snacking on tan bars — a sort of blondie — while Bernie told us of one of his entrepreneurial plans. He’s selling prepared cuts of Merino hoggets at a farmers market.
Now that's interesting because Merinos are wool sheep, not meat sheep.
Mr. Nell explained that sheep with fine wool, which Merinos have, also have finely grained meat, giving them a desirable texture. But it also means that they put on bulk slowly. So pound per pound (or kilo per kilo, as it were) Merinos are uneconomical for meat, but they should certainly taste good.
After our visit, Kevin drove Bill and me to Terrace Downs, a high country sporting resort, with a golf course, fishing and, we were told, spectacular views of the mountains. It was a foggy, overcast day, though, so I'll have to take their word for it.
The folks at New Zealand Trade & Enterprise had rented a house for us for the night. In its kitchen, Graham Brown was making dinner.
Graham is a chef for the Cervena venison folks, among others, and I met him back in 2001, the last time I was in New Zealand. I even wrote a profile of his son, Hamish Brown, who was then the chef at the George Hotel in Christchurch and now is working in London.
Joining us for dinner were two representatives from Five Star Beef, which, contrary to New Zealand custom, fattens its cattle on grain (mostly barley and wheat, but also corn silage) for export to Japan. They're exploring options for exporting to the United States.
Their beef is gorgeous. Take a look at this prime rib:
Graham roasted that with Yorkshire pudding and served it with a Shiraz and white pepper sauce and Kikorangi blue cheese. We drank a 2002 Pegasus Bay Cabernet-Merlot with it. Pegasus Bay is in the Waipara region in Canterbury.
Graham insists that Waipara will be New Zealand’s next big wine region, as many of the country’s best winemakers have set up shop there.
Waipara is not to be mistaken for Wairarapa, on the North Island, which is where our 2005 Paddy Bothwick Pinot Noir was from. We had that with venison that Graham had cured in salt and raw brown sugar and then smoked it with Red Zinger tea. He seared it rare, sliced it and served it on mesclun with baby arugula (which New Zealanders call “rocket”), orange, blueberry, fried parsnip, walnut and walnut oil-raspberry vinaigrette.
Then out came a bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, from Marlborough of course, to be drunk with Graham's whitebait soufflé in phyllo tart.
Then came the beef, along with side dishes of vegetables and potatoes, also seasoned with white pepper, which Graham loves. I mean, he loves it. He swears by it.
Here's a picture of Graham, enjoying his rhubarb fool, topped with mashed strawberries, and ANZAC tuile and whipped cream.
The tuile is made with ANZAC cookies, a staple food for Australian and New Zealander soldiers at the World War I battle of Gallipoli, at which British commanders used those troops as cannon fodder against the Turks.
Graham crushes up the cookies into a batter, spreads it thinly on a silicon baking sheet and cooks it into a tuile.
We ate it with a Grove Mill Late Harvest Gewürztraminer, from Marlborough.

Here’s one more picture, just for fun, of Bill and Graham.