Pumice add a touch of theatre to their Monteith’s Beer & Wild Food entry

The Monteith’s Beer & Wild Food Challenge is back by popular demand for its 14th year!  Chefs around New Zealand are competing to create the ultimate wild food dish matched perfectly to a Monteith’s beer.  This year the team at Pumice have not only created a wild dish they are also introducing an element of theatre as the wait staff create the base of the dish tableside.

In 2005 chef and owner of Pumice, David Kerr created an international stir with his entry that featured horse meat.  The dish “Mr Ed is dead” was so controversial that staff received threatening phone calls and security guards had to put on the door.  But the restaurant was full day and night with people wanting to try the dish.  “I didn’t think it would cause such a stir” says David.  The dish took out the 2005 title.

This year’s entry may not be so polarising but it will definitely have the table talking!  Local oolong tea smoked duck served on a warm silken tofu with flax seed crusted eel and water cress salad is matched perfectly with Monteith’s Celtic Red. David says that a really important element of this challenge is the food and beer match.  “This is quite hard” says David “as beer is bitter and we are not into making bitter food.”

Ingenious elements have been added to the dish making the seamless match of the food with the beer.  Wild rice has been popped to add a great texture to the salad but amazingly it recreates the wonderful flavour of the beer in your mouth as well.  The beer is reduced down to be a component of the dressing, which along with the slightly bitter watercress creates a wonderful match.

But the star of this dish is the silken tofu made before your very eyes.  To do this the wait staff at Pumice have been transformed into chemists slash magicians.  A few members of Pumices Foodies Club got a sneak peak of the dish when David told us the work that had gone into creating this dish and what to expect when ordering it.

The process involves a warm plate and a little bit of magic as warmed soy milk is mixed with a Gypsum powder.  This stage is crucial as over or under mixing will ruin the end result.  The soy milk is then poured into the plate and covered for several minutes.  Then in the kitchen the succulent duck breast which has been cold smoked in oolong tea (from Zealong in Gordonton) and then baked is sliced and topped with the watercress and smoked eel salad.  Now the poor waiter’s job is to take this portion of the dish out to the restaurant and skilfully place it on the silken tofu which, fingers crossed, touch wood…. has turned out perfectly.

Mastering the silken tofu has taken many hours research and a lot of trial and error.  Google searches, YouTube videos and many attempts later the team discovered to make the tofu work they had to actually make their own soy milk!

The Monteith’s Beer & Wild Food challenge runs until the 3^rd of July, so get along to Pumice to try their entry, this may be the only chance you get to see tofu being made!  It is also a wonderful chance to experience a perfect beer and food match.

For more information on Pumice and their Foodies Club go to www.pumice.net.nz