The Bounty of NewZealand shellfish, what do you like?

Crayfish(has no nippers or claws) - crayfish on the table after a good dive, all cooked ready to be eaten.
New Zealand
July 22, 2007 2:11am CST
Here in NZ we have so much seafood to eat as its fresh and can be obtained so easy, We can buy it but most of us like to gather it the way of our ancestors,By this I mean we go out and gather it, we can fish for the fish but when it comes to the shellfish we have to dive for it or dig it from the sands and of the rocks,Two of my favorites are crayfish and Paua(abalone). When it comes to crayfish we dive down onto rocks like on a reef and gather the crayfish into sacks, we are only allowed so many per diver and they have to be the right length, but once you have eaten a cray you can say you have eaten the best.For me I like to get a cray and as soon as I'm back on a boat or on shore I just crack it open and eat the fresh raw meat as it is, but normally most people will cook it untill it turns red and then eat it, but nothing beets a fresh cray straight from the rocks, And the other tasty delight we have here is Paua or you call it abalone, we take the shell from the rocks with a knife as it sticks to rocks and then once we have the right length and size paua we bring them to the kitchen, where we deshell them leaving a beutiful shell that many jewelers love to play with, but for my family we just use the shell as an ashtray or as a small plate, then we take the steak from the shell, discarding the guts and poo bag(the white bit) then we beat it with a mallet for a while and then we cut slices of steak and fry it with garlic and coconut milk to make a sauce, you can also make paua patties but I find the taste disapears, so it's best in the frypan with a few pieces of garlic and then you add the coconut milk and make a thick creamy sauce and eat it,other shellfish we gather are pipi's,clams,Kina(sea urchins),Toheroa,oysters,scallops,muscles,cockles. with the shellfish its just a matter of digging in the sand for them and either eating them cooked with garlic or steamed and eaten with bread, or with the muscles and pipi's we soak them in vinagar and eat them cold or with bread, with the kina we open them and eat the roe, and with scallops we eat all of it except the poo bag,Toheroa is only found on certain beaches and can only be dug up on certain days in the yr, but all the other shellfish can be gathered at anytime as long as you obey the fisheries laws and take certain sizes and lengths and quanity of shellfish per person, anyway why be greedy when you can come back and get more the next day, Have you ever eaten our kinds of shellfish or ever thought about what you can gather from your beaches and eat?
1 person likes this
2 responses
@KaraLee (460)
• United States
22 Jul 07
Bro, your making me homesick man!!! I cant wait to finally come back to Aotearoa and have a seafood smorgasboard right on the sand lol!! Ill take me some pauas and cream, fried mussels and oysters eaten right off the rock anyday!!!
• New Zealand
22 Jul 07
Hey I'm real sorry bout that, lol Where are you? I started on it as I just a had a major feed of paua and kina about 4 hrs back ,sorry lol
@KaraLee (460)
• United States
22 Jul 07
By the way you write...Im guessing your a maori too LOL cos that thing you wrote sounds EXACTLY how some of my cuzzies would explain seafood to people hahaha. Ive been living in the states for the past 7 years, havent been home for a good kai in that long. Cant wait till the end of the year, moving back to the paradise of Whangarei ;-)
• New Zealand
22 Jul 07
Yeah I'm a maori but I'm part as my Mum was a white woman, and I'm originaly from the far south as in Invercargill area,wow living in the states that long could drive someone mad, but I lived in Canada for 11yrs and worked often in the states, so it's all good, I came home at the end of 2001, to much stuff happning in my life and in my family's life there, Whangarei is a nice place, and I got family that live a bit past there in the far nth,
@Nardz13 (5055)
• New Zealand
22 Jul 07
Hi there. From our beach, we can gather, Kutai/mussels, Pipi/cockels, kina/sea urchin, pupu/cats eye, oyster, paua/abalone, fish and scollops... Some of these seafoods are hard to get to place in hidden areas on our coastline, others are right there looking at you and waiting to be picked... Seafood is very nice, who can do without it...
• New Zealand
22 Jul 07
Well I pity those that live so far away from the sea and have never experienced the sea life as there are alot of people in Canada and the States that have never seen the ocean let alone eaten seafood, I spend most of my weekends out round the islands like Great Barrier Island diving here and there and doing a bit of fishing,and when we want the scallops,catseyes,musscles,pipi and kina we go over to the Coromandel as there's some awesome outof the way places there where the foods crying for us to gather it