we're in Auckland, New Zealand and we're going to be going on a massive food hunt
today New Zealand is our home and we are so
excited to share Kiwi food culture with you
the best New Zealand food centres
around fresh local produce and the country's phenomenal seafood and meat in
this 4 part series we're traveling all over New Zealand to show you the
best food from our homeland
from Kiwi classics to
rare foods plus a healthy
dose of Aotearoa's jaw-dropping beauty you don't want to miss this series
this is our first video from New Zealand and we're gathering fresh clams from the
ocean eating golden crispy fish and chips on the beach and hunting down the
best summer treat for a hot day this is gonna be a good one
get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're
Chasing a Plate
we hope you're hungry, let's eat
you can probably tell by the fact I'm wearing a wetsuit for the start of this
video that this is not going to start like our normal videos do so we're gonna
start at the beach in fact we're at the beach right now this is Omaha Beach and
we are going to collect some tuatua which are a clam which is endemic to New
Zealand but collecting your own seafood is a massive thing here so the Maori the
indigenous people of New Zealand have an amazing culture of collecting seafood or
kaimoana and that is how we're gonna start this video so we're going to pop
into the ocean and you have to dig the clams up at low tide they live down in
the sand and you've gotta shimmy down there with your feet to dig these clams out of
the sand
it was a bit of a slow start but we got there in the end
and these little beauties are the tuatua
so just like with any hunting and
gathering sometimes it's really easy to find the food other times it's a bit
hard it took us about 20 minutes of digging really deep into the sand
with our toes before we found some good patches and we were actually throwing a
lot of them back because they were quite small these are a relatively good size so
these will be really really sweet and juicy when we cook them up so we'll take
these tuatua back home and what we need to do is put them in some fresh sea
water we collected a big bucketful of that and we'll let them filter out
the sand that's inside them so you can see they've got their little filters out
already and they're just starting to slowly filter that sand out once they've
been filtering for a number of hours we'll cook them up so we're just going to
put them in a bit of white wine and then they'll just steam open
and how beautiful is this beach so we're about an hour, an hour fifteen north of Auckland
Auckland is the biggest city in New Zealand and it's in the North Island and
there's no one here so you've got this beach pretty much to yourself you can
collect your own seafood straight out of the ocean and there's hardly anyone around
and we're right by Auckland's I mean New Zealand's biggest city it's incredible
the tuatua are soaking away in in salt water now so some salt water that we
collected at the beach so we want them to spit out all the sand because they
live down in the sand and they're filtering animals so they filter the the
seawater to get their their food and their sustenance but some sand gets into
them so you want them to sit overnight or all day to spit that sand out so when
we collected those it was 8 o'clock in the morning so we'll leave those to
sit all day spit out all those sand and we'll eat them later in the video
now we're heading off for an absolute Kiwi classic we're gonna get some fish
and chips
fish and chips are one of our favorite things to eat when we come back home to
New Zealand and we're always about finding the best local eats wherever we
travel and that includes being back home in New Zealand and we are about to
introduce to you some of the best fish and chips we have ever eaten in New
Zealand from Leigh Eats which is just behind me
let's go and grab some food
we've got our hefty packet of fish and chips with us
now there's nothing better than eating fish and chips with a sea
view so we've come down to the ocean to enjoy these babies New Zealand has a lot
of coastline so you're never far from the beach so we're gonna sit right on the
water
we've set up our little picnic and it is time to get in
so let's open up this packet
we ordered...
two lots of chips whoaaaaa
and two pieces of gurnard which is a local white fish and look at that crispy
batter so what makes Leigh Eats's fish and chips super special is that they're really
really consistent we've been eating here for years and it is always top notch the
batter is always crispy the chips are cooked perfectly
I feel like I'm a really good judge of fish and chips because my parents owned fish
and chip shops for over 20 years so I have made and eaten a lot of fish and
chips in my time and to go with this feed we've got of course
tomato sauce
alright let's get into this gurnard first so these guys go through
five tonnes of fish a year and oh my gosh look at that the fish looks so
fresh and it's got that beautiful crispy batter on it I'm gonna just squeeze some
lemon over the top of that oh my gosh I'm so excited all right
Ho... hot!
it's just sensational the fish is perfectly cooked it is so fresh and
gurnard is quite a meaty fish relatively mild in flavor but also a little bit
sweet, the batter is just equal parts soft and crispy so it's really soft on the
inside where it's just enclosed the fish and then on the outside it is crispy and
golden and crunchy and even though it's been about 10 or 15 minutes since we
picked this up from the guys at Leigh Eats it hasn't deteriorated in quality it is
just still super crunchy and crispy I just can't get over how fresh the fish is
and there really is just nothing better eating fresh golden crispy fish and
chips with that amazing view out there
it's all about sauce for me when you're having fish and chips so I'm gonna dump a ton of
tomato sauce on that and that is the classic Kiwi tomato sauce holder so most
houses I think would have one of these in so the tomato shaped tomato sauce
holder and that has got to go with your fish and chips so ripping off a little bit of
this fish off the end so nice bit of fleshy fish and I'm gonna dunk it in
that tomato sauce
oh my god
it's so fresh that fish I was watching them cutting up
the fish and you could just see how fresh the flesh looked and I love how
he's cooked that so he cooked it on the top of the oil and then he flipped the
fish and he said he was sealing both sides of it to really get that batter
crispy and sealed and then he dunked it so he put it in a basket and put a
basket on top of that basket to get the fish fully submerged so that it would
cook right through properly and evenly and the fish is perfectly cooked and
these chips look great as well so once again dunk that in the tomato sauce
whoa a little bit of crunch on the outside but I really don't like it when
they go too far with the crunch and it ends up crispy it's not like that at all it's
still nice and soft and pillowy in the centre that potato and I love the
fat chips they use they'll always use fat chips here in New Zealand they are
really good and the seagulls are starting to gather because I think they
can smell too how good this is
that is such a Kiwi experience when I think of food at home here in New
Zealand that's what I think of amazing fish and chips on the beach so good now
you're probably thinking $22 seems like quite a lot of money to pay for two
pieces of fish and two lots of chips but it is so worth it for the quality of the
fish it is insanely good
so fresh ohhh
now to follow that because of all the
obviously that's a little bit fatty it's deep fried we're gonna follow it with
more fat I guess actually but something a bit fresher we're going for
an incredible fresh organic blueberry ice cream at a blueberry farm and these
are super special
after those incredible fish and chips we were so hot we
actually decided to jump in the ocean and cool off but now we're at the
blueberry farm and we're here for ice cream so all of these bushes behind me
are fresh organic blueberries and just over the other side of the camera is
where they're making the ice cream with those berries straight off the bushes
we have been eating ice cream and frozen yogurt at OOB which is where we're we at
right now Omaha Organic Berries for the whole
summer we love it so much now I'm just going to start eating before I keep
talking because this beauty is rapidly melting so I love their frozen yogurt
more than their ice cream I really love the tanginess of the frozen yogurt with
the berries so it's literally just frozen yogurt and fresh blueberries
straight from those bushes I've got to get in
oh my goodness
it is just sensational
so the blueberry has been ground up in that machine and I love the sound that
the machine makes
it's going ngngngng so it's churning up the berries mixing through that frozen
yogurt and then you've got this amazingly beautiful, tangy, refreshing, creamy sweet
concoction
it is ohhhh
so good
so OOB is an organic orchard and it is so neat that
the blueberries are just literally 50 meters away they get picked and then
they go straight into these ice creams and frozen yogurts, it's magic
we're back home and it's time to get into the tuatua so the tuatua that we
collected this morning has been filtering for about 12 hours so they've
been sitting in seawater and when we tipped out all of the seawater from the
bucket there was a truckload of sand sitting at the bottom so these guys
should be nice and clean so all I'm gonna do is just cook them really simply
I'm just gonna steam them in a little little bit of white wine
the wine is simmering away and I've added the tuatua in batches now the
secret is as soon as the tuatua open you have to fish them out so that they
don't overcook and get really tough so a couple have opened and I am just gonna fish
em out as soon as that hinge pops open now this is a bit of a special occasion
because you never see us cook on this channel we're usually just the ones
eating but because the seafood is so fresh we just had to prepare it in front
of you and just show you that this is the best way to enjoy seafood in New
Zealand
all right so the first batch is done
they are gonna be super hot but let's just get into one straightaway
because we want it to be still hot and juicy and it looks real good there's no
sand in there
they are so tender, really sweet and a
little bit salty from the sea obviously
oh they are really good
they are all cooked up and it turns out we got a lot more than we thought so
we have got a really really good feed here of tuatua, I just want to say
at this point a big shout out to our Patrons who help make this type of
content possible so if you want to join them and support more Chasing a Plate
content check out the Patreon link in our YouTube description box below
how good are they? They are
amazing they're so sweet really really juicy and so sweet and like Sheena said
they've just got this tiny little taste of the sea, a little saltiness the
saltwater taste but then they're so sweet they are incredible so the way
to eat these is just to wolf into them like popcorn just smash smash smash
because they don't stay hot for long just got to dive right in and they're
perfectly cooked they are super super good
oh my goodness, ngngngngng, so good, it's so delicious, mmm