There's nothing quite like a weekend of incredible food and wine to wash away the blues and the East Cape proved the perfect place to do it.
The only thing worse than a broken heart, is one that's slowly breaking. I needed cheering up and knew just what would help - a mini break spent comfort eating. Actually, not just comfort eating but comfort drinking, comfort dancing, comfort surfing.
So, I drove to Auckland airport, went up in the air for 55 minutes and came back down again, in Gisborne. Gorgeous Gisborne. Where better to escape to than the East Cape?
I didn't have much of a plan, other than to spend my first day seeking out some of the fabulous food producers I'd been hearing about and the second, redeeming the ticket a kind friend had offered me in my hour of despair, to the annual Gisborne Wine and Food Festival.
There's so much talk these days about sourcing produce locally, which is all very well, but when you're seeking variety, it can become problematic if your local growing conditions won't oblige. Fortunately, with its long stretches of alluvial river plains and boasting one of the highest number of sunshine hours in NZ, the hills and valleys in the Gisborne region are alive with artisan producers of great food and wine.
I decided that my first stop, even before checking into my accommodation, was to be the local Saturday morning farmers' market to give me a sense of what was on offer.
The man from the rental car company, a man of few words and a clipboard, had given me only one piece of advice about the market.
"Find Bad Boy Pickles first, for the mussel fritters."
Was this some kind of code? I'd soon find out.
Negotiating my way from airport to town centre was easy, as Gisborne is more like a large town than a small city and everything seems to be within 10 minutes drive.
The farmers' market was already in full swing by the time I arrived. I was desperate for a coffee but I couldn't get rental car man's words out of my head. When I spied the sign over the other side of the busy marketplace that read "Bad Boy Pickles" I all but ran towards the stall.
A handlebar moustache greeted me.
"I'm here for a mussel fritter," I said.
"Too late, they're all gone," the man belonging to the moustache bellowed.
I guessed the fact that this town sees the sun first means everyone is used to getting up early, especially if fresh mussel and karengo fritters are the reward.
Not to be deterred, I took in the other items "Bad Boy Pickle" was offering - golden fried vegetable fritters and rows and rows of pickles and sauces, relishes and chutneys. I settled on a vege fritter and a huge bottle of strawberry and chilli sauce to take away. A plush red, it had the sweetness of strawberries mingled with the hard hit of fiery chillies.
I swear Bad Boy Pickle's eyes gleamed as mine watered with the heat of his sauce.
Somewhat sustained, I was then free to walk around the rest of the market at a more leisurely pace. Wow, what plentiful bounty and all of it on the doorstep of, ironically named it now seemed to me, Poverty Bay.
Before I knew it, I had bought lamb racks from Pam and Darcy's Kaikino Hill Country station farm and had a great discussion with Pam about the best way to cook them (a few minutes in an oven-pan, then straight into a hot oven for 20 minutes maximum, then a rest).
Pam then sent me across the market to the good people at Wrights Winery and Vineyard, where I found a chardonnay verjuice that rivalled any I've tasted. Somewhat controversially (as it's more often paired with salads and whiter meats) I like to add a splash of this juice from unripe grapes, to the gravy when I'm cooking lamb. I find its bite nips at the fattiness nicely.
From there it was on to munch my way through freshly toasted macadamias from Torere Macadamias, purchase large tubs of Knapdale liquid honey and discover a soft drink like no other I'd tasted.
Lottie makes her own special carbonated mix of aloe vera and kawakawa, mixed with ginger and honey, to form what can only be described as an elixir. She calls it "Divine" and I couldn't agree more.
I refuelled with an almond, strawberry and pistachio tart from Morells Artisan Bakery and grabbed a loaf of their organic bread for later while I was at it.
Next was Waimata cheeses and who knew that this popular supermarket brand came from Gisborne? I selected a couple in the range that are less likely to be found on the super shelves, an ash-coated Taepo and a farmhouse blue. Dazzling.
My final two purchases included three bottles of capsicum sauce from Sunrise Orchard - red, orange and yellow - that I swear tasted like you'd imagine bottled sunshine to taste, and, from Millton Vineyards & Winery, a bottle of one of their latest organic products, a grape juice they're calling Amrita - Nectar of the Gods. I can never understand how grapes that are capable of producing such magic in the form of wine, as grape juice, almost uniformly fail to impress. Not so with Amrita.
The owners of New Zealand's original and most well-known biodynamic vineyard, Anne and James Millton, make their Amrita by hand-picking and gently pressing them, to extract the juice from the grapes, on just one day of the year. The result is simply heavenly...
FURTHER INFORMATION
* The Gisborne Farmers' market is heldevery Saturday morning.
* For wineries see gisbornewine.co.nz.
* For food stockists - like I said, they're local so you'll have to go to Gisborne to enjoy them!
* Tickets go on sale on Friday July 15 for this year's Gisborne Wine & Food Festival. The event date is October 23 and the headlining act is Fat Freddy's Drop, followed by a giant screen that will show the final of the Rugby World Cup. Tickets will be available from ticketek.co.nz and at the Gisborne Wine Centre, phone (06) 867 4085 or email info@gisbornewine.co.nz.
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