Improving Perfection

JUST WHEN YOU THINK you’ve seen it all, along comes Chatham Island freeze dried honey. Light and crunchy – think hokey pokey without the super sweet aftertaste – with rich, unique floral flavours, this beguiling little innovation is making waves on the culinary landscape in New Zealand and overseas. But if you think it’s just another flash in the pan foodie novelty, then think again; there are some very good reasons to take Chatham Island freeze dried honey very, very seriously.

Freeze dried honey. Light and crunchy –think hokey pokey without the super sweet aftertaste

For a start, there’s the honey itself. The whole world seems to be going mad for mānuka, but Chatham Island honey is something even a little more special. Separated from mainland New Zealand – and pretty much everywhere else – for millions of years, Chatham Island has plant species found nowhere else on earth, so much so that testing of Chatham Island honey fails to identify known varieties of pollen; instead, the local bees are doing what they do with a unique mix of flowers and plants found only on the island and largely unknown to mainstream testing regimes.

The result is a honey with a flavour all of its own; it is often described as being rich and subtly sweet with floral tones and a reddish colour, but you really have to try it to understand why many honey aficionados think Chatham Island honey is so unique.

The bees responsible for this honey are a bit special too. Just as the geographical isolation has given rise to unique plants, so too has it saved Chatham Island’s bees from the voracious Varroa mite that is one of the leading causes of bee colony death around the world. Chatham Island’s bees arrived way back in the early 1800s with early settlers (yes, apparently they travelled with bee hives) and largely ran wild up untill 20 years ago when local bee keepers Michele Andersen and Mana Cracknell started to reign them in and manage hives to supply Varroa free queens to the mainland. The importance of these Chatham Island queens is hard to overstate: since the arrival of Varroa sometime before 2000, ‘the destructor’ has virtually wiped out all wild bees in New Zealand, meaning that all our honeybees – and all the crops, fruits and plants that require pollination – are now totally dependent on beekeepers and managed hives.

The whole world seems to be going mad for mānuka, but Chatham Island honey is somethingeven a little more special.

The Chatham Island hives that were created to produce queens also produce honey of course, but it was largely a by-product until local chef Kaai Silbery – grandniece of Mana Cracknell – decided that this very special honey deserved a very special treatment. “I work with a lot of freeze dried products as a chef – coffee, tea, fruits and berries in cereals – so I knew the benefits of the process. It locks in the flavour and colour and nutrients, so it’s a much better way of preserving something. I use it throughout the dishes in the Hotel Chatham restaurant, whether as garnishes for desserts or in beverages – it’s a great way to replace processed sugar.”

“It really is very versatile, but to be honest I think it’s great just on its own! It’s a high-end product, like caviar, so it adds something really special...”

“It really is very versatile, but to be honest I think it’s great just on its own! It’s a high-end product, like caviar, so it adds something really special to a cheese platter or as a side on a honey panna cotta dessert or a mousse. But I’ve also crumbled it onto blue cod ceviche and used it on beef tartare. It’s raw, organic and unpasteurised so it’s just as nature made it.”

And thanks to the freeze drying process – and the gowild.shop online store – you can enjoy it just as nature made it anywhere in New Zealand. Blue cod ceviche with freeze-dried honey garnish does sound like an excellent excuse for a trip to Chatham Island however.