Fun with fish

February 15

My trip to New Zealand continued...

Here’s the view from my townhouse. Nice, huh?
I left that view so Kevin could drive Bill and me to Leigh Township, where we visited Leigh Fisheries (DBA Lee Fish), which exports wild fin fish, largely caught to order. Who did I run into but Rachel Taulelei, whom I’d met, oh I don’t know, several years ago at one of those New Zealand trade functions. She looked well, as always.
Leigh mostly exports snapper, but other things, too, like red snapper, (on the left), blue nose, John Dory, terakihi, big eye and southern blue fin tuna, and hapuka, which English speakers outside of New Zealand call grouper (and which you can see below, or possibly on the right, depending on your Internet browser).
All of the fish is sent out unfrozen and 95 percent is exported.
So, we toured the plant and looked at all the fish, and then we were taken to see the giant spiny lobsters, which New Zealanders, for reasons of their own, call crayfish, although gigantic ones like this six-pound puppy that Bill’s holding are called pack horses. They’re a different species from red spiny lobsters and about three-quarters of the price.
From there we headed to Black Dog Coffee & Country Kitchen in the heart of Matakana for breakfast, where I had a flat white and a breakfast wrap made with scrambled eggs, spinach and chutney.
A word on New Zealand coffee terminology. A short black is an espresso. A long black seems to me to be a double espresso. A flat white is sort of a cross between a macchiato and a latte. A cappuccino is a cappuccino. Australians apparently use the same terminology.
Then we had some downtime, followed by a day spent at the home of the inimitable Lauraine Jacobs. And I think she deserves a blog entry of her own. Stay tuned...