What's the worst meal you have ever had?

John D: suggestion for your moral: don't be so fussy?

"pcmke" it sounds like you guys wasted some good tucker! Pauas boiled in sea water are beautiful if done right. The secret to having them tender is to shuck them, remove the hua (gut bag) & kill them with one or two bashes before cooking. Don't overcook! We often ate paua & fish as a change from venison when living at Port Craig & further around the Coast. The worst feed I had in the bush was at Mudflats in the Arahura when 13 years old. One of my schoolboy mates (no adults on the trip) made macaroni cheese and mixed up teaspoons with tablespoons for the salt quantity. We tried to eat it but had to give up. Once on the first night of a fly in track cutting mission I had a new employee, a school leaver, helping with tea. He boiled a lettuce instead of the cabbage I'd told him to prepare. I didn't eat any but I served him some and he didn't like it.

Only bad meal Ive ever had was my own fault. There are real salamis and the cheap ones that supermarkets sell that are not properly cured. I packed on a warm Thursday night followed by a warm Friday and guess which salami was in the pack to be used in bread rolls for lunch and also in that nights mac cheese. Opened the plastic on the salami and ate vegetarian for that trip. Wasnt game to taste it

glennj: worst thing the Maori taught the pakeha...what a paua was! I personally like the hua , but selact only the pure white or cream ones, no blemishes acceptable, a little cooking oil in a pan and toss in the huas to just quickly heat through ,nearest thing to oysters you will ever try.

Nothing to do with tramping, but there's a dish in South America called tokosh. You take potatoes, dig a pit next to a river so the water is being refreshed but there's no current, and dump the veg in there for 120 days. A mould (which includes, or is, penicillin) grows on the veg and reduces them in the case of potatoes to small white round balls, which you boil up and get a creamy sauce and the remaining lumps of rotten potato. The smell is somewhere between silage and sewerage. The taste is everything you'd expect it to be. This is a delicacy and gets forced in unexpecting foreigners who walk into remote villages and seek accommodation. I was recently describing this dish to a group of Maori residents at the boarding house I use in wellington, and they all recognised it. Apparently Maori have a very similar dish, made with kumara or corn. More suggestions of a sth-america-pacific link?>

Kainga pirau or pirau (rotten corn) is made by putting corn or maize into a sack and submerging it in a creek (running water)for about 3 weeks. The resulting fermented corn or maize is cooked like porridge, but i can never get my nose near enough to try it! This is well loved by my cuzzys especially the older generation and is considered a delicacy . Have your Maori mates make some for you ,madpom , and then you can say you are a real kiwi. My favourite is water cress,mutton , spuds, heaps of bread and butter and plenty of beer.This is commonly known as a "boil up" pork bones are an alternative for mutton; keep a couple of beers to fix the hangover the next day and reheat the boilup , its twice as good reheated next day.

I'm familiar with Kaanga (corn) Pirau (rotten) but it doesn't belong with the worst meal thread. It smells like vomit but tastes beautiful especially along with brown sugar & cream. I've tried plenty of Maori kai due to my late father being half Maori & from rural East Coast NI plus my having lived & worked around the Urewera fringes back in the mid 80's amongst older Maori from Maungapohatu, Te Whaiti, Ruatahuna & Minginui. The latter group introduced me to various new Toroi (fermented) dishes which I enjoyed, fungii including harore, edible plants plus unborn piglets & slinkies, intestines etc. Those bush Maori didn't waste much in the old days.

They would have been superbly healthy. Fermented food is so good for you. It creates a very good gut flora. You're very fortunate to have had those culinary experiences. That said, I bought a durian fruit once but couldn't bring myself to eat any and ended up giving it away!

I was shown some harore near Maungatautari and recognised them when tramping in Fiordland growing on a rata stump. I cooked them up in a mushroom soup but gave up trying to fish out the worms and ate the lot. It was the first fresh food we'd had in about 30 days.