change of plans

As I was waiting for Ann to come back from the dolphin cruise (she’d texted me earlier to let me know she’d gotten on it, but might not be able to swim) and for Nick to finish filleting all the fish, I was thinking about how we could cook the crayfish Gerard and Nick had given us. We only have a little pot, and I wasn’t sure I would be skilled in crayfish origami, so I had a dilemma. And then I saw the tent Gerard was talking about – it was huge, with cots and mattresses, and it came with the use of a real flush toilet, and shower – even with hot water! – and a kitchen. So when Ann arrived I told her about it, and we decided it would be worth it to change our plans a bit, especially since although she’d had a shower after her dolphin swim, I still had fish guts clinging to me and she probably was not too excited about the idea of being in the car with me in that state. This was a perfect example of the kind of Kiwi hospitality I’m still surprised by even though I’ve experienced a lot of it – I was just another customer on the fishing charter, but here Gerard was opening up his home to me for nothing in exchange.

Gerard was heading up to Blenheim for the night to drop off his sister, but – maybe since Ann and I looked fairly confused by the squirming crayfish we were playing with in the driveway at the time – Nick offered to cook up the cray and the fish for us. We’d bought the ingredients to make coconut ginger fish with some frozen blue cod we’d picked up in Takaka, so I offered to make that one (we threw out the frozen fish, though, in favor of the much better fresh option!) to try as well. Oh, and when we were talking on the boat I mentioned that both Ann and I dive, so Gerard had offered to let us use his dive equipment if we wanted, and Nick offered to take us out to see crays and paua in their natural habitat in between their charters tomorrow. So, once that suggestion was thrown out there, there was no getting us to leave that night.

Nick cooked up the cray in a saucepan with butter, garlic and ginger and gave us honorary Maori status when he saw us picking the meat out of the body instead of just taking the easy pieces of tail meat and being done with it. It was delicious – better than the one this morning, since it was so fresh (and didn’t cost $47…)…but that one was excellent, so this was just off the charts! Next course was the coconut ginger fish, which turned out well enough to make Nick enjoy eating blue cod, which apparently isn’t usually the case. Then we had some lightly battered perch, all complemented by wonderful Koura Bay Sauvignon Blanc, a wine which has some sort of connection to the company hence the same name. Ann and I were feeling like we weren’t really contributing much to the feast, so we brought out our special Nestle-hot-chocolate-and-Redwood-Cellars-cream-liqueur for dessert. We had a nice relaxing spa before crashing at the ripe old hour of 9:45 pm – hey, the sun really can take it outta you.