The following is a dish I used to cook as a good mid-week supper. For a nice romantic dinner, cook in individual oven proof dishes. Obviously, I cannot use the fish I have included in this recipe as this particular variety of marine dweller is something like 15,000 miles away from me, but any firm smoked fish or even salmon or tuna will be just as good. Whenever I make it, I slip back into a nostalgia of weekends spent in Pauanui in the Coromandel, New Zealand, where we would pick up fish from the local fish shop, which had just been caught, grab a kilo of fresh green lipped mussels and literally eat fish from morning to night. Bliss.New Zealand is an island nation comprising of three main islands - North Island, South Island and Stewart Island, but also has many smaller populated islands including the Chatham Islands, which are roughly 800 kilometres (500 mi) east of Christchurch. New Zealand sits in the south west of the Pacific Ocean and the "Realm of New Zealand" includes the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau and the Ross Dependency - which is New Zealand's territorial claim in Antarctica.
The Head of State is Elizabeth II, the Queen of New Zealand and in her absence she is represented by an appointed non-partisan Governor General. The Queen's role in New Zealand is purely symbolic and does not carry any political power or influence. New Zealand operates under a democratically elected parliament and is headed by a Prime Minister. It has an open economy and is well known for having one of the world's largest free market capitalist economies.
Australia is our closest neighbour and sits roughly 2000km (1250 miles) to the west across the Tasmin Sea. To the north are Fiji, Tonga, New Caledonia and Samoa.
Kahawai is a fish found in the marine waters of the Tasmin Sea and are found off the coast of New Zealand, and along the southern coast of Australia. It is a fish from the Arripidae family and has four species within the genus Arripis. Kahawai is the Maori name for the fish but is also known as Australian Salmon. They are not related to the Northern Hemisphere Salmonidae family (Salmon to you and me), but were actually named by the early European settlers for their resemblance.
