Monteiths Wild Kitchens - The Best Of Monteith's Beer And Wild Food Challenge

Their aim: to create the ultimate wild food dish matched perfectly with a Monteith's beer or cider. From just 12 participants in 1998 to over 130 in 2012, the challenge is New Zealand's longest-running national competition for restaurants. In this collection of best recipes from the past challenges, as well as fresh, innovative and delicious new recipes from well known New Zealand chefs, you can now take on the wild food challenge for yourself.

"Fourteen years ago, 12 adventurous chefs in restaurants along Auckland's Ponsonby Road took a culinary plunge by agreeing to participate in a competition that would test their ability to first create two unique and unusual dishes and then pair them with beer." - thus the Monteith's Beer and Wild Food Challenge was born. Now in its 15th year, the challenge is New Zealand's longest-running national competition for restaurants.

One of the factors that make this challenge such a success is the stipulation that the significant ingredients of each dish must feature something from the wild waters, mountains or forests of New Zealand. Nothing sparks the imagination more than harnessing the best that nature provides and presenting it in a manner that it is not only palatable, but competition worthy. Pairing the dish with a beer from the rugged South Island West Coast brewery, Monteith's creates a uniquely New Zealand competition that has gone from strength to strength.

Wild Kitchens is a compilation of the best of the Monteith's Beer and Wild food challenge. Kerry Tyack, founder of the competition, has tweaked the recipes to make them user friendly to the home cook making this an ideal book for the keen hunter. Loaded with information on the Monteith's brewery, the characteristics of various beers and matching beer with foods, it really is the perfect Kiwi joker's handbook for the kitchen.