Cuisine – Sweet as

Honey has become one of the darlings of the New Zealand food scene in recent years. The outright and indisputable international success of manuka honey, with its amazing health properties, has raised the profile of our beekeeping industry, and we are also learning fast about the range and diverse flavours of honey.

Many folk love honey on a slice of sourdough toast to accompany  their breakfast tea or coffee, or drizzled over yogurt for a tasty snack. Some add a sneaky spoonful to tea and drinks to revive the spirits. Some cook with honey, adding it to both sweet baking and desserts, or to add an interesting note to savoury dishes and salad dressings. There’s a honey varietal to suit every taste and occasion, with an astonishing array of flavours that are determined by where the bees fly out to gather the pollen to take back to their hives.
An incredible fact: a bee makes less than one teaspoonful of honey in its entire lifetime.

And given that New Zealanders consume about six times more honey per head than any other country, this means we have a whole nation of busy bees working very hard out there.

Our industry offers unique honeys, yet most of us do not realise just how important and vital the fascinating bee is. The industry claims that for each dollar’s worth of honey produced, the contribution to the New Zealand economy is around $110. Without the bee, we would not have pollination of our fruits and vegetables.

To produce honey, bees fly out from the hive, collecting nectar, pollen and water. The raw nectar comes from flowers, and is mixed with secretions from their glands. It is transformed, deposited in the honeycomb and ripens into honey. The waxy honeycomb is filled with honey, which is the food of the bees, and beekeepers harvest this honey without disturbing the honeycomb, so that the bees will fill it again.

Most supermarkets stock a range of flavours and it’s worth experimenting to find a favourite. Pale creamy pohutukawa honey with its slightly salty tang is one that I love. It’s often found in our region with the lovely coastal pohutukawa trees so prevalent. Other honeys I like are rāta, with a true caramel flavour, savoury wild thyme honey from the mountainous Central Otago region and our local bush honey, which always contains some manuka.

For a tasting and to learn more about honey and bees, pop into the Honey Centre on SH1 near Warkworth, enrol in a weekend class with Grass Esposti at  The Honey Shed on the Omaha Flats (nzhoneytasting.co.nz), or buy some  very local honey at Matakana Farmers Market.

Honey Roasted Carrots with Minty Yogurt

6 large freshly dug carrots, peeled
1 tbsp runny honey
3 tbsp olive oil
5 sprigs thyme, chopped
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp sesame seeds
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C. Slice the carrots into two, lengthwise. Mix the honey, olive oil, thyme, fennel and sesame seeds together with the salt and pepper. Toss the carrots into a dish with this mixture until well coated. Spread a sheet of baking paper in an oven dish and tip the carrots on to this. Roast in the oven for about 35 to 40 minutes, tossing once or twice until starting to soften and brown slightly. Mix 1 cup of Greek yogurt with some fresh chopped mint, salt and pepper to serve with the warm carrots. Serves two.

Lauraine Jacobs
www.laurainejacobs.co.nz/blog/