Feijoa and Swordfish

At the weekend I was supposed to attend the New Zealand Beer Festival down by the quay. I'd been invited to join another of the anatomy demonstrators and some of her friends, and she'd told me to get myself a ticket online, which I did. A few hours later I get a panicked text from her asking if I knew of anywhere she could get a ticket as they'd all sold out. We spent ages looking in different shops and on the internet but to no avail. I decided the nicest thing I could do was give up my ticket and spend the afternoon/evening in the town with her instead. So I advertised my $40 ticket on Trademe (Ebay) and it eventually sold for $120, gotta love karma! We then spent the evening in one of the local bars and had dinner (a delicious pesto, pepper and parma ham risotto) and a keg of beer. It was great :)

As many of you will know I am a huge fish fan, and have pretty much been addicted to sushi ever since I got here. On Sunday I decided that I would cut back on the sushi a little and eat more fish with my evening meal instead, so ordered some fish from a company online. I had a voucher for some money off and delivery was also going to be free so I decided to take the plunge. It's all freshly caught, and really cheap compared to the UK. So cheap in fact that I ordered 1kg of turbot, 1kg of salmon steaks and 1kg of swordfish steaks which came to roughly £15 - BARGAIN! I unpacked the box today and divided up the salmon and turbot into freezer bags. I did have a little problem however with the swordfsh.... when I ordered 1kg of swordfish steaks, little did I realise that it would be a SINGLE 1kg steak - fit that in your frying pan! I'd have loved to have seen the size of the original fish, the steak alone was the size of a dinner plate! I cooked up a small chunk this evening and it was delicious. Money well spent.

This morning my supervisor came in with a small carrier bag, handed it to me, and said 'I thought you might like these'. I looked in the bag, looked up at him and smiled and said 'ooooh, thanks very much'. I spent the rest of the day trying to work out what it was that he had given me! It was a small green fruit, but I had no idea what it was called or how to deal with it.

After much 'Googling' I came up with the name 'feijoa' (pronounced fay-ho-a). It is apparently grown in the highlands of southern Brazil, parts of Colombia, Uruguay, Paraguay and northern Argentina..... oh yeah, and New Zealand!

I had two this evening (may live to regret it a bit later), and they have a really unusual taste. I can only describe it as germolene, the antiseptic cream. I found it quite delicious. The very centre contains the seeds and is soft, a bit jelly-like, and really sweet. As you move further out from the centre towards the skin it becomes a bit more gritty and harder, kind of similar to a not-quite-ripe pear. If tonight passes without incident I may eat a couple more tomorrow....