Originally Posted by
Rushy
Kotuku I don't know the answer to the when part of your question but fifty plus years ago my paternal grandmother (who was Ngai Tahu) showed me how to cover the feathers in a thick coat of clay and put the bird ( complete with gut full of Miro berries) into a bed of embers. When done you would break away the baked clay which would pull the feathers out of the bird and leave a succulent baked pigeon carcass. It was bone sucking good. In or around 1972 a young Private Rushy performed this feat of culinary expertise on a survival course on your fair southern isle and found himself on a charge when the DS found the evidence. Cost me two weeks confinement to barracks and the corresponding loss of wages. As I recall, it was worth it as I had savoured the tasty morsels while others at the time were suffering the pangs of hunger.