Waipuna-ā-rangi and Ururangi are two stars sent to challenge my little quest for a Matariki party!

Waipuna-ā-rangi welcomes the winter sky waters in all their forms - ua (rain), ua nganga (hail) and hukarere (snow). Well, it's hard to find a good recipe for rain (!) so the closest I have in my cookbook collection is The Coconut Water Cookbook by Matthew Goods which I brought last year on a bit of a whim and which has laid largely untouched on my bookshelf ever since. On the other hand, 'hail' means sorbets and granitas to me and 'snow' well that means we're definitely into frozen yoghurts and iced soufflés! My go-to books here are Ices by Sunil Vijayakar and Sweet As ... by Alessandra Zecchini. I just adore Sunil's Spiced Citrus Frozen Soufflé (pg 40) and Star Anise and Mandarin Orange Granita (pg 52). They're refreshingly different ideas using some of my favourite citrus fruits. Alessandra on the other hand has some beautiful sorbets and ice creams with clean palates and simple but tasty ingredients. Frozen Yoghurt with Honey and Pistachio Nuts (pg 99) is a great end to a meal if you don't want something too sweet and I've never known anyone to turn down a helping of her Granny Smith Apple Sorbet (104). She even has a Coconut Ice-Cream recipe (pg 106) which thankfully uses coconut cream not water!

At the other end of the scale Ururangi is associated with the wind and the weather. I thought long and hard about this one as other than 'smoking' I was a bit stumped. Then, as I was prepping a batch of pork to make sausages, it dawned on me how often we use 'air' as a preserver of food and enhancer of flavour. Charcuterie has exploded over the last 20 years or so and is now very much in the realm of the home cook. Think air dried hams (prosciutto style), salami's and sausages. That dehydrator you have (probably in the back of the cupboard) for making dried fruits, fruit leathers, vegetable chips and preserving herbs. The bulbs of garlic and onions you store by hanging them in the garage. Now I don't have any cookbooks per se specifically related to air drying recipes (I'll have to put that on my list of 'books to find') but a quick Google search throws up quite a few options. So next time I'm making sausages I'm going to give it a go! My trusty The Original River Cottage Cookbook (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) has a chapter in it with some useful hints - so I'll be starting there! And wouldn't it be just great to present a party platter to your guests laden with your own home made charcuterie?