Dietary Requirements is The Spinoff’s monthly podcast in which we eat, drink and talk about it too, with special thanks to Freedom Farms. This month, we're joined by hāngī master Rewi Spraggon and his co-owner in The Māori Kitchen, Ganesh Raj, to have a yarn about Matariki, the Māori new year. 

Every winter, the nine stars of Matariki reappear in the dawn sky to signal the start of the Māori New Year. In te ao Māori this is a time to celebrate new life, to remember our tūpuna, and look forward to our future. It’s about friends and family, and is a very good excuse to come together for kai.

This year Matariki is 25-28 June and events to mark it are happening all over the country.

Hāngī master, chef, artist, musician, TV presenter and all round cool guy Rewi Spraggon has been advocating for giving Matariki the respect it deserves long before it was cool, and next week he'll be putting down a hāngī at Takutai Square in Britomart for Matariki. If you're in Tāmaki Makaurau, go check it out and get yourself some kai: more details here.

Spraggon knows a thing or two about bringing hāngī to downtown Auckland already: he and business partner Ganesh Raj opened The Māori Kitchen at Queens Wharf in March, which serves up traditionally cooked hāngī in sandwiches, wraps and pies. Spraggon and Raj joined the Dietary Requirements crew to talk Matariki (and Puanga!) and tell us why we should all be getting our hāngī on a lot more.

For more on Matariki, read this great explainer in The Spinoff Ātea.

And check out this cool behind the scenes of a hāngī mini documentary.

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