Maori
Bread
3 cups flour (heaped)
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder (level)
enough milk or water to make a soft dough
pinch of salt
Flour dust your board or grease the bowl
you are using to mix your dry ingredients and knead your dough until firm,
then roll
out flat.
Warm your tray in the oven, then dust your
tray with flour and put your bread in oven at about 350 to 400 degrees,
bake 10
minutes or longer on each side until light
brown.
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Hangi
Preparation is the key. You need some good
stones to heat in the fire. Ideal ones are porous volcanic rocks which
are light and
easily heated. Finding these in Glasgow
could be a problem I guess so next best are small river stones. At a pinch
you can use
fire bricks or lumps of iron. The best wood
is a dense burning type. Do not use any wood that has been painted or treated.
For
the square base of your fire you will need
four pieces of wood about 1 metre long and 10 cm thick. The stack of wood
should
be about 1 metre.
You can cook all types of meat, shellfish
and vegetables in your hangi.You can partially cook joints in the oven
first. Otherwise
large joints will need 3-4 hours in the
hangi. Peel and salt potatoes, kumara (sweet potato), pumpkin and taro.
Don't do green
vegetables in the hangi because they only
need a short time to cook.
Wrap poultry, fish and steamed puddings
in tinfoil.For a hangi to feed 12 people allow 1 leg of mutton or pork,
3 chickens, 6
cleaned fish, and 24 each of kumara potatoes
and pieces of pumpkin.
Traditionally woven flax baskets were used
to hold the food, nowadays baskets made from chicken wire do the job!
Vegies can all go in one basket but keep
meat and fish separate.
When you have everything ready dig a saucer
shaped pit 50 cm deep and 90 cm wide leaving at least 10 cm clear for the
baskets. Trample the earth flat in the pit
and keep the soil in a pile to one side. There should also be enough stones/bricks
etc to
fill the pit to ground level.
Put some newspapers in the pit and place
4 large pieces of wood across the pit to form a square. Lay the rest of
the wood
across the pit in layers at right angles
to the one below. The top layer should be flat to hold the stones.
Light the fire from all sides to ensure
even burning. As it burns the stones slowly drop into the embers. They
will be ready when
red-hot. Rake the stones over to the side
of the pit and remove all charcoal and embers.Place several wet sacks (previously
cut
open) directly on the stones. Then place
the prepared food baskets lined with cabbage leaves on the top. Put meat
in first then
poultry and vegetables. Cover the baskets
with clean damp split sacks and fold under the corners so the baskets are
held in a
sacking envelop.Cover with more sacks then
shovel earth on top, patting it down firm to prevent steam vents.
After an hour's cooking the earth should
feel warm and after 2 hours steam should be percolating through the mound.
Watch
for steam vents and shovel earth over as
they occur. Two and a half hours of cooking should be about right. Give
it more time if
you are in doubt - it's hard to overcook
a hangi but an undercooked one is a disgrace!
Scrape the earth away with shovels and carefully
fold back the sacks so earth doesn't fall on food. Remove the food baskets
and serve hot.
Making a hangi is hot tough work - good
for blokes to do while women lounge back with a glass of wine!!
(Don't put a hangi down in wet ground)
Acknowledgement to David Burton of Chaines des Rotisseurs
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Pumpkin
and Corned Beef
I have only ever had this once and it was
cooked in an umu (I suspect that a hangi would give much the same result).
It was so
delicious that I'll try and describe it
here. Basically, a large pumpkin had a circle at the top carefully cut
out (as I imagine you'd
do when making a halloween lantern). The
seeds were removed and then a hunk of shredded corned beef was placed into
the
cavity. The top of the pumpkin was replaced
and the whole thing was wrapped in tinfoil. Then it was cooked in the Umu
for
about 5 hours. The best approximation to
this might be to cook in a very slow oven for about 4-5 hours. It tasted
fantastic.
umu = Samoan. Heat up stones by building
a fire around them and keeping it going for several hours. When hot enough,
place
food wrapped in large leaves on top of the
stones and then cover with more leaves and eventually top with dirt - sealing
the
heat inside. Dig the food out after about
5 hours.
hangi = Maori. Very similar but a pit is
dug for the stones and food to go into and then dirt is replaced on top.
Normally now tinfoil is used to wrap the
food and for the umu I saw, we used damp newspapers instead of dirt to
cover the
food. We also kept sloshing water onto them
from time to time to stop them from burning. It seemed to work well.
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 Passionfruit
pavlova slice
4 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 tablespoon caster
sugar, extra
Filling
1 tablespoon icing
sugar
2 passionfruit
300ml cream, whipped.
Line a 25x30cm swiss-roll
tin with lightly greased grease-proof paper.
beat egg whites in
electric mixer till firm. add the sugar 1 teaspoon at a time beating at
maximum speed. Continue beating until sugar is dissolved ( 5 minutes) or
until egg whites form very stiff peaks.
mix vanilla and vinegar
to a paste and beat briefly into egg mixture.
Spread pavlova mixture
into prepared tin and sprinkle with extra sugar. Bake at 180c for about
ten minutes , or until firm. leave oven to cool down, THEN remove from
oven when oven is cold. Otherwise the pavlova will sink.
Turn out onto a sheet
of baking paper and remove greaseproof lining paper.
Trim the ends and
cut cross-ways into three pieces each 25 x 10 cm.
Fold the icing sugar
and pulp fromthe 2 passionfruit into whipped cream. layer this between
the 3 pavlova pieces. Serve as is, in thin slices, or with a fresh fruit
salad with the pulp of two more passionfruit stirred in.
serves 4-6
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"Aunt
Daisy's" recipe for a real N.Z. Pavlova.
Not my aunty, but a famous New Zealand cook.
Pre heat the oven to 250° f
4 egg whites, 3/4 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon cornflour, 1 teaspoon vinegar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence a small pinch
of salt
Method: Beat egg whites and when soft peaks
form add sugar very gradually, beat until very stiff, continue beating
and add
salt then vinegar and vanilla a few drops
at a time, beat in the cornflour and keep beating until the mixture is
really glossy and
will stand when cut with a knife.
Cover an oven tray with a sheet of cooking
paper, tip the pav. mix into the centre of the tray and spread it into
a round about 8
- 9 inches across, leave the centre slightly
dished. place on rack in centre of oven and cook for one hour, then turn
oven off and
leave until oven is cold.
DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR AT ANY STAGE WHILE
COOKING UNTIL IT IS COLD.
Secrets of Pav. making are: Use an electric
food mixer, (the bowl should be clean and perfectly dry) and beat the mix
until it
is as smooth as you can get it, any undissolved
sugar generally goes gummy and spoils the texture. Do add sugar
sloooowwwllllllyyyy, I put it in a dessertspoon
at a time sprinkling it across the surface with a good interval between
additions
to enable it to mix well. You should not
use ordinary granulated sugar that just about guarantees a flop!
The same rules apply to the liquids, add
a drop or two at a time and you MUST keep beating as you do so.
This pavlova has a slightly crisp outside
and is like marshmallow on the inside. I dress it several ways, spread
with a layer of
thick whipped cream that has had 1/4 teaspoon
of vanilla and 1 teaspoon of sugar added. This is covered with sliced fruit,
whatever is in season - strawberries, raspberries,
sliced (peeled) kiwifruit the choice is yours. Sometimes I make a creme
patisserie and use that instead of the whipped
cream.:-d
I usually make this pav at night, that way
I can go off to bed after the oven is turned off and I take it out in the
morning.:-) It will
keep several days if placed in a sealed
container. Relative humidity at the time of making is a factor to take
into account and
can affect the results dramatically leaving
the outside really gooey, however it is still edible.
I hope this works for you as it does for
me, the recipe is over sixty years old and is in the Aunt Daisy Cook Book
the N.Z.
cooks bible.
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(Serves 8)
Ingredients
3 medium bananas, mashed
¼ cup water
1 teaspoon baking soda
150g butter, softened
½ cup caster sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1 cup NESTLE White Choc Bits
Steps:
1.Preheat the oven to 180 C.
2.Line the base of a deep 21cm round cake tin with baking paper.
3.Place the bananas in a saucepan with the water.
4.Bring to the boil, stirring, then remove from the heat and stir in
the baking
soda. Cool.
5.Cream the butter.
6.Beat in the caster sugar gradually.
7.Beat in the eggs and continue to beat until the mixture is light
and fluffy.
8.Sift the flour and baking powder together and stir into the creamed
mixture
with the Choc Bits.
9.Fold in the banana mixture.
10.Turn the mixture into the tin.
11.Bake in the preheated over for 50-60 minutes or until a cake tester
inserted
into the centre of the pudding comes out clean.
12.Serve warm with Caramel Sauce.
Caramel Sauce:
1.Combine 75g butter and ¼ cup brown sugar in a small saucepan.
2.Cook over a low heat, stirring, until the butter melts.
3.Stir in 1 cup cream and bring just to boiling point.
4.Remove from the heat and add ½ cup NESTLE White Melts.
5.Stir until the sauce is smooth.
6.Serve hot.
 KIWIANA
SMOOTHIE
INGREDIENTS
2 New Zealand Kiwifruit
1/2 cup orange juice
1 banana
1/2 cup sweetened
yoghurt
sugar to taste
METHOD
Peel and chop Kiwifruit.
Place in a blender or food processor with the peeled
banana and add
the yoghurt, juice and sugar to taste. Blend until smooth.
Pour into two glasses
to serve. Serve over ice if desired.
SERVES 2 |
