4 oz (100 gm) Butter 
4 oz (100 gm) Sugar 
1 egg
 8 oz (200 gm) plain flour
 1 level teaspoon baking powder
 pinch salt
 Method: Cream butter and sugar, add egg and beat well. Add sifted dry ingredients and stir to mix. Roll out on a floured sheet of paper and cut into rounds, Put into patty pans and add fruit mincemeat (recipe available below). Top with another round and bake at 350° F [180° C] for about 10 minutes until risen and lightly browned on top. Cool on a wire rack and sift a little icing sugar on top when cold. This recipe is also an excellent one for making biscuits.

2 small apples
 1 cup sultanas
 1 cup mixed fruit
 1/2 lemon rind
 juice and grated rind of 1/2 orange
 1/2 cup brown sugar
 1/2 tsp each of mixed spice, cinnamon, salt
 1/4 tsp ground cloves
 1/4 cup spirits
 Mince apple, dried fruit, and rinds and mix with the other ingredients. Top with extra spirits, cover and refrigerate.

2 tablespoons Golden Syrup
 100g butter
 1/2 cup brown sugar
 2 teaspoons ginger
 1/2 cup flour
 Heat the golden syrup with butter and brown sugar in a saucepan until the butter melts. Remove from the heat and add ginger and flour. Drop 4 heaped teaspoon lots onto a greased oven tray (US=cookie sheet). Spread each flat with the back of a spoon. Bake at 180 C for 5-10 minutes until the mixture darkens slightly. Cool until firm enough to roll around a wooden spoon handle. Reheat if already too firm to roll. Brandy snaps should now resemble hollow cylinders. Store in an airtight container immediately (they go soft very easily). Fill with whipped cream - optional: flavor the cream with brandy essence - just before serving.

2 lb pumpkin
 2 large onions
 2 tsp sugar
 1 tsp salt 
ground pepper
 packet of onion soup mix
Chop onions and pumpkin. Simmer (barely covered) until tender. Blend. Make soup mix according to instructions on packet. When boiling, add the blended vegetables with the salt and pepper. Also add nutmeg if desired. This soup is especially good served with a dollop of cream floating on top.

75g butter
 2 cloves garlic
 1-2 tsp curry powder (I also add extra cumin because I like it)
 500g kumara (US=a type of yam) 
1 1/2 cups water
 2 tsp instant chicken stock
 about 3 cups milk
 1/4 cup cream (optional - but really good) 
Add the crushed garlic and curry powder to the butter in a large saucepan. Peel the kumara and slice to about 1 cm thick. Cook in the butter, without browning for 1-2 minutes and then add the water. Cover and cook for 10 minutes until tender. Stir in the chicken stock, then blend, thinning as you do so with the milk. Add the cream and reheat without boiling.

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 it 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.

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. In 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 meter long and 10 cm thick. The stack of wood should be about 1 meter. 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 cook 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! Veggies 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) Acknowledgment to David Burton of Chaines des Rotisseurs

Don't know about the recipe, but there is a secret taught to me by my flatmate, Joanne Cornwall. DON'T over mix. Take a dessert spoon and give a few mixes. If there are still bits of unmixed flour, don't worry. Just don't over mix and they ought to be hunky dory.  Am I right or am I right? 1 cup whole meal flour 
2 cups bran
 1 tsp baking powder
 1/4 cup sugar
 1 1/2 tsp mixed spice 1 tsp cinnamon
 1 cup milk 
1 tablespoon butter
 3 tablespoons golden syrup 
1 tsp baking soda
 1 cup sultanas
 2 eggs
 Mix together the flour, bran, baking powder, sugar and spices in a bowl. Warm the milk, butter and golden syrup and stir in soda. Beat the eggs together and pour into the bowl with the dry ingredients, Add milk etc and sultanas and stir until just mixed. Place large spoons fulls into muffin pans and bake at 200°C for 15 -20 mins. Makes one dozen.

Memories of Chocolate Fish

... When you pull on both ends, the chocolate fish cracks open and the pink stuff stretches between the halves. Are you sure about that? My memories after half a century are hazy, but I have the feeling that the pink stuff in chocolate fish sort of silently snaps when you break it. Anyway, do you eat them from the head down or the tail up? I prefer the first Nope, it's right about the stretching business. Which way you eat them is up to you, but the most important function of chocolate fish was always as a joke betting stake. When I played pool with my friends and we wanted to bet on the outcome, "the usual stakes" always meant one chocolate fish.

Pies and Other Cravings

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, I have a sudden food craving for those nifty wee apple squares that you get in dairies and tea-rooms, you know the ones with pastry on their tops, and pastry on their bums, and stewed apple on the inside and icing sugar on the top. Or an apple pie or a fruit pie like the ones we used to get at school with a tin- foil tray and cream round the edge of the crunchy crust. And a cherry in the middle. And ham sandwiches made with thin white bread and cut into triangles and hot mustard, too. And a good meat pie from a pie-warmer. A Jimmy's mutton pie with the flaky, crumbly pastry, or a 4'n'20 mince and vegetable pie with peas and bits of carrot, steaming away, just bought from a petrol station on the main drag through Matamata or somewhere, or one of those fabulous Rugby pies from Dunedin, or better yet, a Bolognese pie from Muffin Time in Dunedin, or a steak-n-a-mush from the 24 hour!! Pies, pies, glorious pies. And to finish, a donut. A long donut sliced down the middle, filled with sweet creamy cream, and topped with sweet sticky jam and dusted with sweet icing sugar. Or a gooey custard square. Or a piece (a big piece) of carrot cake, with mountains of cream cheese icing on it. And a big pot of stewy, hot, orange pekoe, PG TIPS TEA!!!!! It must be lunch time.