H is for Hāngi

Campbell Pitama, Graeme (Grubb), Frank Williams, Grenville Pitama and Arapata Reuben bring up the hangi feast at Tuahiwi.

Te Ngāi Tūāhuriri ūpoko John Crofts stands for the karakia, and in that quiet moment there is time to reflect on the importance of the traditional hāngi in Māori culture.

The main table is piled high with a banquet of hāngi-cooked mutton, chicken, salmon, vegetables and platters that overflow with kōura, mussels, oysters and salads.

Meanwhile, Aroha Reriti-Crofts is busy organising her people – showing them to the tables that line the whare kai at Tuahiwi Marae. The steaming hot hāngi has been two days in the making and everyone is keen to taste the feast chef Jason Dell (Ngāti Wheke) has prepared for the last of TE KARAKA's traditional kai features.

In pre-European times, cooking food in an earthen pit was the norm. Pits were filled with heated stones and food wrapped in harakeke was lowered in, covered in earth and left to steam. Many generations on, some of the equipment may have changed but the methods are much the same. Uncle John is proud Tuahiwi Marae is well known for its hāngi-making skills.

"When you've got a big crowd of people to feed, sometimes 200 or more, the hāngi is the way," says John. It's our traditional meal. And while every marae has its own way of doing things, it's a custom in some of our Tuahiwi families. It's something that goes back generations through one family and they're always the ones we call upon. We have a very good hāngi team here at Tuahiwi, and I'd back them against anybody.

"It reminds me of when we had the Commonwealth Games here in Christchurch in 1974. The Tuahiwi team put down 22 hāngi for the visitors. I remember the Canadians were reluctant to try food that had been cooked underground. They were used to food cooked on a spit. But once they'd tried it they kept coming back for more, and in the end, they wanted Tuahiwi to go to Calgary to lay down hāngi there.

"You certainly need to know what you're doing to be able to lay down 22 hāngi at once."

Outside, Grenville Pitama (Ngāi Tūāhuriri) is proving the point. He and Arapata Reuben are stoking the hāngi fire, peeling and chopping vegetables and organising watercress to put on the hot rocks. Like his father (Tasman Pitama) before him, Grenville is the man who drives the laying down of hāngi at Tuahiwi. He's been making hāngi for 40 years.

"I was probably eight or nine when I made my first hāngi. I put down a lamb chop, a carrot and a potato. My dad taught me all I needed to know. Our family have always been the cooks here at Tuahiwi, and we do a lot of hāngi as a family – my three brothers, Ross, Toni and Campbell, all help and my two sisters, Paula Daniels and Mary Jane Moody, do the desserts and the tables. It's very much a family affair," says Grenville.

"If there was ever a tangi or a big celebration, Dad would get the call and we'd drop everything and spend three days preparing and cooking. It's always been men's work but there's much more to it than just cooking. It's something that makes me think of the whānau who are no longer with us. It brings people together. Everyone contributes and you don't have to say anything because everyone knows each other and everyone knows what needs to be done.

"You certainly need to know what you're doing to be able to lay down 22 hāngi at once."

"And every hāngi brings back memories of past hāngi. I can still remember the tin shack we had that we used to shelter in if it rained when Dad was preparing a hāngi. I can still hear him laughing there – and that was 30 years ago. A hāngi brings people and families closer together. I like that."

On this day, the team is catering for "around 80 people". Pumpkin, kūmara, carrots and potato are all chopped and placed in muslin bags. Jason has prepared and spiced 10 chickens, three joints of lamb, wild pork and two huge salmon. Kōura, mussels and oysters are being laid out in the cookhouse.

The hāngi pit (around 2ft deep) has been fired up and river stones and bits of old railway iron are heating in the flames. Grenville usually uses willow wood because it burns cleanly, leaving little ash and greywacke stones from the nearby Rakahuri (Ashley River), which don't crack in the intense heat. The team has gathered watercress from nearby streams and this is kept wet in buckets before being thrown onto the heated rocks to create steam. It also lines the hāngi baskets to act as a barrier between the food and the stones to prevent the food burning. In the absence of watercress, wet cabbage leaves are a common substitute.

"We usually let the fire burn for about two hours." says Grenville. "Then we take out the big wood, the large rocks and the iron, and we remove as many embers from the pit as possible. You don't want ash and embers in the bottom because it makes the food too smoky."

Once the food has been loaded into wire baskets lined with watercress, the rocks and irons are put back into the pit and covered with watercress. Huge clouds of steam rise and the men work fast, stacking the wire baskets on top, draping them with wet cloths and sacks and then quickly burying the pit in dirt.

Grenville stands back. He looks pleased that everything has gone to plan.


Left to right: Cherie Williams, Clare Williams, Joan Burgman, Michelle Phillpott, Jason Dell, Tania Piripi, Jasmine Burgman, Hoana Williams, Patricia Silk-Anglem and Tokomaru Hammond.

"We'll leave that for about four hours now. By then everything should be cooked beautifully. In the meantime, I'll make the boys a snack. We've got some excellent tuna from Little River that I'm going to smoke over the embers we removed from the pit. It's always good to relax a little after all the hard work. We've been going since seven this morning so everyone is a bit peckish."

Inside, Aroha Reriti-Crofts is also remem-bering a history of hāngi. Her first experience of hāngi was a profound one that has stayed with her over the ensuing decades.

"When I was seven I was in the Tuahiwi kapa haka group that was part of the inter-tribal pōwhiri formed to welcome home the 28th Māori Battalion from World War II on Wellington wharf in 1946. Then we came back to Tuahiwi and the Ngāi Tahu Battalion members came out to our marae for a big inter-rūnanga pōwhiri and hāngi. I can still remember the smells and the tastes from that day. There's nothing like the hāngi. There's no other flavour like it.

"It's probably the most efficient and most hygienic way there is of cooking for hundreds of people and everyone knows their part. Everyone slots in. We're good cooks here at Tuahiwi and that goes back generations. Noel Kemp is one name I remember; and Tasman Pitama, Rex Anglem, Tim Reriti. Our men are noted for their hāngi. And now we have Grenville and Arapata and Joseph Hullen. They're all very good hāngi makers."

"Hāngi is about celebration. You don't have a hāngi for no reason. It is a celebration of our tikanga and our whānaungatanga. From a cultural point of view, ‘hāngi is us'. I don't think we could come up with an improvement on the hāngi – it encapsulates the whole concept of bringing our whānau together."

Paul and his brother hunted with their father in the Paringa area, especially during the

1950s and 1960s, before the road from Haast to Wānaka was completed.

"You never got many red deer north of Paringa," says Paul. "There were a few at the head of Jacob's River – and they're still there – but generally there are a lot more deer around these days, mostly because deer hunters and helicopters have pushed them into new territories."

Deer were first released into the Rākaia region as game animals in the early 1900s. They gradually made their way across the Southern Alps to the West Coast and within 30 years were declared a major pest. Today, says Paul, there are plenty more hunters around to keep the numbers down.

Despite a long hunting history, Paul admits he'd rather eat venison than hunt it. He has some good tips for its preparation.

"Once it's been shot, deer should be hung for three to five days. We always cut the animal into joints – with the skin left on – and hung them in trees with plenty of ground clearance. The wind dried the exposed flesh very efficiently and blowflies or insects could not penetrate the outer crust that formed.

"The meat was always very tender, and we loved it best when it had been made into a campoven venison stew or fried up with onions."

He says the taste of venison always depends on what the animals had been eating and on their age.