On Thursday 14th September, the school was having a hāngi prepared on our field. This happened to be right outside Room 17 so we had a great view all day of what was happening.
DIGGING THE HOLE
It started off with a relatively small hole being dug. We later found out that this is a small-medium hāngi, but they can be dug for cooking up to 2000 meals!
DIGGING THE HOLE
It started off with a relatively small hole being dug. We later found out that this is a small-medium hāngi, but they can be dug for cooking up to 2000 meals!
There were designated seniors to help, but somehow Cairo snuck in there and got a turn!
KITCHEN PREPARATIONS
I had been told by a few girls that there was a pig's head and brain in the Science and Technology room but didn't quite believe it until we came across this! That's the brain in her hand. She told us about 'Māori Fear Factor' where the brain, tongue and eyes are eaten (cooked first!). It might seem a bit grotesque but it's important to know where our food comes from.
Cross section where you can see the tongue.
Then someone pipes up 'Can I touch it?' and next thing I know there's a line of people holding the head!
Carefully organised dishes we laid out and the meals were all measured and counted. These are the vegetarian meal first, followed by the meat meals. I was a little skeptical about how this was going to cooked all shoved in together but had to trust in the process.
BACK AT THE PIT
Matua showed us the tools he used - shovel for digging, spade for creating the flat sides and railway irons for cooking. traditionally these would have been volcanic rocks.
Matua showed us the tools he used - shovel for digging, spade for creating the flat sides and railway irons for cooking. traditionally these would have been volcanic rocks.
And the most important tool - a leaf blower! This helps add oxygen to the fire (and also blow the smoke away from us watching!).
The helpers were throwing more fuel onto the fire to get it really hot!
Then we needed to wait for the flames to burn down.
CREATING THE STEAM OVEN
Once the fire was low enough, wet cabbage leaves were thrown into the pit.
The large baskets of carefully stacked food was put into the hole...
and the wet sheets...
and sacks were quickly placed over the top to create the steam oven.
Finally the pit was covered in dirt again. This part of the process shouldn't take any more than 10 minutes or the oven will lose it's heat.
At around 5.30pm the food had been dug up and was ready to be served. I was tasty! Sorry, no photos of that; it disappeared too quickly!
What an amazing day and amazing experience for use all to be involved in. During the day we had also read an article on Puia Hāngi - a hāngi using hot pools to cook the food instead, so it was a great comparison.