Aotearoa & Maori · Side
Oven Hāngī Vegetables
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with wood-smoke running underneath, richness that coats and comforts, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 800 g kūmara, in 4 cm chunks
- 800 g floury potatoes, in 4 cm chunks
- 600 g crown pumpkin, in 6 cm wedges
- half a green cabbage, plus its outer leaves
- 2 onions, halved
- 40 g butter
- 300 ml water
- 8 g salt
- 1 large square of muslin, wetted
The skills inside
Charring over open flameSteaming: basket, leaf and lidThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blacken the outer cabbage leaves directly over a gas flame or on a dry pan until they blister and smell of smoke; this is the only honest smoke a kitchen can give you.
- Line a deep roasting tin with the charred leaves, pack in the kūmara, potato, pumpkin, onion and cabbage quarters, salt through the layers and dot with the butter.
- Pour the water down the side of the tin, lay the wet muslin over the vegetables and clamp on a lid or doubled foil so nothing can vent.
- Bake at 160C (320F) until a skewer meets no resistance in the kūmara and the cabbage beneath has gone translucent and sweet, about 90 minutes. 90 min
- Leave it sealed off the heat for ten minutes, then lift the vegetables out on their leaves and spoon the tin juices over.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Charring over open flame 31 recipes
- The surface met the fiercest heat available (flame, a broiler, or bare hot metal) with nothing between them, and it shows as true blistering and blackening rather than gentle, even browning.
- The char matches the surface’s fate: where it will be eaten, black sits in patches over deep colour with every face having had its turn, and where the skin is to be peeled away, it may go to an even black, because the char there works on the flesh below and then leaves with the skin.
- It smells of smoke and toasted surface with no acrid edge that stings the nose: acrid means it went past, and acrid does not cook out.
- Just under the char it is cooked (softened, steaming, collapsed, or puffed, whichever the dish wants) because the flame did the surface and the trapped heat did the rest.
- A taste carries the smoke without mouthfuls of ash: the black that flakes away is a seasoning, not a layer.
Where it goes wrong It was left on one face too long or held too close, so one side carbonised to ash while the rest stayed raw, and the smell turned acrid, which follows the dish through every later step and cannot be seasoned away.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño or Muscadet
- Also Right
- Assyrtiko or Vermentino
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
The Atlantic’s whites beside the sea’s own liquor: salinity in sympathy, acid keeping everything bright.
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