Hell’s Gate recipes and memories

As a family we used to manage Hell's Gate in Rotorua - a volcanic visitor attraction. Mum and Dad were the first to run commerical hangis (food cooked in steam and usually eaten with the fingers) in Rotorua in the evenings, mostly with international tourists in bus parties. This was the 1960's to 1970's. Us kids would plait flax baskets in the shop during the day, and help with getting the food ready: chicken and mutton, peeling potatoes, setting tables. All the food was cooked in big steel containers in the steam boxes... natural steam, piped through stainless steel milk vats where the food would sit with big tight covers over it.

Then the food was lifted out and served into the flax baskets for the tourists to eat at long trestle tables with their fingers.

Dessert was always this Steamed Pudding, cooked in covered basins also in the steam, and served in wedges in the same flax baskets, with great piles of whipped cream.

Hell's Gate Steamed Pudding

1 ½ tbsp butter

1 ½ tbsp sugar

1 ½ tbsp marmalade

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking soda

Enough milk to mix.

Put sugar, marmalade and butter in the oven to melt the butter a little, then add flour and soda, and milk to mix (pouring consistency).

Steam 1 hour

Serves 4

You can just double the recipe for more.

Often on the mornings after we'd done a hangi, Dad would cook up the left-over pudding for breakfast.
Thick slices of the steamed pudding were fried in butter and served with runny cream. It would have a crisp crust on it and of course for those of us with dairy addictions, New Zealand in the sixties and seventies was the place to be. Or, at least, at my Dad's breakfast table.