Ask Iain (Huey) Hewitson and his cousin Jazz their favourite food from their grandmother's kitchen and they answer as one: tattie scones spread with melting butter.
Iain, an Australian celebrity chef, and Jazz, who runs Scotia Bar Bar and Bistro in Dunedin, attribute their love of food to time spent with their Scottish grandmother, Annie Hewitson, who lived in Abbotsford, Dunedin, when they were children.
She had a hard life, emigrating to New Zealand in the 1920s, bringing up seven children at the mining town of Denniston on its West Coast plateau, then moving to Abbotsford in the late 1930s, Iain said.
"She had a tough time, but when it came to us grandchildren she'd mellowed a lot."
He remembers the huge breakfasts when he stayed with her - sausages, black pudding, eggs, tattie scones, bacon, and thick porridge plopped into a bowl and sprinkled with salt. It was a legacy of feeding a family of miners, he said.
Somehow her love of cooking rubbed off on some of her grandchildren.
Iain's brother Don was at the forefront of the early wine-bar scene in London in the 1970s, opening The Cork and Bottle, Methuselah and others highly regarded at the time.
Iain got into the hospitality industry a harder way, washing dishes while attempting to be a professional musician, but went on to open restaurants in Melbourne and now makes television shows such as Huey's Cooking Adventures.
A few years ago Jazz and his brother Paul opened Scotia at the Dunedin Railway Station, and recently moved it to Stuart St. Another brother, Lindsay, runs a Monteith's bar and restaurant in Timaru.
Iain was visiting Dunedin recently, the first time in 30 years, for a family reunion. He grew up in Levin in the 1950s, and used to spend several weeks in the summer holidays in Dunedin with his grandparents.
"She was a terrific cook and the fussiest buyer. Fridays would always be shopping day. She'd come in on the train and go all over Dunedin - this butcher, that fishmonger. I was the bag-carrier. She used to give the fishmonger a hard time when she was buying kippers. She would come in the door and he'd say, 'I've got some out the back for you'.
"We talk about that all the time now, the importance of buying good things and being fussy about it. My God, she was fussy about what she bought. It didn't matter if they were just bacon bones or kippers. They had to be spot-on."
Saturday was baking day and both men remember the cakes, pastries and bread that used to come out of her oven. She had a deft hand - a handful of this and a handful of that, Iain said.
She cooked on a coal range, and Jazz remembers her gnarled old hands held near the hot plates or in the oven testing if they were hot enough.
Every time they make Cullen skink, a smoked fish soup, at Scotia, it reminds him of the wonderful smells of her kitchen. Some of the Scottish dishes on his menu, such as hotch potch, Cullen skink and tattie scones, are based on her recipes.
Her accent remained broad and they found it difficult to understand her sometimes. She pined for Scotland and in the evenings she would nod off over a wee Drambuie listening to Jimmy Shand on the radio, he said.
Annie Grarland Lindsay Hewitson (nee Riggans), was born at New Cumnock, in Ayrshire, Scotland, in 1894 and died in 1975.
TATTIE SCONES
Annie Hewitson's recipe. -
200g mashed floury potatoes
50g plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder (optional)
Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and stir in mash gently to make a dough. Make dough into balls and gently roll out to form 5mm-thick circles.
Heat a girdle or heavy frying pan to medium hot and smear with butter. Cut scone into quarters and transfer to girdle and cook for 3-4 minutes per side until golden brown.
These are often eaten with just butter or butter and jam straight off the girdle or can be equally good served cold. In Scotland, they are often re-fried as part of a cooked breakfast.
