Irrepressible recipe for life

The colourful life of Picton woman Margaret McHugh is barely contained in a biography and cookbook, The Real McHugh.

Margaret McHugh pulled a stool up to the bench as a toddler, keen to help her mother in the busy Winton farmhouse kitchen where she was raised.

The skills Margaret discovered at her mother Tina’s apron strings have carried her through her life, with Margaret’s large personality ensuring it would be an interesting journey.

The Real McHugh started as a 200-recipe 200-page cookbook but reflective of the irrepressible woman herself the project quickly grew to 400 pages and more than 700 recipes, interwoven with a life biography sprinkled through the pages like an exotic spice.

The 60,000-word biography traces a life well-lived, from Winton farm life in the 1950s to Margaret’s adventures in London in the early 70s cooking in fashionable pubs like the Hansom Cab and Turk’s Head, the haunt of film stars and celebrities of the time including Mandy-Rice Davies and

Christine Keeler of the infamous Profumo political scandal.

Keeler tried to chat up the innocent abroad, but it all went over the girl from Winton’s head.

Margaret was too busy having a good time and finding the money for tickets to the many headline shows in London at the time.

This period in the book is complemented by photos of the era by the renowned Frank Habicht, with many more photos depicting Margaret’s journey’s across Europe, through to her crazy solo honeymoon, taken on a 60-day journey on the largest container ship of the time, Alexander von Humboldt with twodozen Croatian and Filipino sailors.

Photos include personalities attracted to Margaret’s kitchens and gourmet venues including Lake Wakatipu’s TSS Earnslaw and a maitre’d later found guilty of murder, supporting the colourful anecdotes of people, food and places, with tales of undercover cops at home, political unrest abroad, waitresses found naked where they shouldn’t be.

Blended with the fast-paced biography are recipes and food photos bringing a comprehensive sense of influences shaping Margaret’s culinary skills, flowing through to Margaret and husband Bill’s busy retirement – the word belies the pace the pair maintain with their Marlborough Farmers’ Market days, the luxury Kippilaw homestay in Picton with its cornucopia of gardens that are a study in gardento-plate living with honey drawn from the hive in the garden fresh for the breakfast table.

Much more than a cookbook, The Real McHugh is a degustation of a book suited to its subject and the broad and varied sweep of her life and culinary skills.

The Real McHugh is available online from eat@gourmet-deli. co.nz

South Island book launch events include: Friday December 10 Kippilaw House 5.30 till 7.30pm open to all; Saturday, December 11 garden party Blenheim; Sunday December 12 Farmers Market Blenheim; December 14 Winton Garden Bar; December 15 Otatarta golf club; December 16, Arrowtown garden party;December 19 Farmers Market Blenheim.