Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 05, The Highlands, the Sepik and the Reef
Kaukau na kumu
The Highlands
Illustration
- Time
- 40 minutes
- Researched
- 1 source cited
This is highland everyday eating, not feast food, and it is worth stating clearly that it very likely does not traditionally involve coconut at all: the highlands sit well above coconut palm range, and any coconut in a highland kitchen has always been a good carried up from the coast. This dish is written instead the way the sourcing behind it suggests highland cooks most plausibly built it, with rendered pork fat or ginger rather than coconut cream, and readers should treat any recipe for this dish elsewhere that assumes coconut as likely describing coastal practice under a highland name.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 40 minutes.
Ingredients
- 800 g kaukau (sweet potato), peeled and cut into large chunks
- 300 g aibika or other kumu greens, torn
- 2 tbsp rendered pork fat, or neutral oil if unavailable
- thumb-sized piece ginger, finely sliced
- to taste salt
Method
- Boil or steam the kaukau in salted water until just tender, about 20 minutes, then drain.
- Warm the pork fat in a heavy pan, add the ginger, and cook gently for a minute until fragrant.
- Add the kumu and a splash of the kaukau's cooking water, and cook, stirring, until just wilted, 3 to 4 minutes: overcooking a green this thin loses both its colour and its texture fast.
- Return the kaukau to the pan, toss briefly to coat in the fat and ginger, and season with salt.
What a modern chef changes
The sugars in the kaukau concentrated by fire rather than diluted by water, and the greens shocked to hold their colour
Kit note, not tied to a numbered rung
Method
- Roast the kaukau whole, in its skin, directly in the embers of a Big Green Egg run hot, rather than boiling it, since dry heat against the skin caramelises the tuber's natural sugars in a way that boiling water simply cannot, producing a deeper, almost smoky sweetness once the skin is peeled away.
- Blanch the kumu in heavily salted, rapidly boiling water for no more than 30 seconds, then shock it in iced water before it goes anywhere near the pan, which fixes its green colour and prevents the slightly mucilaginous texture aibika can take on if it lingers in heat, then finish it in the fat and ginger only to warm through, seconds rather than minutes.
- Serve the kaukau split open rather than cut into chunks, dressed with the ginger fat spooned directly into the split, so the contrast between the smoky roasted skin and the pale steaming flesh is visible on the plate rather than hidden.