Not Just Stew · The atlas · A working atlas of the world's cooking

Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 06, The Root, the Reef and the Earth Oven

Chiliri ngache

Solomon Islands

Chiliri ngache, slippery cabbage cooked by dropping hot motu stones into a covered pot of coconut milk: a heavy dark pot with its lid tilted to one side, revealing tender dark green slippery cabbage in pale coconut milk, a single smooth grey cooking stone visible resting at the bottom of the pot.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time
15 minutes
Researched
16 sources cited
Reviewed
Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked
Not yet cooked and reported

Slippery cabbage, stem removed, is placed into a strong pot with coconut milk, grated ginger and salt; roughly four hot stones from a motu are dropped directly into the pot, the lid closed tightly, and the vegetables cook for fifteen minutes from the stones' direct contact inside the sealed vessel. Served with cassava or sweet potato; can be extended with pumpkin tips, beans, tomatoes, capsicum and fern. [Contributor: Olga Tutua Koito, Zai Na Tina Organic Research and Demonstration Farm, Honiara, in the 2009 Kaikai cookbook, as above]

As tradition built it

Once the stones go in, cook 15 minutes with the lid tightly closed.

Ingredients

Method

  1. Place the slippery cabbage into a strong, heavy pot with the coconut milk, ginger and salt.
  2. Heat stones in an open fire until glowing.
  3. Drop the hot stones directly into the pot.
  4. Close the lid tightly and leave for 15 minutes, the vegetables cooking from the stones' direct heat inside the sealed pot.
  5. Serve with cassava or sweet potato.

Notes

Can be extended with pumpkin tips, beans, tomatoes, capsicum and fern.

What a modern chef changes

The exact mechanism, stated plainly as this chapter's own staging of a genuine traditional technique, since no professional kitchen anywhere was found to have already done this

Rung 2

Method

  1. Sear a food-safe stainless steel disc or a genuinely clean stone to searing temperature on a Big Green Egg, then drop it directly into a covered, heavy-based pan holding the same cabbage, coconut milk, ginger and salt, replicating the fifteen-minute closed-pot mechanism precisely.
  2. Strain the finished coconut milk through a chinois before serving, for a cleaner, grit-free sauce than the traditional stone-in-pot method, which inevitably carries a little ash and stone grit through, allows.
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