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

Laplap sosor

Malekula, Vanuatu

Laplap sosor, Malekula's stone baked laplap with a hot volcanic stone cooked into its centre: a golden brown laplap pudding split open to reveal a dark, smooth cooking stone nestled at its centre surrounded by tender chicken.

Illustration

Time
About 40 minutes to 1 hour 30Our estimate, from comparable dishes in this atlas.
Researched
16 sources cited

A distinct baking method rather than a separate dish: laplap is prepared as usual, but before wrapping, a single glowing hot volcanic stone is placed in the centre of the unbaked pudding, chicken, onion and tomato laid directly on top of the stone, coconut milk squeezed over the whole assembly, the parcel wrapped and baked, the meat cooking from the steam given off where the hot stone meets the coconut milk rather than from direct contact with embers. The stone is removed before serving. Rolf Potts, "Malekula's laplap sosor," a first-person account by a professional travel writer who ate the dish on Malekula

As tradition built it

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

Method

  1. Prepare the laplap paste as usual and half wrap it in banana or Heliconia leaf.
  2. Set a single very hot volcanic stone at the centre of the unwrapped pudding.
  3. Lay the chicken, onion and tomato directly on top of the stone.
  4. Pour coconut milk over the whole assembly.
  5. Close the parcel and bake in the earth oven until the meat is cooked through, the food on the stone cooking from the steam given off where the hot stone meets the coconut milk.
  6. Remove the stone before serving.

What a modern chef changes

The internal-heat mechanism staged deliberately with kitchen equipment, since no professional kitchen anywhere was found to have already done this

Rung 2

Method

  1. Sear a heavy stainless steel disc or cast iron stone to searing temperature on a Big Green Egg, then set it at the centre of the unwrapped pudding with the chicken, onion and tomato on top, exactly as the traditional method does, before dousing with coconut milk and wrapping.
  2. Treat the coconut milk as the actual cooking medium for the meat, not a flavouring: the volume and thickness of milk poured over the stone should be calculated to fully steam the chicken through in the time the parcel spends in the Egg, rather than left to chance.
  3. Rest the parcel briefly before opening, letting the residual heat in the stone finish carrying moisture through the pudding's edges, mirroring what the earth oven's own retained heat would do after the fire itself has died down.
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