Laplap

As tradition built it

The breadfruit version specifically, as documented in the Torres and Banks Groups.

Ingredients

• 1 whole breadfruit, for roasting
• as available coconut milk, in two batches: one mixed into the pounded flesh, one heated separately with hot stones to pour over
• as available banana or Heliconia leaf, for wrapping
• as available hot stones, from the earth oven fire

Method

1. Roast a whole breadfruit until the rind blackens and the flesh softens.
2. Remove the rind, core and seeds. Place the flesh on a wooden plate and pound with a pestle until smooth.
3. Add coconut milk and mix thoroughly through the pounded flesh.
4. Lay the pudding onto a wooden dish, traditionally a hollowed coconut shell.
5. Heat stones directly in a separate batch of coconut milk, using a wooden spoon to lift the hot stones into the milk. Pour this hot, stone-heated milk over the pudding.
6. Wrap in banana or Heliconia leaf and cook in the earth oven for several hours, until the edges have crisped and the interior has set.

Notes

[Labouisse 2016, Figure 2 caption, citing Huffman 1996a, b, c and Rivers 1914]

What a modern chef changes

A Big Green Egg cured exactly as an earth oven, and stone-heated coconut milk reproduced with controlled technique

Rungs 1 and 4

Method

1. Fully stabilise a Big Green Egg in indirect mode, deflector plate in, before loading, reproducing the earth oven's even, stored heat rather than a live-flame char. Rung 1.
2. Heat a clean sear stone or heavy steel disc separately and lower it into a second batch of coconut milk in a covered pan, exactly reproducing the stone-heated milk pour rather than simply warming the milk on a hob, then pour that milk over the wrapped pudding before it goes into the Egg. Rung 4.
3. Purée the pounded breadfruit in a high power blender rather than hand pounding alone, for a more even, silkier base before the coconut milk is worked through it.