Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 06, The Root, the Reef and the Earth Oven
Nalot
Vanuatu
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- About 45 minutes to 2 hoursNo source states a time. Comparable dishes in this atlas take this long.
- Researched
- 16 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Fresh breadfruit roasted whole in the fire, the rind, core and seeds removed, the flesh pounded on a wooden plate with a pestle, then mixed thoroughly with coconut milk and laid onto a wooden dish, filled with a further pour of hot, stone-heated coconut milk. Nalot can also be made from taro rather than breadfruit. [Labouisse 2016, the single strongest source on this dish]
As tradition built it
Ingredients
An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.
- 1 fresh breadfruit (or taro, as an alternative)
- coconut milk, in two batches: one mixed into the pounded flesh, one heated with stones for the final pour
Method
- Roast the whole breadfruit in the fire.
- Remove the rind, core and seeds.
- Pound the flesh on a wooden plate with a pestle until smooth.
- Mix thoroughly with coconut milk.
- Lay onto a wooden dish.
- Heat a further batch of coconut milk with hot stones and pour it over the dish to finish.
What a modern chef changes
The pounding stage reproduced by blender, and the two-stage coconut milk pour kept exactly as documented
Rungs 3 and 4
Method
- Purée the roasted breadfruit flesh in a high power blender rather than hand pounding, for a smoother, more homogeneous base achievable in a fraction of the time. Rung 3.
- Heat a sear stone separately and lower it into the second batch of coconut milk, reproducing the specific stone-heated pour rather than simply warming the milk on a hob. Rung 4.
- Finish with a light dehydrator-crisped breadfruit skin shard as garnish, a texture contrast not documented in any traditional source and offered here plainly as this chapter's own addition, not a discovered technique.