Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 08, The Reducción, the Fiesta and the Fishing Stone
Tinaktak
CHamoru, Guam
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 44 sources in the brief
Finely chopped meat, usually beef, cooked in coconut milk with tomato and green beans, served over rice. Named for its own technique: taktak is an onomatopoeia for the sound of meat being chopped or tenderised.
Vegetable and seafood, Lenten, variants exist. The San Francisco restaurant Prubechu, run by the CHamoru chef Shawn Naputi, offers the clearest documented contemporary reinterpretation found anywhere in the research: Naputi describes his own version as "a technique of braising a protein in coconut milk and lemon with aromatics," finished with housemade egg noodles, cherry tomatoes, button mushrooms and green beans, moving the dish from a rice-plate staple to a composed restaurant course while keeping its core cooking logic, coconut milk and citrus braise, intact.
As tradition built it
Simmer 5 minutes once the coconut milk is in.
Ingredients
The beans
- 1.2 litres salted water
- as needed ice water
- 480 ml fresh green beans, in 5cm pieces
The tinaktak
- 1.4 kg (3 lb) minute steak in bite-sized pieces, or lean minced beef
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 cans stewed tomatoes, chopped, with their juice
- 4 tbsp Dashida seasoning, or salt to taste
- ½ tsp black pepper
- 2 cans coconut milk
- optional donne' (hot pepper)
To serve
- to serve hot steamed rice
Method
- Bring the salted water to a rapid boil and set up an ice bath. Cook the beans in small batches until barely tender, move them straight into the ice, then drain.
- Sauté the meat, onion and garlic in a medium pan over a medium-high heat until the meat is browned and the onion translucent.
- Add the tomatoes with their juice, then stir in the beans.
- Add the Dashida and pepper, taste and adjust.
- Stir in the coconut milk slowly. Lower the heat and simmer 5 minutes, until heated through; do not let it boil.
- Add donne' if you like, and serve over hot rice.
Notes
The recipe is from Annie's Chamorro Kitchen, a Guam cook sharing her family's recipes. Chef Lenny Fejeran of Pika's Café, in a Guam Visitors Bureau piece, fries onion, garlic and cherry tomatoes, browns minced beef and drains it, adds raw beans and coconut milk for 1 to 2 minutes, and finishes with lemon juice off the heat. Candelaria T. Rios's chicken tinaktak in the 1985 Guam Cookbook also uses lemon.
What a modern chef changes
After Naputi's own documented restructuring of the dish, credited by name.
Method
- Braise the meat in coconut milk and lemon with aromatics, following Naputi's own stated method, at a controlled temperature rather than an open simmer.
- Finish with housemade egg noodles rather than rice, exactly as Prubechu serves it, treating the dish as a composed plate rather than a rice-bowl topping.
- Add cherry tomatoes and button mushrooms toward the end of cooking only, preserving their own texture against the long-cooked beef, rather than cooking them down with the meat throughout.