Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 12, The Umu, the Mission and the Sunday Table
ʻOta ʻika
Samoa
Illustration
- Time
- 4 hours
- Researched
- 29 sources cited
Raw fish, commonly tuna, is cut into pieces and cured in citrus juice, then mixed with coconut cream, onion and chilli. This is the same dish family as Tonga's ʻota ʻika and Niue's ʻota ʻika, documented at Manuiz in Alofi, and the citrus-and-coconut method is one continuous Pacific technique under slightly different national names.
As tradition built it
About 4 hours: 3 to cure, 1 to settle.
Ingredients
The fish
- ½ kg snapper or tarakihi, diced to thumbnail size
- enough to almost cover lemon juice
The cream
- 2 cans Samoan coconut cream
- 1 whole white onion, diced
- 2 tbsp, then to taste salt
The vegetables
- a handful chives, chopped
- 3 to 4 firm red tomatoes, diced
- 1½ cucumbers, peeled and diced
- 1 tsp, optional chilli flakes
To serve
- to serve taro
Method
- Rinse the diced fish and submerge it in lemon juice, almost covered. Refrigerate 3 hours.
- Meanwhile prepare the onion, chives, tomatoes and cucumbers in separate bowls.
- Shake the cans of coconut cream well and pour the cream into a bowl.
- Add the onion. Salt it, tasting often, until it is strongly seasoned, and massage the onion into the cream.
- After 3 hours, move the fish to the serving bowl and stir in the cream.
- Add the vegetables and stir gently, with chilli flakes if you like.
- Settle it in the fridge 1 hour and serve cold, with taro.
Notes
The recipe is Timēna Apa's, a Samoan cook, from RNZ's recipe collection (12 January 2019). Warren Elwin's Samoan oka in the NZ Herald cures trevally and tarakihi 45 minutes, drains off the lemon, quick-pickles the cucumbers with sugar and salt, and uses far less cream with spring onion and lemon zest.
What a modern chef changes
After Michael Meredith's geoduck oka at Metita.
Rung 2
Method
- Cure the protein in citrus alone first, timed to firm the flesh without over-curing it, before any coconut touches it. Rung 2.
- Fold the coconut cream in only at the point of service, not during the cure, so its fat does not blunt the citrus.
- Consider a non-fish protein that behaves the same way raw, following Meredith's own logic rather than treating fish as the only correct base; this is offered here as the chapter's own extension of a documented technique, not as an assertion that any other named chef has done the same.
Notes
Meredith's version replaces the fish with geoduck clam harvested from Golden Bay, New Zealand, which he says gives "a beautiful texture and flavour that works well raw," paired with fresh grated coconut and finger lime. The Denizen, as above