Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 12, The Umu, the Mission and the Sunday Table
Takihi
Niue
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour 30
- Researched
- 29 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Documented at Cafe Fana in Fonuakula, where it appears inside a toasted focaccia sandwich alongside umu-cooked pulled pork and house pickles. NZ Herald/Viva, "The Thrill Of A Great Niuean Restaurant Isn't Just The Food. It's The View" No source found in this research gives a full, gram-quantified traditional recipe; this chapter reports the documented mechanism honestly rather than inventing false precision.
As tradition built it
About 1 to 1½ hours
Ingredients
- 1 to 2 medium taro, peeled and thinly sliced
- 1 medium papaya, peeled and thinly sliced
- 800ml coconut cream
Method
- Peel and thinly slice taro and papaya.
- Layer the sliced taro and papaya in a baking dish.
- Pour coconut cream over the layered fruit and root.
- Bake until the taro has softened fully and the papaya has broken down into the cream.
Notes
Reported method, general rather than precisely quantified.
What a modern chef changes
This chapter's own staging of takihi's layering logic, since no chef-driven or fine-dining precedent for this dish was found anywhere in this research.
Rungs 1 and 4
Method
- Slice the taro and papaya to a controlled, even thickness on a mandoline, giving a more consistent layered set than a hand-cut version achieves.
- Bake in a Big Green Egg run indirect, reproducing the umu's even, stored heat over a controlled window. Rung 1.
- Reduce a portion of the coconut cream separately before the final pour, giving the finished bake a firmer set at the edges without drying the centre. Rung 4.