Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 13, One Reef, Two Flags
The ahimaʻa Sunday roast
Tahiti
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 6 hours
- Researched
- 17 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Pork, chicken, fish, breadfruit, taro and feʻi laid together over the heated stones, wrapped and steamed for hours, traditionally the Sunday family gathering meal that grew directly out of LMS-era Sabbath observance. Reported cooking times vary, 4 to 6 hours for the full pit oven, around 2h30 for a simplified stovetop version, a variation this chapter states rather than resolves. [EDT ENGIE blog; Wikipédia, Ahi maʻa]
As tradition built it
4 to 6 hours in the pit.
Ingredients
- as available pork
- as available chicken
- as available fish
- as available breadfruit
- as available taro
- as available feʻi (mountain plantain)
Method
- Dig a pit 50 to 80cm deep and around 2m across. Lay wood and dried coconut husk at the bottom, topped with porous volcanic stone, and burn down until the stones glow.
- Lay the pork, chicken, fish, breadfruit, taro and feʻi on a bed of green banana leaves over the stones.
- Cover with more banana leaves, then damp sacking or a woven leaf mat, then earth or sand, sealing in the heat.
- Leave 4 to 6 hours, until everything is fully cooked through.
Notes
Reported cooking times vary: 4 to 6 hours for the full pit oven, around 2h30 for a simplified stovetop version, a variation this chapter states rather than resolves.
What a modern chef changes
A Big Green Egg fully stabilised in indirect mode to reproduce the pit's even, stored heat, exactly as this atlas's OC-06 documented for Vanuatu's laplap.
Rung 1
Method
- Fully stabilise the Egg in indirect mode, deflector plate in, before loading, reproducing the earth oven's even, stored heat rather than a live-flame char.
- Wrap each protein and starch separately in banana leaf, rather than one single parcel, so each element reaches its own correct doneness rather than the slowest item dictating everyone else's cooking time.
- Hold the Egg at a genuinely low, controlled temperature over a long single cook rather than compressing it toward the 2h30 stovetop shortcut, since the pit's real virtue is time, not heat.