Māʻa tinitō

As tradition built it

Serves 4. The beans soak overnight; about 2 hours' cooking.

Ingredients

The beans and pork

• 300 g dried red beans
• 500 g pork belly
• to taste soy sauce
• to taste salt and pepper

The vegetables

• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 200 g long beans
• 10 taro or chard leaves

The noodles

• 200 g macaroni
• 150 g rice vermicelli or rice noodles

To finish

• 4 spring onions, chopped

Method

1. Soak the red beans overnight in cold water.
2. Next day rinse them and put them in a large pot with the pork belly. Cook at a bare simmer 1 hour 30.
3. Lift out the pork, dice it, and separate the fat from the lean.
4. Chop the onion and garlic. Cut the long beans in two or three and roughly chop the leaves.
5. Render the pork fat in a frying pan, then strain it into a bowl and keep it.
6. Fry the lean pork in the pan with soy sauce, salt and pepper. Add a little of the bean liquid and stir.
7. Meanwhile cook the macaroni in boiling salted water, and the vermicelli alongside.
8. Stir-fry the long beans in the pork fat with the garlic and tip them into a bowl. Stir-fry the leaves in the same pan.
9. In each bowl, arrange red beans, vegetables, macaroni, vermicelli and pork. Scatter with spring onion.

Notes

Described by multiple sources as one of the most popular everyday dishes in French Polynesia today.

The recipe is Marie Liu's, a cook in Papeete, for Arte's Invitation au voyage, as 750g publishes it; she chops the onion but never says where it goes. RecettesTahitiennes cooks the beans 2½ hours, braises the pork with dark soy and a tablespoon of sugar about an hour, and serves it with coquillettes and pota. Province Sud in New Caledonia serves its version with soy and vinegar drizzled over. No source offers brown sugar at the table.

What a modern chef changes

The beans and the pork given the separate, correct cooking each actually needs, then combined, rather than the pork simmered into the beans from the start.

No single named rung, a straightforward two-component separation.

Method

1. Cook the pork belly sous vide low and slow, then finish it hard on the Big Green Egg for a rendered, properly tender result with a real seared crust, rather than fried-through pieces alone.
2. Cook the beans separately to a controlled, still-holding-shape texture, seasoning the cooking liquor itself with the soy and onion rather than adding them only at the frying stage.
3. Offer the vinegar and sugar as a proper table condiment, spice-ground where relevant, keeping the diner's own seasoning choice, which is genuinely how the dish is eaten, rather than pre-deciding the balance in the kitchen.