Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 13, One Reef, Two Flags
Poʻe
Tahiti
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour
- Researched
- 17 sources cited
A baked starch pudding; the Tahitian name possibly means "pearl." Banana poʻe method: oven at 180°C, crushed ripe banana mixed with sugar then flour to a thick batter, baked in a buttered mould 20 minutes, then cut, sugared, and coconut milk poured over. Other varieties use pumpkin, papaya or mapé, and poʻe is served as a side to grilled fish as often as it is served as dessert. [qooq.com]
As tradition built it
45 minutes to an hour at 200°C.
Ingredients
- 1 large bunch, about 2 bowls mashed very ripe bananas
- 1 bowl tapioca flour (tapioca starch)
To serve
- to taste, a small bottle or more coconut milk
Method
- Heat the oven to 200°C.
- Mash the bananas to a smooth purée with no pieces left.
- Add the tapioca flour and mix to an even batter with no lumps, thick but still supple.
- Pour it into an ovenproof dish and spread it evenly.
- Bake 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the depth of the dish and the bananas, until set with a slightly firm surface.
- Rest about 5 minutes. Pour fresh coconut milk over the warm po'e and cut it into portions.
Notes
Other varieties use pumpkin, papaya or mapé, and poʻe is served as a side to grilled fish as often as it is served as dessert.
The recipe is Chefs de Tahiti's, the French Polynesian chefs' platform; it uses no sugar. Tehina de la Motte, in Femmes de Polynésie (20 September 2017), adds Tahiti vanilla and dark rum and bakes 3 glasses of banana to 1 of cassava flour 30 minutes at 180°C. Julien Gué cooks the bananas first to a compote with vanilla, a third starch to two thirds compote, an hour in a hot oven, sugar at the table. The previous "200g flour" was a mistranslation of farine de tapioca from qooq.com, a metropolitan recipe app.
What a modern chef changes
The pudding's own two-stage coconut milk pour reproduced with controlled technique, exactly as documented for Vanuatu's nalot in OC-06.
Rung 4 and 5
Method
- Purée the crushed banana in a high-power blender before mixing in the flour, for a smoother, more even batter than hand-crushing alone gives.
- Heat a clean sear stone separately and lower it into the finishing coconut milk in a covered pan, reproducing the stone-heated pour that the ahimaʻa version of this dish would traditionally receive, rather than simply warming the milk on a hob.
- Dehydrate a few thin banana slices to a crisp as garnish, a texture contrast not documented in any traditional source and offered here plainly as this chapter's own addition.