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Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia · Volume 13, One Reef, Two Flags

Rukau

The Cook Islands

Rukau, Cook Islands cooked taro leaf with onion and coconut cream: a layered casserole of dark green taro leaf and soft diced onion in a baking dish, thick white coconut cream bubbling between the layers.

Illustration

Time
45 minutes

Close kin to Tahiti's fafa, both descending from the same wider Polynesian taro-leaf-and-coconut idea; no source consulted makes this comparison explicitly, and it is offered as our own observation. Two named methods from one Rarotonga cook. As a wrapped parcel: leaves washed, central vein removed, cupped to form a well, filled with diced onion, optional sliced meat or fish, salt, pepper, coconut cream poured in, then gathered and wrapped in foil or tied with string; baked upright at 350°F/177°C for 45 minutes or more, tested for tenderness. As a baked casserole: layers of rukau and diced onion in a 9x13in dish, two cans of coconut cream poured over, baked 45 to 55 minutes until the leaves are fully wilted and the cream is bubbling. [www.ck/food/0202.htm, Mereana Hutchinson, Rarotonga]

As tradition built it

45 minutes or more at 175°C (350°F).

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

  • rukau (taro leaves)
  • onions, diced
  • coconut cream
  • optional meat or fish, sliced or diced
  • to taste salt and pepper

To wrap

  • as needed banana, wild hibiscus or cordyline leaves and string, or foil

Method

  1. Wash the rukau and cut the central vein out of each leaf.
  2. Cup some leaves in one hand to make a well in the centre.
  3. Put onion and meat in the well, season with salt and pepper, and pour coconut cream into the middle.
  4. Bring the tops of the leaves together into a bundle and seal it in foil. Banana leaves should be cut to size and passed over heat to soften before tying.
  5. Make one large bundle or small single servings. Stand them upright in a baking dish.
  6. Bake in an oven heated to 175°C (350°F) for 45 minutes or more.
  7. Open one bundle to check that the rukau is tender and the onion and meat are done. Serve with more coconut cream if you like.

Notes

A second traditional method wraps individual portions: rukau leaves cupped to form a well, filled with diced onion, optional sliced meat or fish, salt, pepper and coconut cream, then gathered and wrapped in foil or tied with string, and baked upright at 350°F/177°C for 45 minutes or more, tested for tenderness.

The method is Mereana Hutchinson's, of Rarotonga, on the Cook Islands' www.ck site; she gives no quantities, and says the bundles were once tied with hibiscus bark and cooked in the ground oven. The 9 by 13 inch casserole with two cans of cream that this record carried is not hers: it is from an unattributed page of the Migrating Kitchen Trust's 2012 Cook Islands exhibition. RNZ's rukau stews 20 young leaves slowly with six lamb chops about 40 minutes.

What a modern chef changes

The parcel method chosen over the casserole for a cleaner presentation, and the coconut cream given the reduction rukau's flat cream base is otherwise missing.

Rung 4 and 5

Method

  1. Build the wrapped-parcel version rather than the casserole, one portion per parcel, for individual plating and a cleaner ratio of leaf to cream than a communal dish gives.
  2. Reduce the coconut cream by a third in a separate pan before it goes into the parcel, concentrating its flavour so the finished dish does not read as diluted the way a straight can, baked, tends to.
  3. Finish under a hot grill or briefly on the Big Green Egg's direct side once unwrapped, to lightly catch the top of the leaf and cream, a texture contrast the fully sealed foil parcel cannot give on its own.
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