Venezuela is the last of our South American countries, and, thanks to this T-shaped country, we’re saying goodbye to the continent in style.
Let’s toast the 1,700 miles of coastline with a tizana [Recipe], a fruit punch made with tons of cut up fruit. Let’s cheer for the southeastern highlands with a sip of chicha, fermented corn drink. Let’s dance along her northern mountains with a splash of rum. And let’s slip along the northwestern lowlands with a thick and creamy glass of cocada (a.k.a. coconut milkshake).
Morning view of Kukenan and Roraima tepuis, from Tëk river camp (river visible in the image), in Gran Sabana, Venezuela. Photo by Paolo Costa Baldi.
After we’ve drunk our fill, we can gobble up a a few arepas, topped with avocado chicken salad. These are the quintessential snacks of Venezuela, and can be filled with a million other things, too.
Virgen de la Paz in Trujillo, Venezuela. Photo by Photocapy.
If you want something more substantial, let’s pull up to a plate of Pabellón Criollo, a platter of black beans, slow cooked beef, rice, and plantains. This is the national dish of Venezuela, a favorite in all regions of the country.
Playa La Salina, Margarita, Nueva Esparta, Venezuela. Photo by Wilfredor.
Of course, I like the idea of keeping things simple, too. Perhaps we can end the day with folded cachapas [Recipe], a pancake of sorts made with fresh corn and topped with cheese. Speaking of cheese, a sprinkling is most definitely s a happy element of Venezuelan cooking. The most popular is Queso de Mano, a soft and creamy cheese like mozarella which makes its way on the cachapas and the arepas.
Salto Angel (Angel Falls), official name: Kerepakupai merú. Photo by Rich Childs.
And let’s not forget the sweet side of Venezuela. Perhaps a slice of bien me sabe will do the trick: a milk and coconut soaked cake topped with meringue. Or then again, maybe you’d rather marquesa, a no-bake cookie and chocolate layered cake. Either way your smile will be bigger after some stovetop travels to Venezuela.
Maps and flag courtesy of the CIA World Factbook.
What are your favorite dishes from this beautiful country?
The Catatumbo Lightning in Venezuela. Photo by Thechemicalengineer.
This week is a special week. We’re only five countries away from finishing cooking the world. Four years ago, I was afraid I wouldn’t make it to the letter “B,” let alone V!
But I’m stubborn.
And I love learning.
And I’m … stubborn.
If all goes according to plan, we’ll be done in less than 2 months!
This is an appropriate time to take a pause… to take a week to breath in and settle into the idea of the finish line being so close. For many of us, this is coming much too quickly.
In my family, we think this is a great time, though, too.
We’ve spent four years celebrating the world.
Four years teaching our daughter to love her world.
Four years with all of you.
As you may have noticed, we’re having a HUGE party at Philbrook Museum this weekend called the Global Table Experience. There’ll be samplings from 175 countries, prepared by 16 chefs and cooking schools in the Tulsa area. Never before has food from so many countries been in one place at one time.
It’s going to be ridiculous.
Here’s the thing. We saved 21 countries for all of you to cook, so that you can Experience the Adventure from wherever you are!
We’d love for you to claim one of them, cook it and share photos and stories from your experience with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even via email:
[dropshadowbox align=”center” effect=”lifted-both” width=”500px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]China, Congo, Cte dIvoire, Ethiopia, Seychelles, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.[/dropshadowbox]
Use #globaltable when sharing your culinary adventures, so you can be included in the day’s hashtag!
People at the event will be using #globaltable, too, so you’ll be able to see what everyone’s tasting!
It’s going to be great…
Together we will cook and celebrate the ENTIRE WORLD in one day!
I can hardly believe that what took me four years will take us, as a community.. a single day!
Anything truly is possible.
Now, for a little more fun. Let’s have a giveaway.
I’ve so enjoyed getting to know you all on the blog, but would love to reach out and chat with one of you.
I can’t wait to find out who! (UPDATE: Congratulations to CHRISTINE who won the giveaway! Thank you to all who entered)
Are there recipes of loved ones long since gone that you continue to make?
I asked this question on our Facebook page the other day, and several of you shared touching comments about your family recipes . Valerie keeps her family recipes in a box. Whenever she sees the handwriting of her loved ones who’ve since passed, she says it feels like a “tap on the shoulder.” But, for some of you, it goes beyond the recipes. Theresa says she still uses her husband’s grandmother’s canning supplies. How wonderful it must be to eat jellies out of the same jars grandma did!
This week, when we made Cousin Alfred’s meat sauce for the Vatican City, I felt like I could taste the past. Like I was closer to him and those memories of standing in his kitchen, watching him cook. I also felt like I could taste my heritage, even though I’ve never been to Italy, let alone Vatican City.
And we were fortunate enough to share the meal with our neighbors. Our neighbors of Scottish and German descent.
This much I know: our country is as much a stirring pot as it is a melting pot. We interact, brush up against, swirl into, each other’s cultures all the time.
What is your heritage, and how do you keep it alive?
THIS WEEK’s FOOD:
The Pope’s Fettuccine | Fettuccine alla papalina [Recipe]
What I loved most about this dish:
Forget the pomp and circumstance; for a fancy pasta dish invented for a pope, this really is quite straightforward to make. The Parmesan melts from the heat of the pasta, the egg sets, and the result is a cheesy sauce punctuated by bits of proscuitto and cracked pepper.
A fun tip I learned: you can make the cheese and egg mixture ahead of time, cover with saran and refrigerate until needed. A nice trick if you’re making this for a small dinner party. Just set it out on the counter while the pasta boils (about fifteen minutes) to take the chill off so it thickens properly
Our neighbor said this sauce was the ‘best thing that ever happened to him.’ Cousin Alfred knew what he was doing: the depth of flavor in this meat sauce is unreal. There’s umami, from the the mushrooms, good ol’ fashioned browned bits from the meat and onion, and so much more. Yes, it makes a big batch, but freeze or the leftovers in dinner-sized portions. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.
When I ask my mother how I’m related to Cousin Alfred, the answer usually goes:
“Well…” and then there’s a contemplative silence. I can see her running through all our different relations, high up on the family tree, doing mental gymnastics to connect one branch to another.
Eventually, she comes out with “I think he’s my mothers, mother’s cousin’s”… and then, either she trails off, or my attention span wanes because, really, all that matters is that he is family, one way or another.
Alfred lived until he was 104 years old. I think much of his long life was due to making homemade ravioli and meat sauce. He taught me when I was about Ava’s age, or maybe a little younger.
We made his spinach & pork ravioli for Italy and, today, we continue to keep Alfred’s memory alive with this sauce.
Mom made sure to write down his recipe for meat sauce. But the title “meat sauce” doesn’t do it justice. This is meat sauce, yes, but it’s also filled with a half dozen sweet Italian sausages, beautiful minced mushrooms (the fancy kind), and the best tomatoes Italy has to offer. There’s also a richness that comes from the best olive oil you can muster and sweet, sweet onion.
In the end, all these beautiful ingredients cook down into a rich, hearty sauce – enough to fill a very large pot.
Case in point? This represents 1/3 of the sauce over 2 lbs of spaghetti:
Look at Ava! She’s already licking her chops in anticipation!
We shared Alfred’s legacy with our neighbors… guys we’ve affectionately dubbed “the beards.” (We don’t call their girlfriends that, though.
This sauce is a great crowd-pleaser.
Robert here said, upon tasting it, “this is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Even Ava agrees (Pssst…leave a comment if you see what’s wrong in the picture below!)
Note: There’s something humbling about the fact that I have less motivation than a 104 year old man. Alfred made this tomato sauce with muscle. In those days, the basil leaves were whole in the canned tomatoes, and he plucked them out by hand after simmering. He pureed the tomatoes with a food mill. He ground the meat with a meat grinder. This sauce was an exercise in love, as all cooking is, but more than that, it was his heritage – his taste of the old world. Of Italy.
This is my modernized version. One that relies heavily on a wooden spoon and pre-ground meat.
3, 28 ounce cans of San Marzano Peeled Tomatoes
2, 6 ounce cans of tomato paste
1 ounce dried mushroom blend (porcini’s if available), reconstituted in 1 cup hot water
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp allspice or cloves
salt & pepper
6-8 sweet Italian sausages
Method:
Fry the chopped onions in a 1/2 cup of olive oil until soft and sweet, then add in the beef and brown it. While I’m sure you could use whatever onions you want, Alfred specified Bermuda, and we loved their sweet flavor in this recipe.
Pour on the canned tomatoes, the tomato paste, the chopped mushrooms, allspice, and nutmeg.
Give everything a stir, then top with the raw sausages. Just plunk them in whole. Alfred says so.
Cover and simmer for 4 hours.
Remove the sausages and, when cool enough to handle, slice into half moons. Break up the tomato chunks, if there are any, and stir the sausage back into the sauce.
Ideally, Alfred says you should wait to eat this until the next day so the flavors have time to mingle. He left his batch of sauce covered, on the counter overnight. I think this would encourage bacterial growth, so I suggest you refrigerate your sauce overnight.
The next day you’ll have a love story between pasta and sauce.
Oh. And the Parmesan cheese, while purely optional with a sauce this good, is a nice touch.
The title "meat sauce" doesn't do it justice. This is meat sauce, yes, but it's also filled with a half dozen sweet Italian sausages, beautiful minced mushrooms (the fancy kind), and the best tomatoes Italy has to offer. There's also a richness that comes from the best olive oil you can muster and sweet, sweet onion.
The title "meat sauce" doesn't do it justice. This is meat sauce, yes, but it's also filled with a half dozen sweet Italian sausages, beautiful minced mushrooms (the fancy kind), and the best tomatoes Italy has to offer. There's also a richness that comes from the best olive oil you can muster and sweet, sweet onion.
Before I knew about Papalina-style noodles, I thought Carbonara was the bees knees. But it turns out that Papalina is the richer version of carbonara. It uses cream, Parmesan, and prosciutto instead of the pancetta or guanciale (pig jowl) from in carbonara.
One peppery bite in, and mac and cheese is a bland, happily forgotten memory.
Let me be clear. My translation of the Italian is not entirely accurate.
Papalina means skullcap, not pope. But I dubbed this recipe the Pope’s Fettuccine because it was literally created for Pope Pius XII in the late 1930’s.
And guess what he wore?
A skullcap.
Pope Pius XII in 1924, photo from the German Federal Archives.
Anyway, there are many versions of how the recipe was invented. The most common, is that the pope wanted to enjoy a very typical Roman meal. The chef in charge decided that carbonara was very Roman… but he decided that he wanted to make a special version, just for the pope.
So Papalina was born.
Beautiful, peppery papalina.
It makes for a fancy but easy dinner party meal.
It truly is the grown-up mac and cheese.
Tip: If the pancetta is too pricey, don’t let that stop you from the spirit of this dish. Use some ham instead, which makes it much more of a weeknight, budget-friendly dish.
1 lb cooked fettuccine noodles
fresh cracked blacked pepper, as desired, but preferably a lot.
Method
Whisk together the eggs, heavy cream, and parmesan cheese. Set the mixture aside.
(Tip: use the best quality cheese you can afford: it will melt better and make for a creamier pasta dish).
Boil your noodles, drain, and toss them with a bit of oil or butter to keep them from sticking.
Meanwhile, in a large skillet, fry the onion in butter until totally soft. Typically, the onion in this pasta dish doesn’t take on color. Be sure to adjust the heat lower so that the onion doesn’t take on color as it cooks.
Add in the proscuitto and heat it for a few moments until fragrant.
Toss hot, drained noodles and turn off the heat.
Dump the egg mixture onto the hot noodles and toss thoroughly with fresh cracked pepper (or you can let your guests add their own).
As you stir the ingredients together, the eggs will thicken and the cheese will melt, all thanks to the residual heat of the pasta.
Be sure to add a lot of pepper. That’s half the fun of papalina.
There’s not much better in life than creamy, cheesy noodles with salty prosciutto, and plenty of fresh cracked pepper.
And that’s the truth.
The Pope's Fettuccine | Fettuccine alla papalina
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Papalina is the richer version of carbonara. It uses cream, Parmesan, and prosciutto instead of the pancetta or guanciale (pig jowl) from in carbonara.
Papalina is the richer version of carbonara. It uses cream, Parmesan, and prosciutto instead of the pancetta or guanciale (pig jowl) from in carbonara.
Whisk together the eggs, heavy cream, and parmesan cheese. Set the mixture aside. Boil your noodles, drain, and toss them with a bit of oil or butter to keep them from sticking.
Meanwhile, in a large skillet, fry the onion in butter until totally soft. Typically, the onion in this pasta dish doesn’t take on color. Be sure to adjust the heat lower so that the onion doesn’t take on color as it cooks.
Add in the proscuitto and heat it for a few moments until fragrant.
Toss hot, drained noodles and turn off the heat.
Dump the egg mixture onto the hot noodles and toss thoroughly with fresh cracked pepper (or you can let your guests add their own).
As you stir the ingredients together, the eggs will thicken and the cheese will melt, all thanks to the residual heat of the pasta.
Be sure to add a lot of pepper. That’s half the fun of papalina.
Recipe Notes
Tip: use the best quality cheese you can afford: it will melt better and make for a creamier pasta dish.
Ava is the first to tell me what should be dinner. Even growing up with this Global Table Adventure since she was 7 months old, Ava asks for the same thing night after night: noodles. (Interestingly, her second most common request is avocado sushi). This week I got to tell her yes to noodles.
Twice.
There’s nothing wrong with carb-loading, right? Especially when eating the Vatican… right? I doubled up on pasta so I can share two amazing sauce recipes with you. One I learned from my distant cousin Alfred, another I learned this week thanks to a Pope!
The Pope’s Fettuccine | Fettuccine alla Papalina [Recipe]
A simple pasta dish invented in the late 1930’s for Pope Pius XII, made with softened onion, prosciutto, a swirl of cream, plenty of good quality parmesan, and as many twists of fresh ground pepper as you can handle.
Ground beef, sweet Italian sausages, rich mushrooms, and the best Italian tomatoes around. This is the sauce to end all sauces, perfect ladled onto spaghetti.
Light streaming into St Peter’s Basillica, Vatican City, Rome, Italy. Photo by Jeb.
The Vatican City is 0.17 square miles of gilded glory tucked inside Rome, Italy.
It’s 0.53 miles by 0.65 miles.
How small is that, you ask? Let’s put this in perspective.
To walk across the country is like taking two laps around a standard jogging track. Which is why there’s no country smaller. And yet, Elizabeth Gilbert said that, if a country could be summed up in one word, the Vatican’s word would be power.
Map of the Vatican City designed by Francesco PIRANEO G.
So who exactly is a citizen of Vatican City?
Almost all of Vatican City’s 839 (2013 est.) citizens either live inside the Vatican’s walls or serve in the Holy See’s diplomatic service in embassies (called “nunciatures”; a papal ambassador is a “nuncio”) around the world. The Vatican citizenry consists almost entirely of two groups: clergy, most of whom work in the service of the Holy See, and a very few as officials of the state; and the Swiss Guard. (Wikipedia)
Peek over her walls, all you’ll find only one restaurant in the Vatican City. I have to admit I love Andrew Zimmern’s bold idea to triple this number.
It amazes me on many levels that Italy has not one, but two countries nestled inside her borders. San Marino was delicious, but somehow starting out this week in the Vatican City feels more… concentrated.
Angels Bridge and Basilica di San Pietro. Photo by Andreas Tille.
When I asked you all what dishes you recommended we try, several suggested the Eucharist, which is fine for a Sunday, but not quite the I-can-cook-this-at-home sort of recipe I was looking for.
At the end of the day, the best thing seemed to look for Roman recipes. After all, Vatican City is inside of Rome.
Turns out this area is known for amazing, thin crust pizza, peppery spaghetti alla carbonara (which got it’s name from being so covered with pepper, it looked like coal), good old fashioned meat sauce [Recipe], and spaghetti all ajo e ojo (which is little more than oil, garlic, and hot chili pepper).
All this was fine, well, and good. But not exactly what I was looking for.
Then I figured out the key. I had to find out if any of the recipes were adapted for the pope. Turns out there was.
Spaghetti alla cabonara became linguine alla papalina [Recipe] in the late 1930’s. More on that in the days to come.
Until then, have a bit of Tiramisu or a slice of ricotta cake.
Last week someone asked me if I was going to cook with rocks because that’s how they cook in Vanuatu. It was a fair question and one that, about two years ago, would have gotten me all sweaty and stressed out.
I would have asked myself if I was treating the people of Vanuatu fairly by not digging a pit in my back yard, scavenging large rocks from local hiking trails, then cooking the meal beneath our Oklahoma red dirt.
But now, three years and seven months into this Adventure, my answer comes without any regret.
No.
Over the last years, this blog has helped me figure out who I am and what I am capable of.
Right now, I have at my disposition a standard stove/oven combo. When the kitchen gets too hot, I have an old gas grill in the back yard. Once in a while we use my chimnea to roast marshmallows.
In Vanuatu, you work with what you have. You celebrate what you have. And that’s no different here, in my little corner of middle America. I am here to cook the world in a way that makes sense for my family. Because, if I had to dig a pit to make my dinner, we’d probably not be cooking Vanuatu this week.
Would I like to do all that? You bet. But right now, I’m a mom, a wife, and an author working on her first book. It is an incredible honor and challenge.
Someone else recently asked me how I have time to cook the world.
To be honest, some days I’m not sure I do have the time.
But by putting one foot in front of the other, simplifying wherever possible, I’ve created a Global Table Adventure even the busiest family can undertake.
Tell me about them and be sure to TAG the photos with #GlobalTable so I can see.
At the end of all this, I’d like to share some of your beautiful feasts here, on the blog.
I’d also like to know: what are your roadblocks to cooking the world? What stumbling blocks keeps you from trying new recipes? Or are you cooking the world just fine? Let’s help and encourage each other. Add your comments below.
The sweet potato is so nice when simmered in coconut milk. The bitter leaves add a nice contrast and welcome dimension. Ava wasn’t sure, but, since sweet potatoes are her favorite root vegetable right now, she warmed up to the dish pretty well.
What I loved least about this dish:
Rolling the simboro proved to be rather difficult, but I learned from a reader’s comments to immerse the leaves in hot water for a minute before rolling. They’ll be much less likely to crack and break. I’m definitely trying this next time!
By pulling together many popular ingredients from Vanuatu, we were able to taste the fresh flavors without actually getting on a plane. While this might not be found in the remote villages, something like this is definitely a coastal, city offering. Finding the pre-shredded papaya made my day, and ensures this one will go into the regular rotation!
What I loved least about this dish:
Not much! Just be sure to use plenty of salt and plenty of lime juice.
What do you do when you’re running low on inspiration? Do you sip a cup of tea, take a walk, paint, write a poem, cook something? Or do you freeze up, unable to create?
Writing a book for the last several months has had an interesting effect on my brain-space. The book is incredibly daunting and takes all my creative juices. I find myself sopping through my house like a wrung out rag.
I once read that we are only capable of making a certain number of decisions each day. After that time, we’re pretty much worthless. Sometimes, after a particularly long book writing session, I can’t even decide what pajamas I want to curl up in to decompress.
Thankfully, the world is a resource. It’s a constant inspiration. Remember, even on those nights you’re too tired to pop popcorn, the world is there, whispering sweet nothings to you. Inviting you to try something different.
And so here we are… today, Vanuatu is doing the whispering.
Since I spent yesterday grating a mountain range of sweet potatoes, today I’m going to show you a shortcut to the flavors of Vanuatu. Green Papaya salad uses many of the most popular flavors in Vanuatu, most notably the grated coconut and the green papaya.
The peanuts and the fresh lime juice give the recipe a nice balance of flavor.
A hit of hot chili pepper would be delicious, too.
Green papaya crunches like carrot, but tastes mild like a cucumber. If you can make your way to a large Asian market, you’ll probably be able to find some perfectly pre-shredded for you. While there, grab a bag of frozen grated coconut. Moist and naturally sweet, it tastes completely different from the dry papery shreds we find in the baking aisle.
With those two purchases, there’s hardly anything left to do.
1 1/2 lb shredded, green papaya
1 bunch green onions, sliced
12 ounces frozen shredded coconut, defrosted
1 1/2 cups chopped peanuts
juice of 2 limes
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
salt & pepper
Method:
Toss all ingredients together in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper, as desired.
Make sure to use lots of salt, to balance out the lime juice.
Enjoy somewhere light and fresh and bubbly… somewhere like Champagne Beach in Vanuatu.
Champagne Beach, North Santo in Vanuatu. Photo by Jae Lee.
Green Papaya Salad
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Green papaya crunches like carrot, but tastes mild like a cucumber. If you can make your way to a large Asian market, you’ll probably be able to find some perfectly pre-shredded for you. While there, grab a bag of frozen grated coconut. Moist and naturally sweet, it tastes completely different from the dry papery shreds we find in the baking aisle.
Green papaya crunches like carrot, but tastes mild like a cucumber. If you can make your way to a large Asian market, you’ll probably be able to find some perfectly pre-shredded for you. While there, grab a bag of frozen grated coconut. Moist and naturally sweet, it tastes completely different from the dry papery shreds we find in the baking aisle.
It only takes five minutes of grating sweet potatoes to make me wax poetic on the brilliance of the food processor.
Friends, I certainly don’t have biceps of steel. Most days, I don’t even see my biceps beneath the jiggle.
Today’s recipe for Simboro gave them a work out.
I first learned about Simboro from a reader named Benjamin who spent some time in Vanuatu. This comforting side dish is made with a grated starch, like cassava, sweet potato, or yam, wrapped in “island cabbage,” then simmered in coconut milk.
As much as it pained my muscles… I treated the grating like a ritual – a rite of passage – a way to imagine myself in Vanuatu telling tourists “THIS way to the beach.”
Thirty minutes later, only my pride had kept me from pulling out the food processor. Because, the fact of the matter is that the sweet potato could just as easily be run through the grater attachment on your food processor, then ground finer in the processor bowl to achieve similar results… leaving you more time for silly eating.
“I’m not looking” almost always gets Ava interested in taking a bite. Reverse psychology.
Note: Variations on this recipe include taro, cassava, plantains, or even yam. If you substitute one of these starches for the sweet potato, the cooking time may vary. Also, keep in mind that the cassava needs to have the tough, woody stems removed before grating. I tried spinach and chard in place of the island cabbage and found the chard to be slightly easier to deal with.
Serves 10-12 (as a side)
Ingredients:
1-2 bunches island cabbage (you can substitute large spinach leaves or chard), cleaned & stems removed
2 1/2 cups peeled & grated sweet potato
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
13.5 ounce can coconut milk
Method:
Find a windswept beach for your kitchen.
Nguna from Emua Wharf. Photo by Phillip Capper.
Grate the starch into a large bowl. Ideally, you want a fine grater without holes, as I used. First, clean up will be easier, second, you won’t lose any sweet potato to the “holes.”
When you have 2 cups grated starch, mix it well with salt and pepper.
Spoon the starch into the leaves, then wrap them into little bundles. Since I didn’t have island cabbage, I used spinach and rainbow chard.
As a result, I had to modify the method – instead of bundling and twisting, I did more of a stuffed grape leaf: folding the sides over the sweet potato,then rolling the whole thing up. I found the method tricky, so make sure you have extra leaves on hand, to account for accidents.
You’ll note that I have a mix of the spinach and rainbow chard.
Lay the bundles tightly in a medium pot.
Pour on the coconut milk, cover and simmer very gently until done (20-30 minutes for the sweet potato).
If you boil them, it they may unroll, so be sure to keep the simmer gentle!
BUT, either way, they’ll still taste like sweet potatoes in coconut milk, which is… in a word… yum.
Sweet Potato Simboro
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Variations on this recipe include taro, cassava, plantains, or even yam. If you substitute one of these starches for the sweet potato, the cooking time may vary. Also, keep in mind that the cassava needs to have the tough, woody stems removed before grating. I tried spinach and chard in place of the island cabbage and found the chard to be slightly easier to deal with.
Variations on this recipe include taro, cassava, plantains, or even yam. If you substitute one of these starches for the sweet potato, the cooking time may vary. Also, keep in mind that the cassava needs to have the tough, woody stems removed before grating. I tried spinach and chard in place of the island cabbage and found the chard to be slightly easier to deal with.
1-2bunchesisland cabbage(you can substitute large spinach leaves or chard), cleaned & stems removed
2 1/2cupssweet potatoes, peeled & grated
1tspsalt
1/2tsppepper
13.5ozcoconut milk
Servings: people
Units:
Instructions
Grate the starch into a large bowl. Ideally, you want a fine grater without holes, as I used. First, clean up will be easier, second, you won’t lose any sweet potato to the “holes.” When you have 2 cups grated starch, mix it well with salt and pepper.
Spoon the starch into the leaves, then wrap them into little bundles. Since I didn’t have island cabbage, I used spinach and rainbow chard.
As a result, I had to modify the method – instead of bundling and twisting, I did more of a stuffed grape leaf: folding the sides over the sweet potato,then rolling the whole thing up. I found the method tricky, so make sure you have extra leaves on hand, to account for accidents. You’ll note that I have a mix of the spinach and rainbow chard.
Lay the bundles tightly in a medium pot. Pour on the coconut milk, cover and simmer very gently until done (20-30 minutes for the sweet potato). If you boil them, it they may unroll, so be sure to keep the simmer gentle!
“A woman is like a stick you throw.” Proverb from Vanuatu
On the surface, this proverb from Vanuatu does not exactly sound flattering. But it turns out it is. In fact, it’s a term of endearment.In Vanuatu, there’s a plant called nanggalat, which takes root and thrives wherever you throw it – even on the jagged edge of a cliff. Comparing a woman to a thrown stick – in Vanuatu – is saying she can adapt and thrive anywhere. (Source)
It’s all about context.
This week we’re making two recipes from Vanuatu to learn more about this culture. Enjoy and, when it’s all over, may we all be more like thrown sticks.
Recipes and meal review will be posted throughout the week.
Simboro [Recipe] Grated sweet potato wrapped in leaves, then boiled in coconut milk. These tidy little dumplings make a lovely side dish in the autumn.
Green PawPaw Salad [Recipe] A tropical salad brought to you by Vanuatu’s most popular produce: shredded green papaya, coconut, green onion, and fresh lime juice. Done and done.
Port Vila treescape, Vanuatu. Photo by Phillip Capper.
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But what about those who live in wood, bamboo, and palm leaf houses? In the 80 islands that make up Vanuatu, the hot, humid weather makes for an entirely different living experience, one where – traditionally speaking – thatched roofs keep out the rain instead of tile.
Eton nakamal (marae), Efate, Vanuatu. Photo by Phillip Capper.
While stones aren’t exactly thrown, in Vanuatu they are heated and piled on top of food. This traditional method is typical of Oceania. Lap lap the most notable of dishes, made with either yam, cassava, plantain, or sweet potato that has been grated, wrapped in banana leaves (with coconut milk), then roasted under hot stones.
Commercial agriculture, North Efate. Photo by Phillip C.
Reader, Benjamin, who spent some time in Vanuatu, told me more about the dish, how they add chicken on top of the grated starch:
…they take a couple of the hot rocks, each about the size of a baseball, rinse them of ashes and then place them in the center of the Laplap. During cooking this creates a well like crater in the center. They then heap the chicken on top of the rocks in the center, and sometimes spread a few pieces over the top of the dish too […] They then sprinkle some coconut milk over the top, perhaps 4oz, before wrapping the whole parcel up in the banana leaves.
It reminds me of a more complex version of Solomon Pudding, which we made when we cooked the Solomon Islands. Except theirs is eaten hot, straight from the fire.
A variation on lap lap is Simboro [Recipe], which is starch stuffed leaves, simmered in coconut milk instead of roasted.
I found listings of other popular recipes in Vanuatu, mostly in the World Cookbook for Students. One dish is a green papaya salad [Recipe], another stuffed taro.
People of Vanuatu. Photo by Graham Crumb.
The end of the meal almost always ends with fruit: something like watermelon or papaya (also known as pawpaw).
Have you ever eaten food out of a fire pit? When I was a girl, we baked potatoes in the campfire embers, as well as banana boats. Great memories!
