The World Table

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Pacific Islands · Main

Ika Vakalolo

  • Intermediate
  • 25 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost

aromatic · fiery · rich · bright Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, real fire that builds and stays, with a clean, bright snap.

Ingredients

  • 800 g walu or snapper, cut into thick steaks on the bone
  • 400 ml second pressing coconut cream
  • 250 ml first pressing coconut cream
  • 2 onions, 200 g, sliced
  • 20 g fresh ginger, cut into fine julienne
  • 3 tomatoes, 300 g, roughly chopped
  • 3 bird's eye chillies, split lengthways
  • 8 g sea salt
  • 1 lime, juiced
  • 2 spring onions, sliced

The skills inside

Reducing a sauceSweating aromatics: soft, never brownedThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias

Allergen screen

Found: fish

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Salt the fish steaks and leave them while you sweat the onion and ginger in a spoonful of the first pressing until the onion is soft and clear but has taken no colour.
  2. Add the tomato and split chillies and cook until the tomato has slumped and turned glossy.
  3. Pour in the second pressing, bring it to a bare shiver with no rolling bubbles, and lay the fish in in a single layer.
  4. Poach uncovered, spooning liquid over the steaks, until the flesh parts from the bone at the thickest point and not a moment longer.
  5. Pull the pan off the heat, count to sixty, then stir in the first pressing and the lime; the sauce should thicken to a coating without a single bead of oil showing.
  6. Scatter the spring onion over and serve with dalo or cassava to mop the pan.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Reducing a sauce 95 recipes

  • A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
  • Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
  • The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
  • Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
  • Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.

Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.

Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias 150 recipes

  • Take any three pieces from anywhere in the pile: they match closely enough in every dimension that you would have to measure them to argue otherwise.
  • The cut faces are flat and clean rather than ragged or crushed; leaves and herbs are cut through, not bruised, and the board carries no dark smear where they were.
  • The stated size is the actual size, held against a rule or a known reference rather than called about right.
  • Everything in the pile is the shape that was asked for: no wedges, no half pieces, and no offcuts swept in to avoid waste.
  • They cook evenly, which is the entire point: at the end of cooking nothing is still raw and nothing has collapsed.

Where it goes wrong The knife was dull, or the vegetable was never squared off first, so the pieces vary: the small ones are mush by the time the large ones are cooked, and the dish has two textures where it wanted one.

At the Table

The Pour
Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
Also Right
Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
From the Taps
Crisp lager or pilsner
Zero-Proof
Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea

Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Ika Vakalolo The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Pacific Islands kitchen