Pacific Islands · Side
Palusami
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- 24 young taro leaves (lu), about 500 g
- 500 ml first pressing coconut cream
- 1 onion, 100 g, finely diced
- 8 g fine sea salt
- 6 squares of banana leaf, passed over a flame until glossy and pliable
- 6 sheets of foil, if no breadfruit leaf is to hand
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
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
- Wash the leaves and cut out the stem and the thick central rib, which hold the most oxalate and never soften.
- Stack four leaves in your cupped palm, shiny side outward, and hold the edges up like a purse.
- Stir the salt and onion into the coconut cream, ladle about 120 ml into each leaf cup, and gather the edges over the top to close it.
- Wrap each parcel in banana leaf and then foil, seam upward so nothing runs out, and set them in a roasting tin.
- Bake at 180C (350F) until the parcels smell nutty and a leaf pulled from the middle is limp, black green and falling apart under a fork.
- Rest ten minutes before opening; inside, the cream will have parted into a spoonable curd and clear oil, and it is scalding.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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