Pacific Islands · Dessert
Po'e
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a floral thread lifting the aroma.
Ingredients
- 1 kg very ripe bananas, peeled (about 8)
- 120 g tapioca starch or arrowroot
- 80 g caster sugar
- 1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped
- 1.5 g fine salt
- 20 g coconut oil, for the dish
- 2 banana leaves, to line the dish
- 250 ml coconut cream, chilled
- 12 g caster sugar, for the cream
The skills inside
Mashing & puréeingThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
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
- Heat the oven to 180C (350F). Mash the bananas with a fork to a coarse puree, leaving some lumps, then beat in the tapioca starch, 80 g sugar, vanilla seeds and salt until no dry pockets remain.
- Hold the banana leaves over a flame until they turn glossy and pliable, grease a 20 cm dish with the coconut oil, line it with the leaves and pour the mixture in about 3 cm deep.
- Bake 45 minutes to 50 minutes, until the top is set and matt, the edges pull away from the leaf and a skewer comes out carrying a thick translucent smear rather than raw white paste. 45 min
- Cool to warm or to room temperature so the starch gel can firm; it will not cut while hot.
- Whisk the chilled coconut cream with the 12 g sugar until it loosens into a pouring sauce, cut the po'e into squares and spoon the cream over.
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.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Demi-sec Champagne
- Also Right
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- From the Taps
- Fruited sour
- Zero-Proof
- Coconut water with lime
Tropical sweetness wants bubbles or Chenin’s honeyed acid: richness met with lift, not more weight.
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