Pacific Islands · Main
Povi Masima
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, aromatics blooming from the first bite, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg beef brisket, in one piece
- 2 L water
- 250 g coarse sea salt
- 60 g soft brown sugar
- 10 black peppercorns
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 kg taro or green banana, peeled in gloves (raw taro sap carries the same needle crystals as the leaf and will burn bare skin)
- 300 g young taro leaves, or 300 g spinach
- 150 g onion, sliced
- 400 ml coconut cream
The skills inside
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
- Boil the water with the salt, sugar, peppercorns and garlic until it runs clear, then chill it to fridge temperature; warm brine on raw meat is the one way this goes wrong.
- Submerge the brisket, weight it under a plate and hold it at 4C (39F) for 5 days, turning it daily.
- Rinse the meat, cover it with fresh cold water, bring it to the boil and tip that water away, then do it a second time before simmering in fresh water for 2.5 hours until a skewer slides out clean. 300 min
- Drop the taro into the pot for the last 40 minutes. 40 min
- Simmer the leaves and onion in the coconut cream with the lid on and the heat bare, adding a splash of water if it tightens, for the full 45 minutes it takes the needle crystals in taro leaf to break down. Do not cut that time short. Serve the sliced beef over them. 45 min
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.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
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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