This issue finds our roving Eat SPASIFIK columnist Robert Oliver in Germany. Secretly he’s dreaming of Samoa, where he’s spent August and September. He fills us in on what he got up to: eating, the Teuila Festival, and voyaging and learning about cooking on the open seas.
I had the privilege of attending the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany as part of the New Zealand contingent representing the Pacific. It involved cooking a Pacific-centred menu for 100, for a “Kai Pasifika” dinner that was hosted by NZ Deputy PM Bill English for the political and business community. The dinner was sold out weeks ahead. There was real interest in the Pacific which I hadn't seen first-hand before.
Just prior to all this madness, I was in Samoa for two glorious months. Luckily the pace is a little less hectic there. I was busy though, researching and gathering recipes for Me’a Kai’s follow up: a Samoan cookbook. That’s all I’m going to say about that for now.
What I will say is that I had amazing food the whole time I was there. There was lots of catching up with friends, eating at all the restaurants, trying lots of different dishes. It was a long but utterly enjoyable process!
Many visitors to Samoa still say the food is bad; they’re not going to the same Samoa that I went to. I had fantastic food in every single place I visited. There’s great restaurant food everywhere, you just have to know where to find it. There are particular places you go for particular dishes, particular specialties. So you go to this place for the tuna, this place for the oka and poke, etc.
While I was there I met up with chef Joe Lam, who’s a good example of the sort of culinary things going on. He’s an incredibly super nice guy, kind of the opposite to Gordon Ramsay. He’s really passionate about Samoa and is doing some really interesting stuff.
He was at Scalini’s in Auckland, and also the SPASIFIK food columnist for five years. While people would go there for pizza, Samoans started going there because they knew he was there and they would ask him for Samoan food. Well now he’s got Scalini’s just outside of Apia and he’s doing some really innovative gourmet Samoan food, fusing Italian traditions and local ingredients. As well as pasta, too.
I was lucky enough to be in town for the annual Teuila Festival this year, which is always a lot of fun, and I was asked to be a judge at the Miss Samoa pageant. Although it’s easy to criticise beauty pageants, or see them as superficial, it’s a serious position in Samoa because it sits within Samoa Tourism. In effect she must be an asset to the country, so it’s an important post.
The girl who won was someone that we all unanimously felt was capable of being a great, elegant ambassador for Samoa, someone able to stand up to the scrutiny of being seen as representative of her country. Funnily enough, she has been on Shortland Street in the past so she knows what it means to be in the glare of cameras.
Samoa Tourism also has a cultural village next to the tourism office during the festival. They have a number of fales, one for food, one for tatau, one where the traditional healers sit, one for fabric printing, and there’s loads of dancing going on. They do a big umu demonstration as well, so people can come and see how it’s done. And everyone eats it too, of course.
In Samoa umu is usually eaten on Sundays, after church. I remember the last time I was there. When I arrived it was really smoky everywhere. I had coffee with my friend Shaddow Fau and said, “what’s with all the smoke everywhere?” And she replied, “well, everyone is doing their umus.”
Speaking of food, I had an amazing experience just before I left. The Samoan vaka that was part of the Pacific Voyagers, the Gaualofa, returned to Apia after the conclusion of their journey at the Festival of Pacific Arts in Honiara. It’s going to start doing charters and we were lucky enough to spend some time onboard.
Lolesio Patolo, their permanent chef, told us all about how they cooked during their cross-Pacific voyages. There were seven vaka in total and all the chefs know each other and meet up; they have a chef culture all of their own because they’ve picked up know-how from the different Islands they visited and the nature of cooking is completely different on the open sea.
The kitchen is about as big as a matchbox and the key is keeping food sustainable and edible over long voyages. Each time they came into port they would stock up on supplies and particularly on foodstuffs that are edible at different stages of their development, to extend their usage over time.
They also have to be very mindful of water, so it’s used multiple times. Water used to rinse beans for example would then be used to steam something else, and then used again to rinse something else, and so on. And Lolesio would make dishes that use very little additional water, because it was needed for drinking.
In effect, this is old knowledge that is being resuscitated and maintained. You’ve got to remember that the original voyagers developed fermenting as a way of preserving food, which may well have been the mechanism that allowed the Pacific to be populated; like how the discovery of vitamin C allowed trans-Atlantic crossings and expansion into the New World. So some of this food knowledge is what made survival possible.
For the record, Lolesio made us tuna baked with coconut, and palusami. It was incredible.
I wrote in Me’a Kai about being out on the ocean and what it does to you, what it means as a Pacific person. Lolesio said that his voyaging with the vaka had added whole new layers to his Samoan-ness, to be doing what his ancestors did all those years ago. The role of the person cooking is so much more than just making grub. It’s bringing people together. The whole function of food gets very extreme, the mealtimes become very significant. They’re not occasions of over-eating though, because people are very conscious of supply, but they are significant in terms of that togetherness.
I don’t know that I could do it, but in terms of in-depth chef thinking it’s pretty intense. I could do it if it was wi-fi! I’m very curious about the food aspect though. It makes me want to experiment with a few things…watch this space perhaps!
It seems fitting to end with a recipe that makes the best use of the bounty of the sea, so here’s Sashimi, Samoa style for you! Enjoy.
SASHIMI SAMOA WITH MIKI AND KAPISI VAI
(Serves 8)
Raw fish dishes abound in the Pacific and thanks to the world’s embrace of Japanese cuisine, including sashimi, Pacific Island raw fish preparations are coming out of home kitchens and onto restaurant menus. This Samoan version of sashimi is served as a starter with miki, a Samoan chilli and coconut sauce. Like miti in Fiji, miki is a chilled, allpurpose sauce and is great with cooked and chilled lobster, prawns or crab.
Sashimi
• 1kg sashimi-quality asiasi (yellowfin tuna)
• sea salt and pepper
• 1 quantity miki (see below)
• 8 cups trimmed watercress
• cup Coconut Passion Dressing (Blend together tablespoon grated ginger with cup passionfruit juice, then slowly whisk in 2 cups virgin coconut oil (or extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil) and season with salt and pepper)
Miki
• 4 cups coconut milk, chilled
• 2 red chillies, finely diced
• 1 cup very finely chopped spring onion
• 1 cup diced, seeded tomato
• salt
Chill eight serving plates. Cut the asiasi into logs about 5 cm across, as one would for sashimi. Sprinkle liberally with sea salt and pepper.
To make the miki, remove the rich, heavy upper layer of the chilled coconut milk (discard the rest) and place in a bowl. Add the chilli, spring onion and tomato and season with salt.
To serve, slice the tuna thinly against the grain, sashimi style, and place four or five slices on each serving plate, slightly off centre.
Toss the watercress with the Coconut Passion Dressing and place next to the fish.
Spoon the miki over the tuna and serve immediately.
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