kakae (kah-kye)

means food! food is an important part of Vanuatu culture (and I think most cultures) so I want to share some common kakae with yall – assuming anyone reads this thing besides my mom – over the next two years. the kakae diaries, volume 1: lap lap

We are super lucky to have access to endless fruit and nut trees here. The soil is rich, so when a fruit is in season, it’s everywhere! I was lucky enough to arrive at avocado season… which means I get to open up a plump one every morning for breakfast. Not half bad.

While the fruit has been an easy plus, it’s taken some time getting used to aelan kakae, or island food. I’m sure there will be plenty kakae posts in the future, but here’s a taste of what I’ve been tasting so far

The national food of Vanuatu is laplap. I’ve eaten this concoction almost every day, sometimes twice a day! This doesn’t mean that it’s my favorite food, it just means that it’s put on the plate in front of me. And then everyone stares until you eat or they talk in language about how you don’t like aelan kakae. It goes like this:

You take some green bananas (or manioc, taro, breadfruit) and grate them down into a mush consistency. You cut down some banana leaves and lay them down, two or three in a row, then two or three on top of those, crossing them the other way. It helps to have you and someone sitting on the ground across from with a few feet to separate you. Allow the space between to become the area of masterpiece. After you’ve laid out the two layers of banana leaves, you must rewind a few steps and collect some coconuts. Once you crack them open, you grate and milk them, putting some on top of the leaves. After, slop on the [insert filling of choice] mush and cover that with the rest of the coconut milk. Use the ends of the banana leaves to wrap the future laplap up tight and rewind again!

So an hour before this, you need to make an earth oven. You layer wood with stones and cook a fire until the wood burns away the stones are extremely hot. There are special round stones used for earth ovens here, I think they get them from the riverbed. Now you remove half of the hot stones and put the wrapped up coconut leaf packet into the earth oven and cover it with more stones. You let this cook for an hour or two while you’re at church and when you return, it’s ready! It tastes pretty mushtastic, but I’ve actually gotten so used to it that it ain’t half bad. I like when the mamas get a little create and add in onions and garlic. Sometimes you get lucky and they add in chicken or beef! Sometimes you don’t get lucky and they don’t take out the bones.

   



chicken laplap pictures from alexis & steve – for more reading, they’re at http://www.invanuatu.com



oh, food! I’ll write volume 2 soon enough