Cook Islands Food

My favourite foods of the Cook Islands — breadfruit chips, fresh fish, and a feast cooked underground.

Cook Island food is the best in the world. Sometimes Cook Islands cuisine gets monotonous, but you can invent dishes — in my case, a crossover of western and Polynesian cuisine. My favourite food is breadfruit, especially as chips, drizzled with salt and vinegar. Serve that with fresh barbecued fish and, in the cool season, salad, and you’ll have a meal fit for a king (ariki). Young fresh coconut juice would have to be the best drink in the world, especially on a hot day.

The volcanic soil of Aitutaki provides tropical fruits and vegetables, while the lagoon provides seafood. In the wet season, greens are hard to come by except fiji ruka, which is similar to silverbeet. Seaweed is nutritious and tasty. Chillies are plentiful, and when green vegetables are difficult to grow in the wet season, chilli plant leaves are edible. The good news is that tropical fruits are in good supply at that time of year.

Island night feasts

Food feasts are massive amounts of good Polynesian food, some cooked underground, including: taro, sweet potatoes, yams, and poke — a glutinous dish wrapped and baked in leaves. There’s pig (wild pigs have less fat than those fed coconuts), chicken, fish, and goat — the way Aitutakians cook goat has still got to be my favourite red meat. Sauces include coconut sauce, sometimes slightly fermented, with chillies added. Bananas of different varieties, oranges, mangoes, custard apples, durian, star fruit and more round out the table, depending on the season. Island nights often have a good variety of Cook Island foods.

If you’re invited to a Cook Island food feast, it’s customary to let the chief eat first. When I saw that the chief always went for the fish head, I learned that other cultures have some features better than western culture — now, when I suck fish brains and eyes at dinner parties in Perth to the shriek of guests, I just say: get over your cultural hang-ups, you’re missing the best part of the fish. It’s also customary for Cook Island food to be eaten with fingers.