COPPERWhat is the national dish of Nauru?
The national dish of Nauru is coconut fish: raw fish, usually tuna, cured in lime juice until the flesh turns opaque, then mixed with coconut milk or cream, onion, tomato, cucumber and chilli and served cold. It has no legal status, but it is the dish named as Nauru's national dish by Wikipedia and by food guides alike.
What is coconut fish?
Coconut fish is raw fish that is never heated. Lime juice turns the outside, then the whole of each cube, opaque, and coconut cream rounds off the acid.
Nauru calls it simply coconut fish. Elsewhere in the Pacific the same dish is kokoda, ika mata or 'ota 'ika, which is why our recipe uses the name kokoda. It is traditionally served in a half coconut shell or on a banana leaf, either alone or with white rice.
The family name tells the method. In Polynesian languages ota means raw and ika means fish, and the Tongan, Tahitian and Samoan versions all marinate the fish briefly until the surface turns opaque before the coconut milk goes in. The dish is not limited to fish: prawns, crab, mussels and octopus are prepared the same way.
How coconut fish is made
The only hard rule is freshness: the fish must be caught the same day, because nothing in the dish is cooked. Our recipe uses 500 g of tuna or reef fish, and the acid cure, not heat, is what cooks it:
- Cut the fish into 2 cm cubes.
- Cure with the juice of 6 limes and 1 teaspoon of salt, chilled 30 minutes to 2 hours, until opaque right through. Fifteen minutes leaves the centre raw.
- Drain and throw the lime juice away. Kept in, it makes the dish sour and watery.
- Dress with 300 ml of thick coconut cream, then diced onion, tomato, cucumber and red chilli.
- Chill 20 minutes and serve cold, in a half coconut shell if you have one.
A quicker, barely cured version
Some cooks prefer the fish barely cured. Our quicker raw-tuna recipe leaves 600 g of sashimi-grade tuna in the juice of 4 limes for 20 to 30 minutes and no longer, so the outside of each cube turns opaque while the centre stays raw and red. Most of the juice is drained, then 400 ml of coconut milk and the diced vegetables go in, and it is served straight away.
The margin for error is smaller: with less acid doing the work, only fish fresh enough to eat raw will do. Draining matters just as much as in the longer version, because lime juice left in the bowl splits the coconut milk and keeps firming the fish.
The same family of dishes runs across the Pacific. Fiji's kokoda is one of the best known: see the national dish of Fiji.
What Nauruans eat today
Like their island neighbours, Nauruans eat a lot of seafood and foods made from coconuts and pandanus fruit, and coconut milk is used in a great many dishes. In Nauruan, the pandanus is called epo and the coconut palm ini.
Pandanus is preserved as edongo, a paste cooked in an earth oven, dried in the sun and rolled in leaves; dried further and pounded, it becomes ekareba, a flour mixed with water as a drink. Kiribati makes the same preserve as te tuae: see the national dish of Kiribati.
Modern Nauruan food also shows two outside influences. The Chinese are the largest foreign community, and Chinese restaurants are common, most of all in Yaren. Australian and other Western food is everywhere too, and Wikipedia lists iced coffee as the national drink.
Most Nauruans are Christians, and Christmas is celebrated with cakes made from banana and coconut. Coconut mousse is kept for special occasions.
Nauru has little room for farming, so much of its food is imported and canned goods are everyday ingredients; Spam, which arrived during the Second World War, is still common. Cooking in an umu, an earth oven, survives for special occasions, and some traditional recipes still wrap food in taro leaves before it goes into the pit.
Other dishes to know from Nauru
Taro-leaf parcels are cooked on Nauru as across the Pacific. Thirty young taro leaves are trimmed of their central stems, stacked five to a parcel, filled with chopped onion, corned beef and thick coconut cream, then wrapped in banana leaf. Traditionally they steam for 2 hours in an umu, an earth oven on hot stones; without a pit, they bake covered at 180°C for 1 hour 30. The leaves must be completely soft, because raw taro leaves irritate the mouth.
You will find all three recipes on our page about the food of Nauru and the neighbouring kitchens in our guide to Pacific Island food.
The recipes
Bua
MukQuestions people ask
Is coconut fish raw?
Yes. The fish is never heated: lime juice turns the flesh opaque, and it is then dressed in coconut milk or cream. Use only fish caught the same day.
Is Nauru's coconut fish the same as kokoda?
It is the same family of dish. Fiji calls it kokoda, the Cook Islands ika mata, Tonga 'ota 'ika and Nauru coconut fish.
What fish is used for coconut fish in Nauru?
Usually tuna. Reef fish works too, as long as it is fresh enough to eat raw.
What is Nauru's national drink?
Iced coffee is listed as Nauru's national drink.
What are Nauruan taro-leaf parcels?
They are parcels of young taro leaves filled with coconut cream, onion and often corned beef, cooked slowly in an earth oven or a covered dish.
Keep reading
- Traditional food of Nauru: 9 dishes to know
- What is the national dish of Fiji?
- What is the national dish of Kiribati?
- What is the national dish of the Marshall Islands?
- What is the national dish of Micronesia?
- What is the national dish of New Zealand?