Lovo recipe

A whole meal buried on white-hot stones under banana leaves, root crops at the bottom and taro-leaf parcels on top.

4 hours and 20 minuteshard9 ingredients

Ingredients

• 1500 g taro
• 1000 g cassava
• 300 g taro leaves
• 500 ml coconut cream
• 1000 g whole fish
• 1500 g pork
• 1500 g chicken
• 10 banana leaves
• 3 tsp salt

How to make Lovo

1. Dig a pit about 60 cm deep, fill it with firewood and river stones, and burn it 1 to 2 hours until the stones glow white. This needs a garden and open flame; it cannot be done in a kitchen.
2. Rake the embers out, level the stones and cover them with a thick layer of green banana leaves. Food never touches the stones directly.
3. Make the palusami: stack 300 g of young taro leaves, pour in 500 ml of coconut cream with chopped onion and salt, fold into parcels and wrap them in banana leaf.
4. Wrap 1.5 kg of pork, 1.5 kg of chicken and a 1 kg whole fish in separate banana-leaf bundles, salting each one.
5. Load in order: 1.5 kg of peeled taro and 1 kg of cassava straight onto the leaf bed, then the meat and fish bundles, then the palusami on top.
6. Cover the whole pit with more banana leaves, then sacks, then soil, so no steam escapes.
7. Leave it 2 to 3 hours without opening. Nothing can be checked or adjusted once it is buried, which is why the stones must be properly heated first.
8. Dig it out, lift the bundles whole and open them at the table.

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