Palusami recipe

Young taro leaves stacked into a cup, filled with onion-spiked coconut cream and baked until the parcel collapses into a dark green custard.

1 hour and 45 minuteseasy6 ingredients

Ingredients

• 30 taro leaves
• 500 ml coconut cream
• 1 onion
• 1 tsp salt
• 0.5 tsp black pepper
• 6 banana leaves

How to make Palusami

1. Strip the stalk and thick central rib from 30 young taro leaves, rinse them and shake them dry.
2. Stir 1 finely chopped onion, 0.5 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper into 500 ml thick coconut cream.
3. Stack 5 or 6 leaves per parcel, overlapping them into a shallow cup in your palm.
4. Pour about 100 ml of the coconut mixture into each cup, then gather the leaf edges up and fold them over to close it.
5. Pass banana leaf squares briefly over a flame to soften them, wrap each parcel tight and tie it, or use a double layer of foil.
6. Traditionally the parcels go into an umu, a stone-lined earth oven, for two hours or more. At home, bake them at 200 °C for 1 hour to 1 hour 30.
7. Do not cut the time short: raw taro leaf is full of calcium oxalate and scratches the throat. Cook until the leaves are dark, soft and no longer squeak.
8. Serve the parcels whole, with boiled taro root, cassava or rice.

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