Lu pulu recipe

Tinned corned beef and onion buried inside a ball of taro leaves, drowned in coconut cream and cooked for hours until the leaves melt into the meat.

3 hours and 30 minutesmedium6 ingredients

Ingredients

• 600 g corned beef
• 30 taro leaves
• 600 ml coconut cream
• 2 onions
• 0.5 tsp black pepper
• 6 banana leaves

How to make Lu pulu

1. Break up 600 g tinned corned beef with a fork and mix in 2 finely chopped onions and 1/0.5 tsp black pepper. No oil and no browning: the fat in the tin is the fat of the dish, and the corned beef already carries all the salt it needs.
2. Strip the stalk and thick rib from 30 young taro leaves, rinse them and shake them dry.
3. Stack 5 or 6 leaves into a cup in your palm and put a good handful of the corned beef mixture in the middle.
4. Pour about 600 ml thick coconut cream over the meat, then gather the leaves up into a tight heavy ball.
5. Wrap each ball in a flame-softened banana leaf and tie it, or seal it in a double layer of foil.
6. In Tonga these go into the umu, an earth oven of hot stones, for most of an afternoon. In a kitchen, bake them covered at 160 °C for 2 hours 30 to 3 hours.
7. Do not pull them out early. Under-cooked taro leaf is itchy in the throat; the parcels are ready when the leaves are black-green and the mass is soft enough to spoon.
8. Serve one parcel per person with roasted taro, yam or cassava.

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