RAW FISH AND YAMS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 197, 18 May 1936, Page 14

RAW FISH AND YAMS

Beachcombers’ Club Dinner SOUTH SEA ISLAND KAI Women with gay flowers in their hair and men in wreaths and pareus sat cross-legged round a native mat spread on the floor and feasted on raw fish, taro, yam, poi and other exotic South Sea island delicacies, when the Beachcombers’ Club held its first “kainga Kanaka” at Wellington on Saturday night. The essentials of this repast were brought down irum Samoa by tbe Maul I’omarc, when she returned last week from Apia aud Niue Island. Although not cooked in the back garden in a Maori oven, as would have been most appropriate, the viands were prepared in the styles in which they most frequently figure on tbe menus of European residents of Polynesia. No island meal is complete without fish. In many parts of the Pacific tbe natives arc accustomed to remark, “No fish? Then 1 do not care to eat today.” So the most important dish of the dinner was the fish. It was served raw. But, while the brown man will actually bite straight into a freshlylanded bonito, and prefers the beards of the striped mullet actually eaten alive, these ideas are repugnant to most European appetites. Why would be hard to say; it is probably just a matter of becoming accustomed to the idea, tor, after ail, oysters are eaten raw and living. But the raw Ush eaten by Europeans is prepared by drenching It with the juice fif limes and leaving it to soak. The chemical action of the acid fruit has much the same effect on the fish as cooking it, and, indeed, uo one unaware of what he was eating would ever guess it hud not been cooked. On this occasion, being unable to come by any of the brightly-coloured denizens ot tropical lagoons, tbe chefs selected sebnapper as being a suitable substitute. The result was delicious. Shrimps, a commonplace inhabitant of reef-pool or fresh-water creek, were included in the bill of fare. For vegetables there were kumeras, yams, taros aud baked bananas. The yam is a woody root, or tuber, attaining anything up to six feet in length and three in girth. Boiled or baked, or boiled and then fried, it forms a dish that appeals to most white folk. One comparatively small yam more than supplied sufficient for the very hearty appetites of the Beachcombers. The taro is a lily root, allied to the arum lily. It is grown to some extent in the north of New Zealand, and was fairly extensively cultivated by the Maoris in the early days. The first-comers to these shores brought lit with them from Hawaiki. To eat, it is slightly starchier and heavier than potato, and when cooked assumes a dark bluish colour. With these vegetables, by way of lubrication, was provided, coconut cream, expressed from the grated kernel of the coconut. Lacking the specialised form of grater devised by the Kanaka for this task, those who undertook the preparation of the cream found it no light undertaking. They eventually managed, however, without having recourse to the scheme suggested of putting the coconut first through a mincer and then through a mangle. The final course was pol, a paste made of bananas pounded up with the cream. There are many forms of poi eaten in the islands, and taro, bread-fruit, tapioca and bananas are all used in different places as ingredients. This poi was made on a Tahitian formula, and was particularly pleasant. Kava, the native beverage of Fiji and Samoa, was replaced on the menu by another drink correspondingly popular among white Pacific Islanders —rum punch. After proceedings had attained the point where the man from Samoa, punning appallingly, remarked, “I yam full,” the reclining guests passed the rast of the evening with those most Polynesian entertainments, song and story. They were well aware that in many ways their feast fell short of the real thing. They realised fully that it was beyond their power, here in Wellington, to recapture altogether the atmosphere of those island nights. But, ■because the flavour of island food in their mouths revived old memories, they were well content. It was worth while to recall having dined on such foods, served at other times, in other places, by solemn-eyed* brown children, by the glimmer of an oil-lamp, under a thatchod roof, with house-lizards chattering on the rafters, mosquitoes stabbing at bare ankles and, from outside, louder than tbe whisper of the trade wind through the palms, the monotonous thunder of surf booming on tbe outlying reefs.