Food of Cook Islands

My favourite foods of the Cook Islands

Cook Island food is the best in the world. Some times Cook Islands cuisine gets monotonous but you can invent dishes which in my case was a crossover of western and Polynesian cuisine.  My favourite food fruit is breadfruit when its cuisine was breadfruit chips, drizzled with salt and vinegar. Serve that with fresh barbequed fish and in the cool season, salad and you'll have a meal fit for a king (ariki)

Volcanic soil of Aitutaki provides tropical fruits and vegetables while the lagoon provides seafood.

In the wet season greens are hard to come by except fiji ruka which is similar to silverbeat. Seaweed is nutritious food and tasty.

Chillies are plentiful and in the wet-season when green vegetables are difficult to grow, chilly plant leaves are edible. Good news about this time of the year is that tropical fruits are in good supply.

Food feast are massive amounts of good Polynesian foods some cooked underground, including:

Taro, sweat potatoes, yams

Pigs (wild have less fat than those feed coconuts) chickens, fish, goat. The way Aitutakian's cook goat has still got to make it my favourite red meat cuisine.

Sauces include coconut sauce, sometimes slightly fermented with chillies added.

Bananas of different varieties, oranges, mangoes, custard apples, durian, star fruit, etc depending on the season.

Island nights often have a good variety of Cook Island foods.

If you're invited to a Cook Island food feast it is customary to let the chief eat first. When I saw that the chief always went for fish head, I learned that other cultures have some features better than western culture. Now when I suck fish brains and eyes at dinner parties in Perth to the shriek of guests, I just say get over your cultural hang ups, your missing the best part of the fish.

It is also customary to for Cook Island food to be eaten with fingers.

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