Kiribati: vegan palusami

We are back in Micronesia and this time we visit Kiribati. Here we make vegan palusami, a classic dish popular across Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. The dish is made by stuffing taro leaves with coconut cream and different flavor elements before baking the palusami packets for an extended period. Read on to learn more about Kiribati cuisine, palusami, and my own painful experiences with taro leaves, or jump straight to the recipe.

Kiribati

An island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Kiribati (KIRR-ih-BASS) is home to ~120,000 people and encompasses some 30 atolls, including the world’s largest atoll, Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island). Kiribati is the only country to reside in all four hemispheres, crossing both the equator and the 180th meridian. If you ever looked at the international date line on Google Maps, you may have noticed a quite strange eastward bulge instead of a straight line. That eastern bulge encompasses Kiribati and ensures the entire country has the same date. Fun fact, it also means Kiribati is the first country to celebrate New Year, at UTC+14:00.

Kiribati cuisine

Before being colonized by the British Empire, the islands were populated by several waves of different peoples, the latest wave consisting of Polynesian Peoples. These migration waves have laid the foundation for Kiribati cuisine. The Polynesian influences can be seen in the dishes and ingredients used, such as coconut milk, starches like cassava, taro, and breadfruit, and, not surprisingly, plenty of seafood ​[1]–[3]​. Popular dishes include te bua toro ni baukin, a dish prepared by baking cabbage, corned beef, and pumpkin to create a flavourful casserole. Rice is an important staple for most meals in Kiribati and a popular way to prepare it is to simmer the rice with coconut milk ​[4]​ and let it cool to make a solid pudding which is cut into squares or diamonds. Two intriguing desserts are uumu and kakau, where taro (for uumu) or cassava (for kakau) is grated and mixed with coconut milk, sugar, and spices before steaming.

Among the many Polynesian dishes you will also find palusami, a slow-cooked dish popular among most (if not all) cultures tracing their ancestry to the Polynesian peoples, including countries like Fiji, Samoa, and the islands of Hawai’i.

Palusami

Palusami, taro leaves baked with coconut cream, is often described as the national dish of Kiribati. This traditional dish has been made for centuries and is enjoyed throughout the Pacific, from Fiji to Hawai’i. From what I’ve read, most renditions seem very similar. That is, there seems to be more difference between two cooks from the same country than there are differences between palusami from different countries. The recipe shared below mixes ingredients and preparation methods from Kiribati, Fiji, Hawai’i, and Samoa with my own substitution for hard-to-find taro leaves.

While the basic palusami is made from only coconut, and taro leaves, variations do exist. The most popular one today is to add onion and corned beef, for instance of the brand SPAM – Specially Processed American Meat ​[5]–[8]​. Some recipes include fish, tomato, or breadfruit instead of or in combination with corned beef ​[9]–[11]​. To create a deeper, more complex flavour, most cooks include onion and some cooks add garlic, ginger, curry powder, and/or chili powder as well ​[5], [6], [9], [12]​.

How to prepare palusami at home

The traditional way to prepare palusami is to use taro leaves to create a cup and fill it with coconut cream and sometimes other ingredients, like onion and spices. The cup is closed and wrapped in larger leaves, such as breadfruit leaves or banana leaves to create a leak-proof packet for cooking ​[5], [13]​. The packets are then baked in a traditional fireplace oven, where they are mixed with hot coals or rocks and covered in palm fronds and other leaves to bake alongside other dishes.

Modern renditions, more accessible to home cooks, are often made by wrapping the taro leaf packet in aluminum foil and baking it in a domestic oven ​[6], [9], [12]​. You can also steam the packets ​[14]​, make a taro leaf lasagna-type dish ​[15]​ or something resembling a multilayer cabbage roll with taro leaves ​[5]​. Another even easier take on the dish is to make a stew with coconut cream and taro leaves or other leafy greens, such as spinach ​[7], [16]​ or kale ​[16]​. This version reminds me a lot of creamed spinach, stewed kale, Trinidadian callalloo ​[17]​, and Filipino laing ​[18]​. Both callallo and laing consist of taro leaves cooked in coconut cream with different spices and some animal protein.

Vegan palusami

While the base recipe for palusami is vegan, using just coconut cream, onion, and taro leaves, many cooks include corned beef (such as the brand SPAM) ​[5]–[8]​ or sometimes fish ​[10]​. If you are looking to make a corned beef-style vegan palusami, you might be in luck. In the past few years, several commercial vegan substitutes for SPAM have hit the market, the first being Hong Kong-based Omnipork’s vegan meat-style luncheon released in 2020 ​[19]​.

While you could purchase one of the commercial vegan SPAM options, you could also create a home-made substitute. Tofu cut into suitable shapes and marinated in liquid smoke, soy sauce, and other seasonings is very popular ​[20]–[22]​. Pauline at the blog I Really Like Food, takes the texture one step further and breaks apart the tofu and mixes it with vital wheat gluten to try and recapture some of the non-homogenous texture and look of SPAM ​​[23]​​. Most of the vegan SPAM recipes are for dishes like musubi (“Hawaiian SPAM sushi”) or SPAM fried rice where the visual aesthetic of the dish is linked to SPAM. In palusami, the look is less important since the corned beef substitute will be mashed up and hidden away so cutting tofu into nice shapes seem redundant. You could also try something like jackfruit, as done by Catherine at Cath’s Little Kitchen in their vegan Kiribati palusami. For my vegan palusami, I decided to go back to the more traditional, pre-SPAM roots of the dish and make the dish without any corned beef substitute.

How to replace taro leaves in palusami

I could not find fresh taro leaves here in Vancouver and chances are you might have a tough time as well. So I looked into a suitable replacement. Some home cooks replace taro leaves with spinach ​[7], [8]​, black kale ​[16]​, or Swiss chard. Since spinach leaves are quite small, the replacement will only really work if you turn the dish into a stew instead of baked packets and the same goes for black kale with its narrow leaves. Better options would be green kale or Swiss chard if you want to make packets. Here in Vancouver, there are a lot of East Asian grocery stores so I decided to try some Chinese broccoli (gai lan) for my palusami. I have never used this plant before but it has large, soft leaves perfect for wrapping filling and, being a relative to the more common (Western?) broccoli, it has a bit of that slightly bitter flavour I associate with taro leaves.

“My throat started to feel super hot. It was as if I had swallowed a bee and it stung me, mid swallow. Or maybe like I had swallowed a cigarette butt that was still lit. Either way, this hot, stinging sensation traveled up my jaw, all the way to my ears. I started coughing.”

– Molly Patrick, Clean Food Dirty Girl

Taro leaves are poisonous and painful

If you do find fresh taro leaves, don’t forget to cook them. The first time I used them (to make callaloo on a real-life trip to Trinidad), I chewed on a bit just to see what it tasted like raw (know your ingredients!), and, to my surprise, my mouth started hurting. The pain came quite early so I quickly spat it out. But the pain kept increasing and my mouth and throat started hurting as though I had eaten something small, numerous, and very sharp, like finely ground glass. My wife and a friend (the same friend who helped with the post about the Bahamas) were with me and in our frantic googling to see if I needed to go to a hospital, we came across this blog post by Molly Patrick. In it, Molly describes how she and her partner made and drank a raw taro leaf smoothie. After the initial excruciating pain, they were out for days, feeling like they had the worst hangover of their lives. I was relieved I wasn’t going to die and that I hadn’t eaten as much as Molly and her partner. My pain subsided in an hour or two. Nowadays my eating-things-without-googling-if-they-are-poisonous-first priveliegies are restricted. Probably for the better…

Bottom line, taro leaves contain oxalate, a toxic salt that is destroyed by cooking the leaves. So, if you find taro leaves, cook them properly to avoid a lot of pain.

Conclusion

I found the gai lan (Chinese broccoli) to be a really good substitute for taro leaves. The leaves were large and pliable making it easy to prepare the parcels. In addition, the leaves had quite a bit of flavor, distinct from spinach and more similar to kale or broccoli. For the vegan palusami, the gai lan leaves were great for wrapping a few leaves around a spoonful of coconut milk. I only used the leaves themselves and saved the stems for a quick stir-fry with garlic, ginger, and vegan fish sauce as an easy Chinese side dish for another meal.

Baking the vegan palusami packets for one hour really changed the flavour of both coconut and leaves, in a way that is hard to describe. Not surprisingly, the dish reminded me of Trini callaloo, where taro leaves are stewed in coconut milk. The dish is essentially the same but with some differences in seasoning. You could consider palusami to be a slightly more laborious version of callaloo but with a more interesting look. Serving stewed greens as individual little packages are sure to stand out on your next potluck or Micronesian feast.

That’s it for this visit to Kiribati and Micronesia. Join me again next time when we head back to Northern Europe for a quiet special post or maybe a mini-series. If you don’t want to miss it, you can subscribe to my email list and I will send you an alert when the post is live.

Vegan palusami

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Vegan palusami

Palusami, the national dish of Kiribati, is made by baking coconut cream wrapped in taro leaves. Substitute for other large leaves if you can't find fresh taro leaves.

Course Side Dish

Cuisine Kiribati, Melanesian, Micronesian, Pacific, Polynesian

Keyword coconut, leafy greens, Taro

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour

Servings 6 packets

Ingredients

• 18 large leaves, ideally taro see note
• 100 g onion, diced
• 100 mL coconut cream
• 1 pinch salt
• seasoning, optional see note

For wrapping

• aluminum foil

Instructions

• Set oven to 180°C/350°F
• Dice the onion and mix with the coconut cream. Add a pinch of salt.
• Prepare your leaves by removing any stems (depends on what leaves you chose)
• Layer 2-3 large leaves in the palm of your hand. Add two spoons of coconut and onion mixture.
• Fold the leaves in over the coconut cream to from a tight packet.

  Wrap the packet in aluminum foil to keep tight.
• When all palusami are assembled, bake them in the oven at 180℃/350℉ for 45-60 minutes.
• When the palusami have cooled enough to handle, open the packets and serve straight away.

Notes

Large leafy greens: traditional palusami is made from taro leaves but depending on where you live, these can be hard to find. They can be replaced by other large leafy greens that are available to you, such as Swiss chard, kale, or Chinese broccoli (gai lan).

Seasoning: Some cooks add additional seasoning to the coconut cream, such as garlic, ginger, or curry powder.

 

References