Faikakai Manioke

Tonga's grated cassava baked into a dense, chewy slab and served under lolo, the dark caramel made with coconut cream instead of butter

Origin: Nuku'alofa & Tonga

From the journey of Cassava.

Manioke is Tongan for cassava, and cassava is the root that feeds Tonga on an ordinary weeknight: boiled in salted water and set on the table beside lu, the taro-leaf parcels, and whatever fish or pork there is. Faikakai is the other thing Tonga does with its starches. The word covers a family of sweets in which a dough of some kind, banana in faikakai malimali, dumplings in faikakai topai, grated cassava here, is cooked and then drowned in lolo, a caramel made by taking sugar to a deep amber and slackening it with coconut cream rather than dairy. Grated cassava is wrung of its liquid, bound with a little of its own starch and coconut cream, and baked until it sets to something dense and faintly chewy, closer to a mochi than to a cake. It is cut into squares, laid in a dish, and the hot lolo poured over. It belongs to feasts and to Sunday, when the umu, the earth oven, is opened after church. Cassava is not an old plant in the Pacific. It arrived from the Americas about 1800, in the first years of sustained European contact, and it made its way through the islands so quickly that within a century it had displaced older roots in some of them; in Tonga it now sits beside taro and yam rather than under them, because it will grow where they will not and will wait in the ground until it is wanted.

Ingredients

Cake

1 kg cassava (manioke), peeled and finely grated, or 800 g frozen grated cassava, thawed
3 tbsp tapioca starch
250 ml coconut cream
100 g caster sugar
1 pinch salt

Lolo

200 g caster or demerara sugar
3 tbsp water
400 ml coconut cream

Method

Heat the oven to 180°C and line a 20 cm square tin. Squeeze the grated cassava in a clean cloth to wring out as much liquid as you can.
Mix the cassava with the tapioca starch, coconut cream, sugar, and salt, and press it into the tin.
Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until set, firm to the touch, and pale gold at the edges. Cool a little and cut into squares.
For the lolo, melt the sugar with the water in a heavy pan over a medium heat, without stirring, until it becomes a deep amber caramel.
Take the pan off the heat, stand back, and pour in the coconut cream. It will spit and seize. Return it to a low heat and stir until it is smooth and pourable.
Pour the hot lolo over the squares of manioke and serve warm.

Notes

Frozen grated cassava is sold in Pacific and Asian grocers and needs no squeezing. The same lolo is poured over banana dumplings for faikakai malimali and over plain flour dumplings for faikakai topai.

The Gastrographer

Name: Faikakai Manioke
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Nuku'alofa & Tonga
Ingredients: 1 kg cassava (manioke), peeled and finely grated, or 800 g frozen grated cassava, thawed; 3 tbsp tapioca starch; 250 ml coconut cream; 100 g caster sugar; 1 pinch salt; 200 g caster or demerara sugar; 3 tbsp water; 400 ml coconut cream

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control