Kon

Chuukese pounded breadfruit: boiled mai beaten hot on a wooden board into a smooth, dense, elastic loaf and finished with thick coconut cream

Origin: The Caroline & Mariana Islands

From the journey of Breadfruit.

In Chuuk, in the Federated States of Micronesia, breadfruit is mai, and kon is what it becomes on a pounding board. The fruit is peeled, cut, and boiled until soft, then pounded whilst still hot on a heavy wooden board with a pounder that is wetted as the work goes on, until it turns from a crumbling starch into a smooth, dense, faintly elastic mass. Coconut cream is poured over or worked in. The tradition holds that the first portion goes to the head of the household. The name of the fruit carries a piece of Pacific history. The old Oceanic word for breadfruit, *kuluR, from which Samoan and Hawaiian ʻulu descend, survives in the Chuukic languages, but as the name of a quite different tree, the fish-poison Barringtonia. Micronesia calls breadfruit by another word altogether. Malcolm Ross reconstructs it as *maRi from its descendants in South Vanuatu, Micronesia, and Polynesia, and Paul Geraghty takes the Polynesian mei to be a borrowing, presumably from Micronesia. The fruit is Micronesian in a deeper sense too. The genetic work of Nyree Zerega, Diane Ragone, and Timothy Motley found that many Micronesian breadfruits are hybrids between the Melanesian breadfruit and Artocarpus mariannensis, a seeded wild species of the Mariana Islands and Palau. Those hybrids are a second origin of the breadfruit that is eaten today, and the atlas marks them as such.

Ingredients

Breadfruit

  • 1.5 kg mature breadfruit, firm and starchy rather than ripe
  • 1 tsp salt

To finish

  • 250 ml thick coconut cream

Method

  1. Peel the breadfruit, quarter it, cut out the core, and cut the flesh into large chunks.
  2. Boil the chunks in salted water for 30 to 45 minutes, until completely soft all the way through.
  3. Drain well and, whilst the breadfruit is still very hot, pound it on a wooden board, in a large mortar, or in a heavy bowl, wetting the pounder with water every so often and folding the mass back over itself.
  4. Shape it into a loaf or into rounds on a board or a banana leaf.
  5. Pour the coconut cream over and serve warm, cut into slices.

Notes

Kon needs mature fruit that is still firm. A ripe, soft breadfruit is too sweet and will not pound to the right texture. A food processor overworks the starch and turns it gluey; pounding by hand is the method, and it is also the pleasure of the dish.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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