Oka iʻa

Samoa's raw fish in coconut cream, cured briefly in lemon and lifted with onion, cucumber and a little chilli

Origin: Apia & the Samoan Islands

From the journey of Coconut.

Oka iʻa is raw fish, and the Samoan words say exactly that: oka is raw and iʻa is fish. Tongan ʻota ʻika is the same two words in a neighbouring language and very nearly the same dish, and Samoans and Tongans have been telling each other whose is better for roughly a thousand years, which is about how long the two archipelagos have been arguing about most things. The Samoan version leans on lemon where Tonga tends to lime, uses a heavier hand with the onion, and is very often finished with a little chilli, which the Tongan version usually is not. The coconut cream, pe'epe'e, is pressed from mature nuts and is expected to be thick enough to coat the fish rather than pool beneath it. It belongs to the toʻonaʻi, the Sunday meal that follows church and is the fixed point of the Samoan week. Most of that meal comes out of the umu, the above-ground oven of hot volcanic stones under which taro, breadfruit, and palusami are baked for hours; oka iʻa is the one dish on the table that meets no fire at all, and it is usually made last and eaten first. The fish is whatever the reef and the boats give up, most often skipjack or yellowfin tuna. Samoa sits in some of the richest tuna water in the Pacific, and the fish for oka is bought whole and cut at home rather than filleted at a counter.

Ingredients

  • 600 g very fresh tuna, skinned and boned
  • 6 lemons, juiced (about 180ml)
  • 400 ml thick coconut cream, freshly pressed if possible
  • 1 large onion, very finely sliced
  • 1 cucumber, deseeded and diced
  • 2 tomatoes, deseeded and diced
  • 3 spring onions, finely sliced
  • 1 red chilli, finely chopped
  • 1.5 tsp sea salt, or to taste

Method

  1. Buy the fish the same day and tell the fishmonger it will be eaten raw. There is no technique that substitutes for freshness here.
  2. Cut the tuna into even 2cm cubes. Evenness matters, since uneven pieces cure at different speeds.
  3. Put the fish in a non-metallic bowl with the lemon juice and half the salt, and turn to coat.
  4. Cure for ten to fifteen minutes only. Cut a cube open: the outside should be firm and opaque and the middle still translucent.
  5. Drain the lemon juice off completely and discard it. Coconut cream and citrus left together will split into a grainy mess, so this step is not optional.
  6. Return the fish to the bowl and pour over the coconut cream.
  7. Fold through the onion, cucumber, tomato, spring onion, and chilli, and season with the remaining salt.
  8. Chill briefly, fifteen minutes at most, and serve cold with taro or green banana as part of a larger table.

Notes

Drain the citrus before the coconut cream goes in; this is the step that decides whether the dish holds. Ten to fifteen minutes of curing is plenty, and a cube cut open tells you more than a clock does. Fresh pe'epe'e is worth the work; full-fat tinned coconut cream is an honest substitute and light coconut milk is not. Salting the onion for a few minutes and rinsing it takes the harshness out if it is very strong.

The Gastrographer

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