Rourou

Fiji's young dalo leaves simmered slowly in coconut cream with onion until they turn black-green and silken

Origin: Viti Levu & the Fijian Islands

From the journey of Taro.

Dalo is the Fijian taro and rourou is its leaf, and between them they account for a good deal of what is eaten on Viti Levu on an ordinary day. The corm is the ceremonial starch, presented in bundles at a sevusevu and lifted from the lovo whenever there is reason to dig a pit. The leaf is the weekday half of the partnership, and it is cooked with more coconut cream than seems reasonable until it turns into something closer to a sauce than a vegetable. Fiji sits at the meeting point of taro's two lineages, which is a fact of some consequence for the plant even if no cook thinks about it. The Lapita voyagers who reached these islands about three thousand years ago were carrying the Asian taro brought down through the Philippines and the older New Guinea taro picked up in the Bismarck Archipelago, and Fijian dalo descends from both. Everything east of here, including Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, and eventually Hawaiʻi, was settled from this side of the line. The cooking is undemanding and the timing is not. Rourou is left to simmer far past the point at which the leaves look finished, because taro leaf that has not been cooked through will scratch and burn the throat for hours afterwards. Fijian cooks tend to describe the endpoint by colour rather than by clock: the leaves must go properly dark, and a pan of rourou that is still bright green is not ready. It is served with fish, with more dalo, with cassava, or spooned over rice, and it appears at both ends of the social scale, on a village table and on a hotel buffet, without changing much on the way.

Ingredients

Rourou

  • 1 kg young taro (dalo) leaves, thick stems and central ribs removed
  • 2 onions, finely sliced
  • 500 ml thick coconut cream
  • 200 ml water
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

To serve

  • 6 portions of boiled dalo, cassava, or rice, to serve

Method

  1. Strip the leaves from their stems and tear out the thick central rib of each one. Wash them in several changes of water.
  2. Put the leaves in a large heavy pot with the water and the onions, cover, and set over a medium heat.
  3. They will collapse dramatically within five minutes. Stir them down and let them cook, covered, for twenty-five minutes.
  4. Add half the coconut cream, the salt, and the pepper, and stir it through the wilted mass.
  5. Simmer uncovered over a low heat for twenty minutes more, stirring occasionally, until the leaves are completely broken down.
  6. Judge it by colour rather than by the clock. The leaves must be dark, almost black-green, and soft throughout; bright green rourou is not cooked and will burn the throat.
  7. Pour in the remaining coconut cream and bring it back to a bare simmer for five minutes. Do not let it boil hard, or the cream will separate.
  8. Taste for salt. Coconut cream flattens seasoning and the pot will take more than you expect.
  9. Serve hot, spooned over boiled dalo, cassava, or rice, with grilled or fried fish alongside.

Notes

Taro leaves must be cooked until they are entirely soft and dark, because the calcium oxalate needles in the raw leaf cause severe and lasting irritation of the mouth and throat and only long wet cooking destroys them. Forty-five minutes is the minimum. Frozen taro leaves from a Pacific or Asian grocer are excellent and are what most cooks abroad use. Use thick coconut cream rather than the thin milk sold for curries; the dish depends on the fat. Cassava leaf is the closest substitute if taro leaf is unobtainable and needs the same long cooking, whilst spinach collapses in a quarter of the time and gives none of the depth.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Journey Point Map Key

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