The corned beef hierarchy

My mother-in-law has just got back from a trip to Rarotonga, a neighboring island in the Cook-Australs chain, but presided over by New Zealand and not France, so actually very different to Rurutu. Her gift for us was a 24 pack of Rarotonga corned beef!

Apparently it's a superior quality to the four varieties that we get here in Rurutu! For those of you who have never visited the central Pacific, it's perhaps somewhat surprising to hear that corned beef is a revered food source. Here in French Polynesia it's called Punu pua toro
literally translated that means 'tinned cow animal', and we like to eat it with tomato sauce and greens either accompanied by rice, otherwise with miti hue, a delicious sauce made from fermented green coconut meat and breadfruit. It's a favorite meal. I guess it's hard for me to understand how revolutionary tinned meat and fish must have seemed when it first arrived in Polynesia - sardines, mackerel and other fish are also consumed in quantity. Alleviating the traditional feast/famine cycles.

In Samoa, Fiji and Tonga corned beef is also consumed in quantity. I remember being amused by the 'traditional' offering of coconuts, breadfruit and corned beef, when visiting any village in Independent Samoa....

Or the fact that both houses and vehicles are dressed up as tinned food in Tonga!