Dreaming of okra!

okra seedling, who's for gumbo?

As part of my new sustainability drive I've caught the gardening bug. I've been playing around with the garden a bit for the last 18 months or so (well frankly it needed it). We've been planting anything and everything we can think of, including fruit seeds and grains from the store,  just because you can. But now I've gone a bit further. I cajoled Viriamu (and it took some doing) into installing a raised bed outside our back door, it's studded with a few stunted looking plants at the moment (OK you can't learn everything in a few weeks), there are also a whole variety of seedlings newly put out into my ever expanding garden patch and others poking up from newspaper plant pots (an excellent recycling idea from LHITS).

climbing spinach

 I suspect I'm being a bit too ambitious, but I've been able to get hold of some exciting  fruit and veggie seeds, from climbing spinach and okra, to kiwis and passion fruit, as well as some odd things like cape gooseberries and luffas.

Passion fruit and papayas

I'm trying to stay realistic, as I really know zip about gardening, but I have high hopes that we will be able to eat a homegrown cherry tomato or two in the months that come........and who knows, maybe even get a rub-down with our homegrown bath sponges!

Luffa seedling, loving a good horse-manure mulch

Hotting up for Christmas

Matotea's had her Christmas party at school and is on holiday and Tuati's back with us now too. But I always find it a little tough to get into the festive spirit in the summer heat. I did managed to motivate myself, and got the Tropical Christmas pud made last week, using my home-made glacéed tropical fruits (papaya, pineapple and lychee, yum!) and some freshly dried mango. I'm hoping the pud will be as tasty as the tropical Christmas cake I made last year, though doused in brandy sauce pretty much anything tastes alright. We're going more for a Rurutu style feast this year, (i.e. we decided to forget about the turkey this time) with a Tahitian oven planned for the 25th, though I have got some mussels on order, that I should be about to collect from the plane this morning, at extortionate cost!!! The champers should arrive tomorrow, though the cargo boat has had a couple of difficult trips recently, and has lost several days on its schedule, so the boat due in on the 19th, is now in on the 24th!!!! Fingers-crossed that our beer will have time enough to chill before the big day!

Lychees

The season of plenty official kicked off on sunday evening, with the rising of the Pleiades in the southern hemisphere night sky. But we've been enjoying the glut of fruits for a few weeks now. Aside from the 12kg of tahitian goosberries that I've got stashed away in jars now, it's lychee season. This year is not a bumper crop, but Tattie Monique has still got a reasonable amount on her trees.

 

Fresh lychees are pretty awesome, we're all agreed on that, albeit a little fiddly to peel.

Heimana, in particular, has been gorging herself.

The even greater thing about lychees is that you can use a lychee seed (and a match-stick, it's all very Blue Peter) to make a remarkably good spinning top (see tutorial), so the fun never ends!

 

Ten Reasons why I like living in Rurutu: #7

It's been a good while since I worked on my ten reasons, and what could be a better reason than these? Did I mention the mangoes? Yes, mango season is here again, and this year I'm more determined than ever to make the most of it, you may know that I'm a little bit obsessed with mangoes.

I've already got production rolling with mango jam and mango sorbet.

 

Yesterday we ate steak with green peppercorns and mangoes (delicious!). This week I think I might aim at some chutney and who knows a mango upside down cake and maybe even some dried mangoes before the season's out. I used to love the dried mangoes that my dad brought back from trips to India and the Philippines, now it's just a question of figuring out how to make my own.....

Ten Reasons why I like living in Rurutu: #4

Passion-fruit. The vine is native to South America, but is grown broadly across the world, in Rurutu it grows a bit like a weed. It has attractive flowers and beautiful purple fruits with orange pulp.

It's now the season and, despite the recent cyclone, our vine at the back of the garden is laden with fruit. This year it's a bumper crop, I've already tried my hand at sorbet (to be recommended) and passion-fruit butter (I think it's an improvement on the jelly I made last year). But what I really need to go with the passion-fruit butter is cheesecake..... Alas, it's one of the many deserts that you just can't find here in Rurutu, due to a serious shortage of cream cheese!!!

Ten Reasons why I like living in Rurutu: #2

Soursop - jam, sorbet, juice, ice-cream....it's all good.....

May celebrations

Monday May 17th marked the end of the season of abundance in the Polynesian calendar 'tau matari'i i raro', it was the day that the Pleiades set at the same time as the sun, and so disappeared from our night sky, we celebrated their rising back in november. This marks the start of the season of 'sharing' - a time when the communally harvested and stored food supplies would have been shared. Though frankly it's all relative, we still seem to have quite a bit of fruit here and there's always fish to be had! However, the weather is definitely cooler now and the nights are drawing in here in Rurutu, for the past few weeks we've been dipping below 20ºC which is pretty darned cool for here. Matotea's been wearing socks! I'm actually enjoying the cooler weather, particularly with the ever-expanding bump. Far from being the start of lean-times for us, it signals the very beginning of the busy season, this last week was a school holiday and we had a couple of families staying with us for a few days, keeping us on our toes! The month of May also marks a month of celebration in Rurutu, linked to the omnipresent protestant church - it's a time when the annual contributions to the church are collected and people are expected to spruce up their houses and deck themselves out in a new set of clothes (and of course a new hat - it's the busiest time of year for my mother in law who makes fine church hats by the dozen, mostly from niau, a beautiful white coconut fiber).

The celebrations are held over three weeks, each week one of the villages celebrates with a vigil, an all-night sing-a-thon followed by a day of reveling, visiting each of the houses in the villages, enjoying food and drink provided by the owners and admiring the fineries that are laid out.

Viriamu's grandma is particularly keen on this celebration and despite being in her eighties she is a vigorous little lady, who insists on new curtains and a clean coat of paint for the house each May! It also signals a time of year when large Tahitian ovens would have been prepared to cook 'ti roots (this traditional Polynesian plant has tap roots that make a good substitute for sugar or honey - when cooked slowly in a Tahitian oven for a week or so), and is still a time when pi'a is prepared (better known as po'e in tahitian), a sticky sweet substance made from roots, such as taro or ape (elephant's ear - Alocasia macrorrhizos), or alternatively with fruits such as papaya, banana, coconut or pumpkin, pulped and mixed with tapioca flour. The pi'a is then wrapped in 'ti leaves and cooked slowly in the Tahitian oven for at least 48h, it can also be steamed, but both the texture and taste are very different when it's been cooked in the ground.

Maiore - part 1, the breadfruit

We live in a district of Rurutu called Vitaria, unlike the rest of the island, which depends on taro as its staple, the inhabitants of Vitaria were known as breadfruit-eaters. This is because we have no reliable fresh water-source on this side of this island, so we couldn't have grown our own taro, even if we wanted to.

Our poor breadfruit tree growing in the shade of our coconuts,
but still determinedly giving fruit

Now is the start of the breadfruit season and our tree has a good load of fruit. A breadfruit tree can grow to a height of 20 meters and is one of the highest-yielding food plants, a single tree can produce over 200 fruits per season. The fruits are very rich in starch, they are also a source of vitamin C, potassium, zinc and thiamin. We normally eat our breadfruit cooked in its skin over a fire or directly on the stove burner, but it can also be boiled, baked in the oven, deep-fried or cooked slowly in the Tahitian oven. When cooked the taste is potato-like, or similar to fresh baked bread (hence the name).

The Rurutu name for the tree is maiore, but is better known as 'uru in Tahitian. The plant originates from the Malay Peninsula and western Pacific, where it is pollinated by fruit bats. There are no fruit-bats here in the eastern Pacific and it is thought that the plant was transported throughout the Polynesian triangle on voyaging canoes. The fruit remains a very important food source in the Marquesas and also Tahiti. The Marquesans developed a method for storing the ripe fruit for up to a year, trampling and fermenting the fruit in large holes in ground, providing a reliable food supply, even in times of scarcity.

breadfruit (unripe), showing leaf bud and leaves

The breadfruit tree has many uses other than food. There are well over thirty distinct varieties documented from French Polynesia alone, each favored for different qualities. Breadfruit produces a pale lightweight timber that was widely used across the Pacific for building structures, furniture, outrigger canoes and even surfboards, a sport which first originated in Tahiti. The bark of the breadfruit tree is used to make a fine cream-coloured bark-cloth or tapa. All parts of the plant yield latex, a sticky milky sap. This sap can be applied to the skin as a moisturizer, or to heal cuts, scratches and various skin diseases, it was also mixed with monoi (perfumed coconut oil) to make a kind of Polynesian hair gel. The sap was used as glue and caulking material for canoes. The thick and abrasive leaves are used to wrap food and can also be topically applied to soothe muscle aches. The leaf buds are prepared in diverse ways as a cure for a wide variety of ailments ranging from angina, to bronchitis, asthma and internal haemorrhaging. Burning the fallen, sun-dried male flowers is also an effective nontoxic mosquito repellent.

A contemporary use for breadfruit - leaf-print blocks, I love printing with
these leaves,which have also inspired traditional Hawaiian quilting patterns

Forster, the botanist on Captain Cook’s second voyage to Tahiti in 1776, was the first European to describe the plant in any detail. The high productivity and nutritional value of the plant made it a candidate as a cheap food source for slaves in the West Indies. Lieutenant William Bligh was assigned by the British Admiralty to captain the HMS Bounty on a voyage to Tahiti to collect breadfruit saplings and take them to the British Antilles. The famous voyage never completed its objective, as a result of the now fabled mutiny, though Captain Bligh’s second expedition did successfully deliver over 2,000 young trees to Jamaica in 1793. Breadfruit grows in the Caribbean still, though the species never thrived to the same extent as it does in the Pacific and it never really became a favored food-source.

According to Tahitian legend, the breadfruit originated from the ultimate sacrifice of a chief from Rai’atea, Ruata’ata. The island was seized by famine, Ruata’ata and his wife Rumauari’i had nothing to feed their four children but the bare red soil beneath their feet, in desperation they went off into the forest to search for something to eat, all they could find were some ferns in a cave. Ruata’ata despaired, he could no longer bear to watch his children suffer. He told his wife to go to sleep there in the cave and that tomorrow he could deliver them all from starvation, but that he would have to leave them, to do so. In the morning Ruamauari’i woke in the dappled shade of a great tree that had grown at the entrance of the cave during the night, the tree was laden with heavy breadfruits that the family gratefully ate, saved from starvation. Ruata’ata never returned and his wife understood that he had transformed himself into the lofty breadfruit tree, the leaves and branches represent his arms, the trunk his body and the fruit his head.

Confitures de la maison

I've mentioned it before, but I'm working on a small venture making and selling my own home-made jams, at the moment it's still at the first stages of cottage industry, but I'm getting a lot of positive feedback from our guests and am looking to ramp up production - last year we collected and cut up over 25kg of mango flesh, half of which is in the freezer for future use. I've developed some new recipes - my soursop jam is quite a hit, a recipe that I modified from a posting on blogspot, I might add! Now it's the start of the guava season, so Viriamu and the boys (Tuati and Iro are back here for the Easter hols) have been knocking themselves out collecting guavas. So, I've got to do some experimentation with recipes. Here's a guava jelly that I tried this week, delicious and what a lovely colour.

Incidentally I also tried making guava fool with the left over pulp, it was pretty good too I might add! Just substitute guava for goosberries in any fool recipe - though I prefer one that has a little custard in there instead of gelatin, for extra creaminess.

tau Matari'i i ni'a

Tomorrow, nov 20th, marks the beginning of the 'season of plenty' in the ancient Polynesian calendar and is signaled by the rising of the Pleiades on the horizon, the celebration occurs on the first new moon in November, and the constellation sets in mid to late May heralding the end of this season (Matari'i i raro) and the beginning of the cooler season. The arrival of the Pleiades heralded a favorable time for planting food, for fishing, marriage and also for travel (the stars were used by Viriamu's ancestors to navigate the vast Pacific Ocean). The Pleiades are a cluster of seven bright stars, also often known as the Seven Sisters or affectionately as M45, located on the shoulders of Taurus near Orion. I haven't yet tried to locate them, but I have remarkable trouble with the Southern Hemisphere sky....you can be sure I'll have my eye out for them....anyway they should look something like this....

The constellation was recognized by many ancient cultures and has many legends and stories attached to it. In Greek mythology the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Pleione and Atlas, handmaidens of Artemis and playthings of the gods (both Poseidon and Zeus had children with one or more of them!). Legend has it that they committed suicide with grief after the disappearance their brothers the Hyades and death of their father, Zeus honored them by transforming them into stars. Merope the youngest of the sisters was wooed by Orion, but she refused his advances, and it is said that Orion's constellation still pursues the Pleiades across the sky. One of the most beautiful legends I just found comes from the Kiowa, a native American tribe, and is linked to Devil's Tower national monument in Wyoming. It goes something like this, seven young maidens were out playing by the river when they were set upon by bears, they climbed upon a large rock and in fear they called upon the spirit of the rocks to help them, pitying the maidens he raised the rock high into the sky, and though the bears tried to climb it, they could not, their claw marks can be seen on the side of the rock today, now known as Devil's Tower. The maidens, unable to descend from the rock, ascended into the heavens and were transformed into stars.

Devil's Rock National Moument, Wyoming (photo:Colin Faulkingham)

Here in Tahiti the celebration of Matari'i i ni'a is focused on teaching and reviving traditional cultural practices, learning how to prepare and preserve food. Of course, with the missionaries, the celebration of this festival was forgotten and it has only recently been re-established. Along with kava drinking ceremonies, which were also forbidden by the missionaries. So to open the Matari'i celebrations there is a kava drinking ceremony. To see pictures and find out more about the festival (in French), click here.

Mango Madness

I love this time of year here in Rurutu, even though we're technically in the tropics we have two quite different seasons a 'cold' and a 'hot' season. As we're in the southern hemisphere now is the 'hot' season, or rather the 'fruit/flower' season. It's all relative, we have banana, limes and papaya all year round, but now we have mangoes, pineapples, avocado, passion fruit and lychees all starting to get ripe, we also grow a lot of watermelon, as opposed to the potatoes, carrots and cabbage grown in the 'cold' season. My absolute favourite fruit is mango, and in fact I'm finding it hard living here where mango is only available once a year, in Moorea there are two fruiting seasons a year - so you can just eat as much mango as you like! And it's the same for pineapples, which are grown fairly intensively in Moorea - mainly to sate the appetite of the pineapple juice factory on the island. Since we now live on a tiny island there are no fruit or vegetable markets to speak of, we grow most of our own fruit and veggies, so it's not always easy to buy things like mangoes. Last year I really didn't make the most of it, so I have been promising myself to really make an effort to take advantage of the mango fest this year, there are three huge mango trees a few kms up the road from our home and I've been making a point to stop there every couple of days and clean up the spoils, it's still a little bit early yet, but there's still enough fruit for me to get going with some of my plans.

The mangoes fall all over the place, so I've been diving into thickets of Lantana, picking up a fair few scratches on the way, but I just love gathering food, it's immensely satisfying to be able to use what nature has to offer and it reminds me of when I used to go picking blackberries off the mountain-side as a child.

Today I made a spicy mango syrup:
(recipe taken from the Mongo Mango Cookbook by Cynthia Thuma)

• 4 small greenish mangoes (the variety I have here are very small, the recipe asks for two medium mangoes)
• 3 cups water (750ml)
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 cinnamon sticks
• 1 tsp. whole allspice
• 6 whole cloves

Peel and coarsely chop the mangoes, add to a pan with all the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil and simmer for ~40min, until the mixture begins to thicken. Strain the sauce to remove the spices then return the fruit pulp to the sauce. Pour sauce into a glass jar.
Keep refrigerated. Delicious on crepes with home-made vanilla ice-cream.