The reason we are living in DC this
year is that I am working as a Program Director at the National Science
Foundation (NSF), helping to manage programs in the areas of Robotics and
AI. For this dinner, we invited some of
my colleagues from NSF and their spouses.
The rules were supposed to be no shop talk, but even though we ended up
talking about programs and funding, everyone had a good time getting to know
each other better. And, true to our
nature as program officers, responses to the post-meal survey had the flavor of
NSF proposal reviews.
For this meal, the choice of Fiji
was fairly straightforward: I had done Finland the first time around (probably
the biggest flop of my meals, but that’s another story) and didn’t want to do
France, since my mother-in-law is French and I figured I just couldn’t compare
with her exquisite cooking. Besides, how
can you pick a more exotic place than Fiji!
Fijian diet consists of mainly pig and fish, so right there it narrowed
things down to fish. And, while the
influences are mostly from Southeast Asia, there is apparently a significant
Indian influence, as well. I figured it
would be a very tasty and interesting meal.
The Appetizer:
One of the most
popular appetizers in Fiji is Kokoda, a ceviche-type dish.
Coincidentally, it is very similar to the appetizer I made for the Ecuador meal. Since that dish was such a success, I
figured that the Kokoda would be very good as well, so I, once again, used
mahi-mahi.. The main difference between
the two dishes is that Kokoda has coconut milk (actually, almost every dish I
made for this meal had coconut milk, which some of the guests found repetitive). That gave the Kokoda a creamy texture and, of
course, a coconutty flavor that meshed very well with the lime juice. The guests rated the Kokoda 6.7 out of 7 –
definitely a keeper!
I also made taro chips
to accompany the Kokoda. We had to go to
a few places to find enough taro root for the meal, and I had to buy a mandolin
to make the chips. It was cool using a
kitchen gadget that I had heard a lot about but never used, and fortunately I
avoided slicing my fingers off.
Unfortunately, the
mandolin was not a high-quality implement and the slices were not uniform, so
they did not bake evenly – some were nice and crisp, but some were burnt, as
one can see from the picture. I tried to
compensate by moving the chips around a bit as they were baking, but the
overall effect was not all that pretty.
I did heavily salt and pepper them, so they were quite tasty, as long as
one avoided the burnt parts. Overall,
the guests didn’t seem to mind and rated them 6.3.
The Main Dish:
While the main dish was also fish, I
tried to make something distinctive from the Kokoda. Suruwa, Fijian
fish curry, has Indian influences, and I thought it would contrast nicely with
the other, more indigenous, Fijian foods.
We used cod for the recipe, which I cut into roughly 2” pieces. I also seeded the chilis so the dish wouldn’t
be too hot. Unfortunately, the dish turned
out quite bland. Even after adding more
salt, doubling the amount of cumin and turmeric, and adding a teaspoon of curry
powder, the dish still did not have a very distinctive flavor. I guess that the chili seeds would have made
it much less bland, but I really don’t like to make dishes that blast
heat. It was not a bad dish, and the
turmeric made it look very pretty, but it was just not overly flavorful. The guests evidently agreed, with ratings in
the 4-6 range, averaging 5.4. Not a
keeper.
The Starch:
Besides using a lot
of coconut milk, Fijian recipes apparently also use a lot of taro. For the starch, I found a recipe that
combined the two – boiled taro in coconut milk. I
was a bit worried that the dish would be too bland with just salt and coconut
milk, and, indeed, it was bland and also not very appetizing looking. However, the texture was nice; the starch in
the taro thickened up the coconut milk nicely, and it paired well with the more
Suruwa. The guests’ reviews were
generally good, though – mostly 5’s and 6’s, with one 7 and one 3. Personally, I would have given it a 4. I don’t think I’d make it again, though,
since it takes so long to cook (it needs about an hour for boiling and then
must be peeled once the taro cools down).
The Vegetable:
Keeping with the
theme of the meal, the vegetable recipe, called roro, also calls for coconut milk. Roro is apparently the Fijian word for taro
leaves but the recipe acknowledges that they are very difficut to find in the
West, and frozen chopped spinach can be used instead. I thought I would be fancy and use fresh
spinach – and was amazed when a big bag of spinach ended up as a small
clump. Fortunately, we had some frozen
spinach in the freezer, and that saved the recipe. I used about 50% more onions than called for
in the recipe (not really on purpose – it was just the size of the onions that
we had) and substituted siracha for the thai chilis. Again, I erred on the side of not too much
heat, so, while the dish was not bland, it was also not very spicy. The roro had a great creamy consistency, and
I felt it went well with the fish. The
overall ratings were fairly mixed, though – spanning the range from 4-7, with
an average of 5.33. I found it quite
tasty, but not enough to be a keeper. The
only dish of the four from this meal that really stood out was the appetizer of
Kokoda and taro chips. As we NSF program
directors know, however, a success rate of 25% is pretty good!
Up next: Ghana! First meal of this
round from Africa!
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