F is for Fiji

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!