The dish from a cuisine that’s unfairly ignored in Australia (and by me)

The dish

Laplap, Vanuatu

Laplap wrapped with banana leaves and cooked on coals, Tanna, Vanuatu.Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

Plate up

Confession time: not many dishes from the Pacific Islands have been featured in this column. This is an overlooked region in some respects, a place with a rich bounty of fresh produce from both land and sea, not to mention a variety of influences from countries near and far. So let’s redress that with laplap, the national dish of Vanuatu, a cherished staple that takes time and effort to prepare, an act of love and caring for family and community.

The dish begins with a hand-ground paste of bananas and root vegetables (one or a combination of yam, taro, cassava and breadfruit), which is then layered with coconut milk and meat such as fish, beef or pork, and then wrapped in a banana leaf and cooked in a ground oven. Think of this as like an island-style tamale – and the taste is even better.

First serve

How long is a piece of string? That’s how long the Ni-Van have been cooking laplap in ground ovens. In other words, there’s no definitive answer, though there’s a theory that ground ovens spread through Micronesia and Melanesia from Papua New Guinea, and this has been a popular method of cooking for hundreds of years in Vanuatu. Laplap might be the national dish, but its modern-day iteration is usually saved for special occasions: big family lunches, ceremonies and other large gatherings.

Order there

In Vanuatu, the laplap served on each island will vary slightly in ingredients and method, so it’s worth trying as many as you can. For those flying into Port Vila, make your first stop Au Fare, a traditional restaurant on the waterfront, or Port Vila Market, to sample local laplap (no websites).

Order here

Good luck finding laplap at a restaurant in Australia (most Google searches take you to laptops). Instead, you’ll have to create the dish yourself – visit atravel.blog to find a recipe for home cooking.

One more thing

The reason laplap is so popular in Vanuatu should be obvious: all the ingredients grow naturally on the island. The root vegetables are there, the coconuts are plentiful, the chickens are scratching around and the fish just need reeling in. Then it’s a case of putting them all together.