South Polynesian Islands

The Polynesian kitchen serves a large selection of specialties mainly seasoned with sea food and tropical fruits, with a touch of France and China. The meals use relatively few herbs and often contain coir milks, gingers, lime, custard or almonds. There are many ways to prepare your crustacean: barbecued, spit-roasted, packaged and cooked or deep-fried, uncooked, etc.

Of the seafishes, the most favoured are tunas, mahi-mahi (Coryphaena), which is valued for its delicious taste, opa (or moonfish) and sabers. There is also an unbelievable diversity of seafood used in local cuisines such as parrot fishing, scat and redfish. It has a warm and moist tropic environment, making it ideal for cultivating fruits and veg.

In Polynesia, taro is widely used for both tubers and foliage; there are alsofa ( "tropical spinach"), manioc, yams and many fruits such as "uru" (breadfruit), which, when boiled, look similar to loaves of crumble. It is often used as a desert, but is also used in lettuce, seafood cakes and boiled cuisine.

Of course, one of the most associated with the islands is of course the maize. It is a plant known as the "tree of life" and is used as a construction element, while the berries are eaten in all their shapes. In young people, part of the interior is fluid; that is coir waters.

Then when the fruits ripen, they become firm. Coir is used in a wide range of gastronomic preparation and is produced by crushing ground coir meat. On special events, meals are still prepared in earthen stoves or cook ware quarries, using a method that goes back to antiquity. It is to dig a one meter wide pit whose area varies depending on the amount of dishes to be made.

Dried timber is laid on the ground and coated with vulcanic rocks. Burn the firewood to warm the rocks, then wrap the meal (wild boar, seafood, tartar, cassava, urus, etc.) in sheets of bananas and place them on the rocks to boil. Eating is topped with more warm rocks and then with soil and grit to produce a steaming/frying effect.

The preparation of a food usually lasts a few inches.