On weekends in Tahiti, families and friends come together to prepare po’e—a pudding-style dessert—so that it will be ready for the traditional Sunday lunch.
The fire blazes brightly on a balmy Saturday night in Tahiti. A closer look at the flames reveals a pile of shoebox-sized stones inside, some of them already turning bright red in the heat. Once the volcanic stones are all glowing red, the cooks know they’ll be ready to cook the po’e hi’o—a traditional dish on the islands. Close to the fire, a gigantic bowl filled with a mix of tapioca starch, sugar and coconut water has already been prepared.
Coconuts play a central role in Tahitian cuisine and particularly in po’e hi’o, where coconut water is the main ingredient. Coconut water is the juice obtained when first cracking open the coconut and is naturally sweet and delicious. Coconut milk, on the other hand, is made from grating the flesh of a ripe coconut and then squeezing out the rich milk by hand.
Once the lava rocks are red-hot it’s time to start cooking the po’e. Moving thirty burning rocks from the coals into the bowl is a three-person job. The rocks hiss as they enter the coconut water mixture, and the po’e
