#66 Kiribati
- Jen
- Feb 4, 2024
- 3 min read
Pronounced: ki-ruh-bas.
Kiribati comprises three chains of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: the Gilbert/Tunagaru Islands, the Phoenix Islands and the Line Islands. When I say in the middle of the ocean, I’m not being flippant; Kiribati straddles the equator and the 180th meridian, making it the only country in the world to be situated within the northern, southern, eastern and western hemispheres.
Have a quick glance at a world map and you will immediately see that the International Date Line doesn’t completely follow the 180th meridian, and is in fact a bit wonky. This is because Kiribati spans multiple time zones, and historically some of its islands were almost a day behind the others. In 1995 the easternmost islands skipped 1st January altogether to time travel 24 hours into the future, bringing the country closer together in time, and thus adding a kink to the International Date Line. This means that at 11am today in Wales, it’s tomorrow in Kiribati, and yesterday in the US territory of Baker Island, which is situated only a few hundred miles from Kiribati.
The total land area of Kiribati’s 33 islands is a similar size to Greater Manchester, and land rises to only about 2m above sea level. These sandy low-lying islands do not provide fertile soils or swathes of pastureland, so what can be grown or reared is quite limited. There are few complex recipes or dishes per se, the traditional diet being largely made up of various combinations of readily available seafood, and hardy plants like coconuts and tubers. Rice has also become a daily staple, all of which is imported. Pigs and chickens are eaten only for special occasions.
Seafood commonly found includes: lobster, crab, tuna, shellfish and parrotfish, and is prepared in a number of ways - grilled, battered, baked, etc.
Tubers grown include sweet potato, taro, cassava and yam. They’re eaten with fish, or can be pounded into pastes and mixed with coconut to bake into puddings.
Coconuts are a super-important food for the I-Kiribati (the term for people from Kiribati). It can be eaten fresh, its sap made into a toddy, cooked with pumpkin in soups, mixed with mashed sweet potato (similar to what I cooked for Papua New Guinea), or used as the main ingredient in dipping sauces for crab claws or lobster tails. Sauces and soups are often also flavoured with ginger and/or curry powder.
Other staple fruits are breadfruit and pandanus fruit, which grow on trees near to shorelines, and like coconuts, require a lot of work to get into! Both are often eaten cooked. Pumpkins, bananas and mangoes are also grown and enjoyed in Kiribati.
One dish that should be highlighted is palusami. Often associated with Samoa, but also found in Kiribati and throughout the Polynesian world, palusami is a mixture of coconut milk and young taro leaves, wrapped in large taro leaves and baked in an underground oven. This is similar to the Vanuatu lap lap I made, which ranks bottom out of the 65 Jen Cooks The World dishes to date.
Coconut crusted fish
In the absence of many traditional recipes to choose from, and not wanting to risk promoting Vanuatu up the league table, I improvised an I-Kiribati dish using the sorts of ingredients that would be available on the islands:
- Coconut
- Curry powder
- Sweet potatoes
- Mango
- Fish*
*Artistic license exercised due to low confidence in landing Atlantic codfish in Kiribati.
Dinner I-Kiribati-style was a succulent cod loin, fried in a coating of panko breadcrumbs and desiccated coconut, and mildly spiced with a pinch of curry powder, to create a sweet and beautifully crispy crust. This was accompanied by sweet potato chips (made by Sainsbury’s, not me), and a juicy, zingy, fresh mango salsa.
Like sunshine on a plate.
Leaving sunshine and coconuts behind…and off to KAZAKHSTAN!
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