On the way back from the meeting mentioned in the previous post I decided to check in on a good friend of mine, Janet. I found her in her garden tending her sweet potato (kaukau) and corn and decided to stay and get my hands dirty, too. They get a good kick out of our feable attempts to garden so I thought I'd amuse Janet for a bit.
She had dug up a few "tapiok" (cassava root, where tapioca comes from) and wanted to show me how to make tapiok cake.
The tapiok tree.
We peeled the tapiok (it peels off like bark) and she set me to work grating it into mush.
A pretty ingenious invention...nails punched through a piece of tin. This worked way better than any grater I've ever owned (minus the rust).
Pat the tapiok into the bottom of an oil-lined pot.
Cover it with pieces of banana leaf.
Heat rocks over the fire and, using homemade bamboo tongs, place them on top of the banana leaves, then cover with more leaves.
Life in a hut: dark and smokey. The Highlanders generally sleep in a different hut than they cook in, but Janet & Heti only have the one hut.
The tapiok is then placed over the fire to cook.
The end result....sooooo good. I'm not the biggest fan of tapiok so I had my doubts about this, but it was moist and chewy and, with a bit of salt, I didn't want to stop eating.
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