Chef Anthony Healy: Palusami is one of my favorite local dishes, and we serve it at the Plantation House. This is a South Pacific specialty, which is traditionally cooked in a lovo, an earth oven that uses pre-heated rocks and the moisture from leaves and banana stumps. In the case of cooking pigs and goats, heated stones are also sometimes put into the body cavities to ensure thorough cooking. Our lovo is prepared only with products from Laucala Island.
Combine coconut cream, lime zest and salt. This can be adjusted to your own personal taste. To wrap, start with the breadfruit leaf on the outside, then the banana leaf and the first leaf will be the dalo. Carefully ladle about 160ml of the coconut mix into the leaf combination. Without spilling any, carefully wrap the leaves together.
Bake inside the lovo for 1.5 hours. Remove from the lovo and discard the breadfruit and banana leaf gently from the outside. In the middle, the set coconut cream should be wrapped in the dalo leaf. Cut into portions and serve. The flavor that the coconut and dalo takes on from this cooking method is incredible.
