Friday, December 7, 2012

Tongan Cooking 101: Mei Fruit Chips


Today was the last day of school and only ten students showed up. Not much was going on so by 10 am there were only 4 left. There is a giant tree in the school yard that produces mei fruit (seen below). The tree is huge and sprawling and reminds me of something you might find a a Roal Dahl book. The boys picked the best, most ripe, mei fruit and brought it over. We then went to work making mei fruit chips.


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They asked for a tin can. Then they cut it apart and used it to scrape the skin off of the mei fruit.



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This was quite the task. It's not easy scraping all the skin off. Takes a lot of elbow grease.



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Once the skin is off you cut up the meat of the fruit. The consistency is sort of spongey - like bread almost. And in Tongan "mei" translates to bread so that makes sense.



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Then put some oil in a pan and heat it up. Slice up the mei fruit pretty thin and fry it (fakapaku style).



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Wait until it gets nice and brown.



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Then make sure the excess oil is off and put on a plate to cool.



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Serve with salt and ketchup. Enjoy!


They taste like french fries!





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