Palau

This was another of those countries I've barely heard of before I decided to make a meal to represent its cuisine. OK, perhaps I should take out the barely: honestly, I'd never heard of Palau and given its size and relatively unimportance, I'm not that surprised. Turned out, though, that's it is a really popular scuba diving destination (Eric says there's a few derelict II World War warships buried in the Ocean there as some battle was fought... but I think the Coral Reef might have something to do with it being a scuba destination).

Palau, located southeast of the Philippines, is made up of 240 islands I've learned. However, only 11 are inhabited which suggests that perhaps the rest are probably too small to build a hut on... considering that its entire size is barely twice the size of Washington DC, I'm probably not wrong about it.


Finding recipes from Palau proved, as I suspected, quite a difficult task. The web has a few things but not enough to make a full Palauan meal. I kept on stumbling across the reference to a "fruit bat soup" dish, supposedly a delicacy to try if you happen to be in Palau but let's face it, I wasn't likely to find its main ingredient (fruit bat - yes it is a bat) in Atlanta (or anywhere in the USA anyway). Moreover, unless the soup came already made, I probably would not have been very happy to handle a fruit bat. All this said, those few references to it on the web, swear this is really good... whatever.

After a bit of research over the course of the last few months, I did come up with the recipe for a soup and a soft crab course that sounded easy enough and yummy enough to serve. It just didn't sound like enough food for a meal so I ended up "borrowing" from a neighboring country, the Philippines, for the rest of the meal. I can't be that wrong, surely being Palau so small and with just over 20,000 inhabitants, I read that they do have influences from Philippines as well as Western Countries like the USA and France. And because of their scuba tourists, they have quite a few restaurants that serve Western style food.

I had invited Dan & Peter and Kako over and suggested that they come wearing their favorite south Pacific clothes... but I forgot about this so when Kako showed up at the door wearing what looked like a coat over huge naked breasts, my first thought was: "oh no! she's been attacked" and the second was "oh, she must have had breast implants made over the last couple of weeks, I wonder if she's cold!". It was only after she came in and we all started laughing loudly that I realized it was a plastic breast... as she explained it was purchased as an Halloween costume and it had found another used as appropriate clothing for a Palauan dinner amongst friends. She also explained it kind of annoyingly got in the way as she was driving over (I can only try to imagine the scene... thankfully no police was around...)




After the customary glass of wine as welcome and the happy birthdays were exchanged (it was both mine and Kako's birthday), we sat down for dinner.
The first course was a taro soup that was supposed to be made with taro leaves and coconut cream as main ingredients but I simply couldn't find Taro leaves anywhere (they didn't have them at any of the 4 farmers markets we visited and got a few stares when we even asked for it... but that might have been because very few of the workers at the farmers markets in Buford Highway actually speak any English). So, Eric found on the old faithful web, that a good substitute was chard and so I bought a really beautiful bunch of organic rainbow chard at Whole Foods. It's called rainbow as each stem come in a different color (red, yellow, white and variations of these colors) so it's even quite fun to handle.
I cooked the soup down quite a bit and then waited a few hours before running it through the food processor and as a result the consistency was actually just what I hoped for. Not too thick and not too runny. I love coconut cream and even dropped a couple of cooked shrimps in just before I served it. I really liked it and so did my guests (except for Eric but that's because he can't stand coconut, but he was a good sport and ate it anyway - although he gave me some grief for the last dollop of cream I put in the soup just before I served it).



As another starter, I prepared Lumpiang that are fried egg rolls typical of the Philippines. They're stuffed with pork, shrimps, onions and a few other ingredients all mixed together and I was amazed to find how many of them Dan could taste. He's really got a very sophisticated palate. If I had a food company, I think I would hire him as a professional taster, surely that would be a fun job - unless you happen to have a dog/cat food company... then I am not sure it'd be so much fun.
Unfortunately, I had prepared the wrappers a little too early and omitted to warm them up before serving with soy sauce and lemon and as a result they were a little soggy. But they tasted yummy though and there were none left. The recipe also didn't give any directions on how to roll them up so it took a few try before Eric and I got our hand around it but eventually we managed to make a few that looked rather decent (although mine were rectangular, his round).




The main course was made out of soft crabs. I didn't think I had them before but Eric tells me that spider rolls in sushi restaurants are made out of soft crabs so I must have had them. They're really small and I was surprised when the recipe called for 4 only - as we were 5 I bought 5 but they are too small to make a meal. I think. Or maybe we are just used to eating too much. I served them with a spicy citrus sauce that was wonderful before I decided to warm it up before serving and ended up cooking it down too much and so it had the consistency of marmalade. As an accompaniment to the crabs, I made stir fried baby bok choi. I love baby bok choi and they're really easy to make (little chance of screwing those up).





Finally, after the rest of the food was washed down with nice red wines (I think this was the first time I had made just enough food, there was nothing left), it was time for dessert. Again, I had to borrow from Philippines for this but since it was a concoction made out of taro root, sugar and coconut, I figure it wouldn't have been too far off what they eat in Palau. Unfortunately, and this happens to me when I don't test recipes out of the web, the ratio between water and taro root was a little off and as a result I had to serve the little cakes in their silicon cups (thankfully, I had purchased cute red and pink heart shaped ones at Target so they didn't look bad on the dinner table). Apparently though, the recipe said to steam the cakes and then removed them from the cup and roll them in shredded coconut... ehr, yes sure, but what if they've the consistency of runny eggs? So I covered them with coconut instead and served them in the cups. Oh well, they were not too good... sweet sugary syrup maybe... But we ate them anyway (I had 2 but then I like sweet syrupy stuff covered in coconut).






And so went another nice evening with nice friends, food and wine talking about this and that, just moments before Obama becomes the first African American president of the USA... there was an air of optimism and we all felt that, despise the doom and gloom of daily headlines, things will get better once Bush is out of office (officially leaving with the worst rating ever).




Here is the menu and the scores:

STARTERS
Taro Leaf & Coconut Soup 7.75 (just because Eric gave it a 4 as he doesn't like coconut)
Lumpiang Shanghai 8

MAIN COURSE
Crispy Mangrove Crabs in Spicy Citrus Sauce 7.75
Served with
Stir-fried baby bok choi with chilies and garlic 7.5


DESSERT
Pichi-Pichi 4.5


Next time, it's going to be Russia and I know it won't be difficult to find delectable dishes to prepare... should we serve nice flavored Stoli with them? Stay tuned...