What to eat French Polynesia? culinary specialties and gastronomy

Polynesian cuisine offers a wide variety of specialties, mainly based on seafood and exotic fruits, with a subtle touch of French and Chinese influences. Dishes tend to use relatively few spices and often include coconut milk, ginger, lime, vanilla or tamarind. Fish and shellfish are prepared in many ways: grilled, skewered, wrapped in foil and baked or fried, raw, etc. Polynesian lagoons also offer an incredible variety of fish used in traditional cuisine.

The hot and humid tropical climate is particularly well suited to the cultivation of fruits and vegetables. Fresh fruit is often served as a dessert, but is also used in salads, fish tartars and ready meals. One of the major elements of cooking in Tahiti and much of the Pacific is the Polynesian oven or ahi ma'a (from "ahi" fire and "ma'a" food). On festive occasions, food is always cooked in earthen ovens or cooking pits, according to a traditional technique that dates back to antiquity. This consists of digging a hole about a metre deep, the surface varying according to the quantity of food to be cooked, of course. Wood and dried coconut shells are placed on the bottom and covered with volcanic stones. The wood is burned to heat the stones, then the food is wrapped in banana leaves and placed on the stones to cook. Among the ingredients of Tahitian cuisine cooked in an ahi ma'a are pua oviri (wild boar), uru (breadfruit), taro, fe'i banana (a kind of orange banana that is only eaten cooked), eia (fish), poe (a kind of gelatinous dessert wrapped in banana leaves), fafa (a kind of local spinach) or manioc. The food is covered with hotter stones, then covered with earth and sand to create a giant pressure cooker. The oven is then constantly monitored and if smoke appears through a hole, it must be blocked. A meal usually takes a few hours to prepare using this traditional method.

As cooking is very long, traditionally, ahi ma'a was prepared on Saturday to be opened the next day and served after Sunday mass. As a Sunday tradition, this preparation is particularly popular at events and family gatherings, and is usually a great success at Sunday lunchtime.

Thanks to its tropical climate, French Polynesia is able to cultivate a wide variety of foods even though the small size or relief of some islands severely limits agricultural possibilities. Among the plants cultivated in the region are many root vegetables, used as a source of starchy foods. Taro is common in Polynesia, both for the tuber and for its large heart-shaped leaves. Let us also mention the fafa, close to taro, cassava and sweet potato. The fruit of theuru, or breadfruit tree, is a major component of Polynesian cuisine. This plant, native to the Pacific, produces fruits that - after cooking - look like bread. It needs to be cooked for about 3 hours before eating and is a super nutritious food (rich in carbohydrates, vitamins and mineral salts) with a balanced taste. From an energy point of view 200 g of uru (255 kcal) provide as many calories as 100 g of white bread. On the other hand, the flour extracted from it does not contain gluten. After harvesting, it is usually left to rest overnight so that it can be emptied of its sap. Theuru is then placed directly on a wood fire and left to bake for about 30 minutes on each side, until each side of the skin is well cooked and a thin layer of grey ash forms on the surface. This "crust" is then peeled off: the cooked flesh thus uncovered is served in nice slices - the heart where the seeds are located is removed. The resulting slices ofuru

can also be fried in oil.

But beyond this fruit tree, there are many other types of fruit that flood the markets, such as the passion fruit with its tangy pulp, the fragrant pineapple, the melting mango or the papaya. Carambola does not have a very strong taste, but once cut, it forms beautiful yellow star-shaped slices. Lime is very commonly used in Polynesian cuisine. Tamarind, widely used in Asia for its sour pulp, is often consumed in Polynesia as a cold drink. The dragon's eye or longan, with translucent flesh, close to the lychee, comes from China. The cashew apple (cashew tree) is the fruit that grows on top of the famous cashew nut. The margose is rather used as a vegetable. This amazing bitter cucumber, with its skin covered with spikes, is emptied of its seeds to be stuffed. The anone corossol has a creamy and very sweet white pulp. Noni, although growing naturally in Tahiti, is actually native to India. However, this fruit surprisingly resembles a white blackberry and is very popular locally. Finally, the apple or cyther plum - native to the Pacific - has a light, tangy taste and a crunchy flesh. Tahiti is also a vanilla-producing region. Different from Bourbon vanilla - grown in Madagascar - with subtle aniseed and caramelized notes, Tahiti vanilla is in a way the black gold of French Polynesia and is produced mainly in Tahaa.

One of the fruits most associated with the islands is of course coconut. The trunk of the coconut tree, called the "tree of life", is used as a building material, while the fruit is consumed in all its forms. It is wrapped in a thick layer of fibres, under which a thin brown shell envelops the pure white flesh. When the coconuts are young, part of the inside is liquid: this is coconut water. Then, as the fruit ripens, it becomes solid. Coconut milk is used in many culinary preparations and is made by pressing the grated coconut flesh. Coconut blossom sugar, more simply called coconut sugar, can also be extracted from the flower of the coconut palm. It is an unrefined sugar obtained by crystallizing the sap from the stems of the coconut blossoms. It is a variety of palm sugar.

Although French Polynesia has a modest surface area, the entire territory, including the maritime areas, stretches over some 5,500,000 km². In other words, fish and seafood have a more than predominant place in Polynesian cuisine. The most popular lagoon or ocean fish are tuna, mahi-mahi, perch or swordfish, not forgetting the large freshwater shrimp, known here as "chevrettes". It must be said that the small agricultural areas mean that the local cuisine is very dependent on seafood, the pig being the only land mammal imported by the Polynesians when these islands were settled. Cows, goats, rabbits, etc., are more recently acclimatized animals, for about two centuries, and most of the meat consumed in French Polynesia is imported from New Zealand. Traditional whale hunting, practised in particular by the Rurutu, stopped in the middle of the 20th century, and its meat is no longer consumed, unlike the green turtle, which is still hunted despite bans.

Farming on these islands, practised in a traditional way, is all the more simple as the animals - goats and pigs in particular - cannot swim, so there is no need to keep a close eye on them. Polynesian families often own one or more pigs (pua

) and have been raising chickens since their ancestors landed on the islands. In the Marquesas, goats live in the wild. All you have to do is hunt them and eat them on the spot. An extraordinary experience. Although much of the milk is imported, Tahiti, and more specifically the Vaiora cooperative, located on the Taravao plateau on the Tahiti Iti peninsula, has a herd of 1,100 cattle, including 220 dairy cows, covering 300 hectares and producing about 1,000 liters of milk every day. Nevertheless, there are a number of feeds that cannot really be produced on the islands. We could mention corned beef, Chinese noodles, wheat flour, red beans, as well as products that will flatter the palate of the French in the mainland, such as a Roquefort or a good Bordeaux, which of course will cost a fortune on the spot. The three main cultures existing in Tahiti (Polynesian, French and Chinese) have learned to take advantage of the richness of each cuisine. High gastronomy is (it is true) confined to the tables of the great restaurants and hotels of the Society Islands. It mainly chooses its base of inspiration in French or Chinese gastronomy: try mahi-mahi with vanilla sauce, or sautéed fillet of beef with mahogany. You should know that any snack bar or restaurant offers chicken and chips or entrecote steak with Roquefort cheese. So you can enjoy pure raw French cuisine, or a French one with local products. The average Polynesian family prepares good small dishes such as raw fish with coconut milk, grilled or cooked fish in papillote, garnished with rice or various vegetables, different chicken curries, chevrette, etc.

The fafaru, with its powerful and disturbing smell, is a real culinary surprise. It consists of raw fish or shrimps macerated for several days in sea water. The Faranis (French people from the metropolis) often wonder how one can eat this thing. Nevertheless, its taste is more subtle than the smell would suggest. The most famous dish is probably raw fish à la tahitienne or i'a ota, marinated in lime juice and coconut milk. This dish can be prepared with fresh tuna, but other Polynesian fish such as mahi-mahi, bonito or barracuda also do very well. Apart from fish, which adapts very well to this type of preparation, seafood such as sea snails, clams, lobster or prawns are excellent raw recipes. The ina'a fritters with rea are a recipe for small fry croquettes. Other classics include chicken at fāfā, a chicken stew with taro leaves and coconut milk. Another stewed dish, pua'a choux is a pork stew with cabbage, turnips and carrots. Otherwise roast suckling pig is a popular holiday dish, as is spit-roasted veal. Maa tinito

(literally "Chinese meal") consists of pork belly and kidney beans cooked in a sweet and sour sauce. Starchy foods are highly prized and often combined to create dense, slightly elastic breads such asipo (made from flour and coconut milk), rēti'a (made from starch and coconut) or tāota (grated cassava, starch). Without forgetting the po'e, of which there are different versions, often presented at Tahitian banquets and sold on markets: the po'e ī'ītā (papaya), the po'e mei'a (banana), the po'e hi'o (coconut water), the po'e ape (giant taro), the po'e māpē (Tahitian chestnut) and the po'e mauteni (pumpkin). Banana and papaya po' e are generally considered desserts. The ma'a Tahiti is a large plate of Polynesian dishes, containing raw fish in coconut milk, po'e, fafa, cooked bananas, taro or coconut bread. Punu pua' atoro is the Tahitian term for corned-beef, an American import, which has since become very popular throughout the Pacific. It is often used with peas and rice.

Even if each country has absorbed over the course of history various external influences that have shaped their gastronomy, we find two dominant trends in French Polynesia. Tahiti's Chinese cuisine, inherited from the Hakka people who settled in the archipelago at the end of the 19th century, has adapted following cultural contacts with the European and Tahitian populations, and is now an integral part of the local culinary tradition. Some of these dishes can be found in metropolitan France, but they have different flavours from their Tahitian counterparts. Chop suey, chao pao, chicken heart skewers, shrimp fritters, Cantonese rice, egg rolls and so on are classics. Chinese cuisine is not limited to restaurants, but can be found in every snack and on every plate. The chao mein is an almost transparent distortion of the Chinese dish called chow mein. Here we are talking about a dish of sautéed wheat noodles, garnished with vegetables (cabbage, turnip, carrots, green onions), shrimp, pork and chicken. A more than complete and particularly delicious dish. The chao bao is a type of steamed brioche often known simply as bao in China and is filled with a tasty mixture usually containing ground pork, vegetables or, even more flavourful, lacquered pork with a delicious sweet-salty taste. Lemon chicken is a recipe of fried chicken pieces coated with a sweet and sour lemon sauce, while tapen lou

or Chinese fondue is made of a multitude of finely chopped foods (meat, vegetables, seafood, etc.) which are plunged by the guests themselves into a very fragrant broth. French gastronomy has a more diffuse influence on everyday food. A few chefs have settled in these islands and offer meals worthy of their nationality at high prices, but the average Tahitian family does not cook "à la française". Inherited from the French presence, everyone has their baguette de pain, but French products are mainly present on the shelves because of taxes. The French community in Tahiti simply imports the products they are used to. Rather, it should be considered that Europe and the West in general have made their contribution to the Polynesian food palette, since, as everywhere, people eat pasta, pizza, red meat and dairy products.

On the pastry side, in addition to the classics such as chocolate-banana cake, gourmets will try the pai, small slippers filled with coconut or banana, or coconut bread, or the firifiri, sweet donuts in the shape of a figure eight. The banana po'e is a dessert made with bananas, manioc flour (tapioca), vanilla and coconut milk. A kind of pudding, usually served lukewarm. It can be made with pineapple, guava or papaya. The po'e can also be cooked with pumpkin, in this case it is not a dessert, but the accompaniment of a main course. The coconut bread is a kind of brioche that incorporates coconut water giving a little taste to this soft bread very appreciated for breakfast. In the Marquesas, the popoi refers to baked and crusheduru (breadfruit tree) to which coconut milk is added. The fei

is a variety of banana that is eaten cooked.

Coconut water has long been the only source of drinking water on the atolls, especially when it did not rain. Each coconut contains about two full glasses. Today, all the islands have running water at the tap, but it is not always drinkable, especially on small atolls where there is no natural water source. In the Tuamotu, the islands are supplied with containers of mineral water. Fresh water is a very rare commodity, and therefore to be consumed without wasting it. The two main brands, Vaimato and Eau Royale, spring up in Tahiti. A few others are imported. Many houses are equipped with fountains that are refilled with a canister, as can be seen in the United States. Succulent juices are extracted from the islands' fruit riches. Rotui pineapple juices, made in the factory in Moorea, can be found everywhere, in cans. The one-litre bottles, 100% pure juice, are excellent, but expensive. The factory also sells grapefruit and guava juice.

To sprinkle a good meal with a grand cru is possible: most shops in Papeete sell French, Chilean and Californian wines, as well as hotels and restaurants that have a cellar. Wines of course cost much more than in metropolitan France for the same quality. Even if hotels and restaurants have discounts, which allow them to have "conventioned" rates making the bottle more accessible, but quite expensive, at least 15-20 €. Strong alcohols remain expensive, there are no rum distilleries like in the West Indies. The flagship whisky is Cutty Sark, which is mixed with Sprite. On the other hand, the local ti-punch exists to accommodate rum. The maitai cocktail ("excellent" in Tahitian) is made with white rum, brown rum, coconut liqueur, pineapple juice, grenadine, lime, Grand Marnier and Cointreau. Hinano beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage, but there are good rums and liqueurs. It is in Rangiroa, in the heart of the Tuamotu, that Tahitian wine is matured. Although the vine is not necessarily a tropical plant, it has been able to adapt and red coral wine, rosé and white are produced. The white in particular is sweet and fruity.