Dear LPG readers,  

I think that I have done the nation of Vanuatu a serious injustice.

 

Trying to make ‘Lap Lap’ has to represent my worst-ever attempt at an international cooking task in LPG history.  While verbalised excuses are hard enough to produce, writing down ‘I just don’t know what went wrong’ is the most accurate sentence that I can come up with on this occasion.   

I studied the videos and, barring banana leaves (which the recipe suggests be substituted with Tin Foil), I was more than satisfied with my ingredient collection.   

All the videos I watched showed the grating process, but with all the mod cons that we have for grating, I have long since given up on getting one of those conventional hand-held food graters out.  My answer to getting things pulverised has to be my smoothie maker and once peeled, I put both the banana and the sweet potato in and pressed the button.  The resulting wiz was predictably deafening, and the pulped result looked much the same as that in the videos but, even though I baked it for twice as long as the recipe suggested, the result remained liquid.  

I have decided that, in fairness to Vanuatu, I will have to repeat this recipe in a year’s time.  As you can imagine, there was no taste-testing but ‘Google Lens’ (one of those virtual assistant apps that has recently appeared on the mobile phone I took the picture on) offered an opinion of my dish.  Its definition was as follows, ‘Based on the image, you are looking at a dish typically referred to as fish in foil or fish en papillote, where seafood is tightly wrapped and steamed in its own juices along with aromatics and vegetables.’  

Considering that there was no fish involved and I baked it, I found the AI definition of a steamed fish dish a bit bewildering, and the difference between what AI could see and what I set out to do says very little for their perception of my picture,  and even less about the level of my cooking success this month. 

With my plan for next June’s cooking attempt already arranged, I set my sights on something to have a go at in July, and the Maldives will be celebrating on the 26th.  Their national breakfast dish involves no grating and hardly any cooking, so I will be giving Mas Huni my best shot next month. 

 

 

CB, Lewisham.

 

 

…CB offers some pointers to a Maldivian breakfast…

 

 

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