An Asian-Style Feast

Last night we were invited to have dinner at Sarah's place. Sarah Packer is a dental assistant from Melbourne but originally from Malaysia, and she loves to cook with the ingredients that are available here but not in Melbourne. She put on the meal on her last night here in Vila where she has been helping with the National Oral Health Survey. She invited all those who have been helping on our team, and one of them, Marie, was her assistant. I got to learn how to make a couple of the dishes. 

 Here is Sarah preparing choko,

 Marie grating coconut. I had a go but I was really bad at it, there is definitely a technique to be mastered.

 The freshly grated coconut.

 Then Marie showed me how to peel and grate manioc. The skin peels off like bark once you chop the ends off and slit it lengthwise. This was all done with a carving knife and I was wondering if I would have any fingers left afterwards! This morning I discovered a tiny shallow cut on my thumb when I got it wet in the shower and it stung - not bad going. Mainly because Marie did most of the work 😆

 Tools of the trade - the coconut grater - you sit on the big roundy bit, with the smaller roundy bit with a sharp metal edge on it facing out between your legs, the manioc grater, and a bush knife for chopping the coconut shells in half!

Hard boiled eggs, coated in turmeric and oil and which should have been baked but had to be fried because there is no oven there.

 The manioc and coconut cream dessert was delicious, but that also had to be cooked on the cooktop because of a lack of oven. Amazing what can be achieved with a bit of improvisation.

 Here we are enjoying the feast, which included rice, chicken and vegetable curries, island cabbage and pak choy. We are eating in the front porch of Twin Cains which is an apartment complex owned by PCV. 7 units are rented to locals and the front 2 are kept for overseas visitors. In this instance Sarah was staying in one unit and Dr Barry Stewart (on the left) was in the other. There is a mesh screen around the porch which keeps out dogs but not the cats.