Tongan Cooking with Elder/Sister Olive

We are blessed to have several Tongan missionary couples in our mission. The Olives approached us to do traditional Tongan cooking for a senior activity. Great idea! There is a large umu in Mission President Sione Tuione's back yard; Elder Olive got permission to use this for our cooking.

First step is to start the fire in the umu with wood. We then added coals and let them get hot. In this photo, Elder Olive is warming the banana leaves so they will be pliable later on when we place them over our lu.












While the umo got  ready to be filled, we visited on the patio, grated coconut and squeezed the fresh grated coconut for coconut cream to add to our lu. Fresh coconut cream makes all the difference in the taste. Elder Thomson grated quite a bit of the coconut we all used.

Each couple brought ingredients for lu ... meat, tomato, onion, manioke (supplied by Olives), mushrooms. The Olives had gathered taro and banana leaves.

Sister Olive, Sister/Brother Evans

Coombs

To make lu, we put meat or fish and vegetables on top of taro leaves. We next folded the taro leaves neatly and tied them with banana stem. We devised ways to identify our lu. Hudsons  tied theirs in a mattress suture. We just put the stem straight across the tie, not fancy but we knew it was ours.

Sister Heiner

Some of us then stuffed squash with manioke, tomato, onion, and again fresh-squeezed coconut cream. We identified ours with a T carved in the shell. I never had thought of stuffing squash before, but this was really good!

It was time to fill the umu! -
lu wrapped in banana leaves and squash wrapped in foil - traditionally it would have also been wrapped in banana leaves.

Elder Olive carefully covered the food with banana leaves to add flavor and hold the heat in. The banana leaves were then covered with a metal lid which then was covered with wet fabric to hold the heat in and smoke the food.


All that was left was the cooking...about 2 hours for everything to be done and the flavors all mixed together. Again a great time was had visiting and telling stories. The Va'enukus arrived ... they had been picking up missionaries including President and Sister Tuione at the airport. We had made them lu so they did not go hungry. The squash was shared by all.
       Everyone helped remove the steaming banana leaves... very carefully not to get burned. Then it was time to eat ...   DELICIOUS!

This was such a fun activity. Thank you Olives for teaching us to cook Tongan style.

“Every person you meet knows something you don’t; learn from them.”

                                                                   —H Jackson Brown Jr.