Kiribati - Te Bua Toro Ni Baukin

Kiribati is an island group in the Pacific Ocean. It's main language is Gilbertese due to the fact that a guy named Captain Thomas Gilbert discovered the islands in 1788.

This dish is their national dish and includes pumpkin which makes it handily seasonal right now :D

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
6 tbls powdered milk
1 medium pumpkin
Cabbage
1 lemon
1 can corned beef
Salt & pepper


I don't know why the quantity of cabbage is so vague in this recipe. maybe it's down to personal taste, appetite or maybe it means a whole cabbage. Who knows? We used half of a medium white cabbage in ours, anyway :)

Also, that huge container of powdered milk was the only one we could find and the recipe calls for 6 tablespoons, so now we have a vast amount of powdered milk, woo -.-

 Cut up, deseed and grate the pumpkin. Which is easier said than done (apparently, since JD was the one who did the deed and he complained about it) because pumpkin innards are gross, slimy and get everywhere. You also have to try get rid of the extra moisture in the grated pumpkin which is another horrible job that thankfully JD did :D

 Shred the cabbage and place it in a bowl with the pumpkin. I guess they need a minute alone before the other ingredients invade the party because the recipe says to add all those other things next.

 Mix everything up together and bake at 200 C for about 45 minutes until browned.

 This is how it looks browned and finished.

 Now it's on a plate with sausages and a bread roll, what a life this dish leads :)

Yet again JD and I were whisked away to surprisingly delicious food city. It looked stodgy and all clumped together like it hadn't worked out right but when we tasted it we knew it'd worked out perfectly. The corned beef is salty, the cabbage still slightly crunchy and the pumpkin was creamy. Something (maybe the powdered milk) gave the illusion that the dish contained lots of cheese but it didn't. We literally could not stop eating it until the whole dish (not the actual dish, we're not maniacs. I mean the food) was gone (even though there was murmurings of me taking the leftovers for lunch tomorrow) and we were too full. What a life they must lead in Kiribati :D