Vanuatu

Vanuatu's national dish in sweet form: mashed ripe island banana bound with coconut milk and baked in a banana-leaf parcel.

Whole or large-cut taro corm (Colocasia esculenta) boiled until fully tender and dressed at serving with freshly pressed coconut cream and salt — a foundational everyday staple of Vanuatu and broader Melanesian cuisine.

A whole-cooked specimen of Birgus latro — the world's largest land arthropod — boiled or fire-roasted and served with coconut cream, reserved across Indo-Pacific island cultures as a prestige feast protein.

Birgus latro — the world's largest terrestrial crab, raised on a diet of coconut and tropical fruit — dispatched live and roasted whole over an open wood fire, served as the prestige centrepiece of ceremonial feasts in Vanuatu.

A fresh reef fish simmered in coconut milk with island greens and chili, typical of Vanuatu.

A Ni-Vanuatu side dish of leafy island greens — aibika or taro leaves — wilted in coconut oil with garlic and chilli.

A ceremonial and social Pacific beverage made by grinding or pounding the dried or fresh root of Piper methysticum, then kneading and straining the root mass in cold water to yield an earthy, mildly sedating, muddy-brown drink consumed communally.

A dense, slow-cooked Vanuatuan loaf of grated root vegetable — taro, manioc, yam, or breadfruit — bound with coconut milk, optionally layered with protein, wrapped tightly in banana leaves and baked in a volcanic-stone earth oven until it sets into a firm, pudding-like cake.

Vanuatu's national dish lap lap — a baked pudding of grated root vegetable and coconut cream — served in its ceremonial feast form topped with roasted fruit bat (flying fox).

A Vanuatu dish of boiled cassava chunks braised in seasoned coconut milk until the starch thickens into a creamy, mild stew.

A Vanuatu pudding of roasted taro or breadfruit pounded hot and blended with coconut milk into a dense, smooth mass.

A Vanuatu salad of shredded green (unripe) papaya dressed simply with lime juice, chilli, and salt.

A Vanuatu parcel of grated or mashed starchy root or banana bound with coconut cream, wrapped in leaves and cooked until set.

Whole or filleted fish cured with salt and hot-smoked over wood until cooked through and flavored, a staple preservation dish across the Baltic and Pacific.

A Melanesian festive dish of grated cassava dough wrapped around a spiced fish or meat filling and steamed, often inside leaves, until the starchy casing sets around the savory center.

A communal Pacific feast in which a whole pig, taro, root vegetables, and leaf-wrapped parcels are slow-roasted together over superheated volcanic stones in a sealed earth pit, the accumulated steam and radiant heat of the stones doing all the cooking.