Читать книгу In the Strange South Seas - Beatrice Grimshaw - Страница 13

The dinner was served at a table, but most of the dishes were on green leaves instead of plates, and L———— begged us, almost with tears in her eyes, to eat the native dainties with our fingers, as they tasted better that way. Little gold-fish, baked and served with cocoanut sauce, were among the items on the menu: sucking-pig, cooked in a hole in the ground, fat little river crayfish, breadfruit baked and served hot, with (I regret to say) European butter, native puddings made of banana and breadfruit, and the famous raw fish. Some of the guests would not touch the latter, but the rest of us thought it no worse than raw oysters, and sampled it, with much enjoyment. I give the receipt, for the benefit of any one who may care to try it. Take any good white fish, cut it up into pieces about two inches long, and place the latter, raw, in lime-juice squeezed from fresh limes, or lemon-juice, if limes are not to be had. Let the fish steep for half a day, and serve it cold, with cocoanut sauce, the receipt for which is as follows:—Grate down the meat of a large cocoanut, and pour a small cup of sea-water over it. Leave it for three or four hours, and then strain several times through muslin (the fine brown fibre off young cocoanut shoots is a correct material, but the reader may not have a cocoanut in his back garden). The water should at last come out as thick and opaque as cream.

This is the true “milk of the cocoanut” about which one so often hears. It is of immemorial antiquity in the South Seas.

Captain Cook mentions it in his Voyages, and describes the cocoanut shells full of it, that were given to every man at a feast, in which to dip his food. When used as a sauce for meat or fish, one or two fresh red peppers from the nearest pepper bush are cut up and put in. Chili pepper, judiciously used, is a fair substitute for the latter. The sauce is also used for many native puddings and sweet dishes, in which case it is made with fresh water and the pepper is left out. As a fish sauce it is unsurpassed, and may be recommended to gourmands as a new sensation. It should be served in bowls of brown cocoanut shell.