Fiji

Fijian cuisine is defined by the reef and the coconut, kokoda (fish 'cooked' in citrus and coconut cream), taro, cassava, and the earth-oven lovo feast. Indigenous iTaukei and Indo-Fijian curry traditions meet across three hundred islands.

Fiji is usually counted at 332 islands with roughly a third of them inhabited, and the water between them supplies most of the protein. Yaqona, the pepper-root drink outsiders call kava, comes with its own protocol of clapping and cupped hands, and is offered before a serious conversation at least as often as before a meal.

Half of what Fiji eats arrived with sugar. The first indentured labourers from India landed at Levuka in May 1879 and more than sixty thousand followed over the next thirty-seven years to work the cane; their descendants' curries, roti and dhal are now ordinary Fijian food, sold beside taro and cassava rather than kept in a separate cuisine.

Firm reef fish lightly fried, then simmered in lolo (coconut cream) with onion, garlic, tomato, chilli and greens, finished with lemon and served with boiled cassava or dalo.