How to Steam

Appears in

Islas: A Celebration of Tropical Cooking - 125 Recipes from the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Ocean Islands

Published 2024

About

The recipes in this chapter bring together dishes that use sustained heat and steam to cook rice, marinated meat and fish, and banana leaf–wrapped parcels.

Although in-ground earth ovens are commonly used to prepare these dishes, they are hard to come by in urban settings, so these recipes have been adapted for modern kitchens with an emphasis on preserving the spirit of these dishes and replicating their flavor profiles.

From Indonesia, Bebek Betutu is whole duck marinated in garlic, chiles, and Balinese thousand-spice blend, then wrapped in banana leaves and steamed—perfuming and tenderizing the meat and creating a velvety sauce you can pour onto fragrant, turmeric-laced Indonesian Nasi Kuning. Puerto Rican Cazuela, among the few desserts in this book, is made by blending pumpkin and batata, or white sweet potato, with coconut milk, cloves, and star anise and then baking it inside banana leaves.