Earth Oven

(An earth oven in a pit) Heating up the stones

With Christmas day looming in  the horizon I already know what I will miss the most: Earth Oven baked food. We Islander are notorious for this cooking technique and  no Islander can say they don't enjoy this typical household cooking tradition.

First of all, earth ovens are called umu or motu in our native tongue, try saying earth oven to a Solomon Islander and he will think you are messing with his intelligence. There are numerous versions of earth ovens around, Ive seen some permanent earth ovens taking the shape of a western Oven just made of slabs of concrete and clay. Quite fancy if you ask me. What I'm referring to here is the mobile earth ovens. I like to call it that because my mum keeps moving spot for our earth oven each time she thinks of preparing food with one.

 removing the banana leaves covering the earth oven

Quick description of our earth ovens: Some tribes would dig a pit (most common in Fiji Islands) but we just use  huge stones collected from the river to make a circle. The size of the circle depends on the quantity of food that will be baked. Next step is to fill the circle with little stones, then on top of that is where you build your fire. Piling wood on top of each other, then finishing off with medium size river rocks on top. The next step is to wait til the fire turn to ashes and then remove the now hot stones (The ones on top of the wood). Place the food(usually wrapped in banana leaves or aluminium foil) and put the stones back on top. Properly cover the whole earth oven with banana leaves, wait 1 or 2 hours depending on how strong your fire was and then remove the now warm stones and you have your dinner.

During Christmas, weddings or any other special occasion the size of the earth ovens can take up a parking lot. With millions of parcels wrapped up in banana leaf along with whole pigs and fishes. In one earth oven alone you can find a variety of food, fish, pig, chicken, potato whatever is possible to put in there. Believe me the villagers will mix it all in. Earth ovens are not only restricted to special occasions but also to any typical family dinner. 

The sad thing about it is we cant just build a huge fire in the suburbs of Tokyo and start an earth oven. I would love to but then might get arrested for attempt arson. Growing up my family lived overseas for quite a while and as earth oven is part of our tradition, its like what sushi is to the Japanese. My mother somehow turn the garage into a local kitchen, we became the envy of other Solomon Islanders living in the area. Whenever we have a gathering we will be the family responsible for earth oven baked food. Some evenings we will have visitors who purposely come over to use the garage.
This Christmas earth oven is another of the simple things in life that I will miss apart from my family and the tropical climate, the beach and the feasts.