To imagine that there is a single cookery of the Torres Strait would be as wrong as assuming a uniformity across Aboriginal Australia. Each island has its own traditions of which it is fiercely proud. As a woman once said to me, while she waited for the boat to take her back to her home on Badu, ‘People do the island cookery there: dugong, turtle, vegetables, cakes. … These islands don’t have good cookery.’ She nudged askance at the place she was leaving.
Though the islands share a Melanesian heritage, differences arise from geography, climate and soil, which in turn influence the crops that can be grown. Anthropologist Alfred Haddon, in Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits of 1898-99, noted that in traditional lore the garden crops were brought to the islands by Sida, a hero from New Guinea. He came with a basket full of plants, distributing them here and there as he travelled from west to east. At some places, the Islanders were mean, and in return he gave them fewer gifts from his basket. But on the Eastern Islands of Mer, Erub, and Ugar they were more generous and these have always been renowned for their garden plots, which in the old days supported large villages. Throughout the islands, even where good land is limited and rainfall uncertain, there are usually a few coconut palms, plantains, bananas, pawpaws or mangoes in the gardens of people’s houses, and each family owns a patch of land somewhere to grow cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, taro, pumpkins, sugar cane or other crops. Traditionally, cooks depended on their garden crops, seafood, some wild fruits, game animals and birds.
Changes came from the 1870s with the influx of Japanese, Filipinos, Malays, Ceylonese and Chinese to work the pearl-shell beds for the button industry. By the 1890s Asian food influences and store-bought foods were common. The traditional flavouring of coconut milk was spiced up with chillies, curry powder, ginger, garlic and soy sauce. The impact was greatest on Thursday Island (TI) where separate districts such as Little Yokohama and Malaytown grew up. Asian pearlers married Island women, and Islanders crewed the boats where they shared food with co-workers from Asia. As a result the foodways of both quickly intermingled. Thursday Island cookery was totally transformed and many changes spread throughout the Strait.
Now, every island community has its large IBIS shop, supplied by the weekly barge, with shelves of rice, flour and ‘Hamper’ (the most common brand of tinned corned beef), fruit and vegetables, and freezing cabinets full of lamb and beef. However, even today, if one had to sum up the preferred pastime of most Torres Strait Islanders, both women and men, it could be put in three simple words: ‘Fishing, fishing and fishing.’
Urur Lar (Fire-Fire Fish)
Serves 1
The waters of the Torres Strait teem with seafood, which traditionally provides the chief source of protein. In A Flower-Hunter in Queensland and New Zealand, botanical artist Ellis Rowan, who visited the islands in the 1890s, described the catch brought in one day:
At two o’clock the fishing boats came back laden with booty, one dugong – a great fat unwieldy-looking creature, which they rolled in on to the shore – three large turtles, a kingfish, and several crayfish, which are very brightly coloured and different from those in the south.
A kup maori, or earth oven, is popular for cooking dugong and turtle, but the simplest method for fish is grilling on the hot coals of the fire.
1 x 250-350 g (8-12 oz) whole fish, gutted, scaled and cleaned
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Peanut oil
- Pat the fish dry, season with a little salt and pepper and brush with oil. Preheat the griller and brush lightly with oil. Grill the fish at a high heat until done, about 6 minutes each side, depending on the thickness of the fish. The fish is done when it flakes easily with a fork. It is better to undercook than overcook since it will continue to cook after it is removed from the heat.
Saucepan Sop-Sop
Serves 6-8
Sop-sops are among the most characteristic dishes of Torres Strait Island cookery. Major Roland Raven-Hart, in The Happy Isles, describes a meal he enjoyed during his sojourn on the island of Mer in the 1940s:
And then we ate; and I met with ‘sop-sop’, and fell in deathless love with it.
One of the island-mothers who were waiting on us put a large green parcel in front of me: it was wrapped in banana-leaves, and when opened it gushed out a mouth-watering steam. … All sop-sops are good: an excellent sop-sop is a thing to remember with reverence.
The Major’s parcel contained yam, pumpkin, chicken and fish, and had been cooked in the kup maori, with stones heated by fire and then the parcels put on the stones, and covered over with palm fronds and sand heaped up ‘like someone dead in there’. For simpler meals sop-sop is cooked either in a frypan, or in a saucepan lined with a banana frond, which protects the food while cooking.
1 banana leaf
750 g (1½ lb) yams or potatoes
375 g (13 oz) pumpkin
375 g (13 oz) sweet potatoes
1 onion, finely chopped
2½ cups coconut milk
1 teaspoon salt
150 g (5 oz) fish, chopped small, or quantity to suit
- Take a young, untattered banana leaf. Turn a hot-plate or gas ring onto the highest setting and pass the leaf, lower surface uppermost, a few inches above the heat source. As it softens and becomes pliable , the leaf’s lower surface will turn a brighter green and lose its white bloom. Line a saucepan with the leaf, curling the rib around the sides and base.
- Peel the root vegetables and cut into 1.5 cm (½ inch) dice. Combine in a large bowl, stirring in the onion, milk and salt. Place in the lined saucepan and scatter the fish over the top.
- Bring to the boil, maintaining the heat at moderate to moderately hot for 10-15 minutes until the ingredients in the middle begin to warm up. Then lower the heat and simmer, covered, for a further 30-40 minutes until the vegetables are all cooked. Do not stir.
Goeynaw Mabuth (Taro Mash)
Serves 4-6
The commonest vegetables in the islands are starchy tubers, with the exception of pumpkin and corn – later introductions. In earlier days, before potatoes were imported cheaply from mainland Australia, yams were the most important dry-season vegetable on many islands, whether planted in slash-and-burn gardens or, on Muralug, dug wild from the stony hills. The sweet potato achieved widespread popularity when it arrived from New Guinea by European ship, probably in the 1800s. Cassava, another colonial import, is a good crop for dry conditions. However, on Saibai and Boigu, with their swampy mud flats, taro has always been the staple. Here, a simple dish of mashed taro is combined with coconut milk, which not only flavours the taro deliciously but also lightens what is rather a heavy vegetable.
1 taro root (about 750 g or 1½ lb)
Salt
¾ cup coconut milk
- Peel the taro and cut it into large chunks. Boil in salted water to cover for about 20 minutes until soft when pierced by a fork.
- Drain and turn into a large bowl. Pour in the coconut milk and mash with a potato masher or an electric beater until smooth. Serve at once.
Bisi Damper (Cassava Damper)
Serves 8
‘Damper’ here is not the usual meaning of the word and the dish resembles somewhat the pilhi vegetable dishes cooked in baking dishes by the women of Norfolk Island. If you are lucky enough to have access to cassava you will find it delicious, particularly if using fresh coconut milk and seafood. On the islands, it is made with mangrove mussels, cockles or Hamper.
1 cassava root, about 1 kg (2 lb)
375 g (13 oz) green lipped mussels in brine, or 1 kg (2 lb) fresh mussels in their shells, or 1 x 375 g (13 oz) tin of corned beef
2-3 cups coconut milk, or half coconut milk and half water if using tinned coconut milk
- With a vegetable knife peel the cassava, removing the brown skin and the outer layer of white flesh under the skin. Wash and grate coarsely, discarding the stringy core at the centre. Place in a large bowl.
- Drain the mussels in brine, reserving the liquor. If using fresh mussels, place them in a large saucepan with ½ cup water, bring to the boil and steam a few minutes until they open; let cool and remove the meat from the shells. Chop the mussels and mix with the cassava, or stir in the corned beef, broken up with a fork. Stir in 1 cup of the brine or cooking liquor from the mussels, or, if using corned beef, stir in 1 cup of coconut milk.
- Spread the mixture loosely (without pressing down) in a greased baking dish (30 x 20 cm, or 12 x 8 inches). Pour 2 cups of coconut milk over the top and leave to soak for at least an hour until you are ready to cook dinner. Bake for 1¼ hours in a moderately hot oven (190oC, 375oF) until lightly browned and crispy around the edges.
Prawn Sambal
Serves 6-8
Sambals are fiery dishes made with shellfish, prawns, chicken, meat or innards, spiced up with birds’ eye chillies, ginger, garlic, onions, vinegar and sometimes cinnamon and cloves. Ron Edwards, in his comprehensive Traditional Torres Strait Island Cooking, notes that they have probably been part of Island cookery since Malay traders first started coming in search of bêche-de-mer several centuries ago. Malays, many of them from the Indonesian archipelago, formed a prominent community on Thursday Island beginning in 1881 when 59 were brought in to work a huge new pearl-shell bed. The following recipe comes from I. Shibasaki, who contributed it to the Centenary Cook Book, published in 1984 by Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church on Thursday Island. Instead of prawns, 1 kg (2 lb) of tripe or chicken giblets may be substituted. Cooked vegetables can also be added. Serve with rice.
2 kg cooked prawns
4 medium onions
4 small cloves of garlic
¼ knob of green ginger
6 birds’ eye chillies
3 tablespoons peanut oil
1 heaped tablespoon blatchan (fermented prawn paste), available from Asian food stores
¼ cup vinegar
¼ teaspoon salt
¹⁄8 teaspoon pepper
- Shell the prawns and set aside. Chop the onions and mince the garlic and ginger. Fry the onions, garlic, ginger and chillies in the oil till brown. Stir in the prawns and ‘steam’ for 10 minutes, uncovered. Mix the blatchan with the vinegar and add to the prawn mixture. Cook for a further 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Season with salt and pepper.
Sabee Rice (Coconut-Milk Rice)
Serves 6
One of the biggest consequences of the Asian pearlers was the shift of the main carbohydrate from root crops to rice. This was the staple of the pearling crews, cooked by the absorption method in the Japanese fashion, using the forefinger to measure the depth of water required. Sabee Rice a local adaptation, simmered in coconut milk and coloured with turmeric. Kucuma, or native turmeric, flourishes in the wet season in the Eastern and Inner Islands, sometimes growing by the acre.
2 cups white rice
1 onion, finely chopped
4 cups coconut milk, or half coconut milk and half water if using tinned coconut milk
2 teaspoons turmeric
1½ teaspoons salt
- Place all the ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring so that the rice does not stick to the bottom. When it comes to the boil, reduce the heat to the lowest setting and simmer very gently, covered, for 15 minutes. Take off the lid and give the rice a stir. Turn off the heat and leave, covered for a further 5 minutes. Serve with curry or fish.
Coconut-Milk Damper
Serves 6
Dampers are a common food in the Torres Strait, although often replaced these days by store-bought bread. The most decorative are those made for feasts, wrapt in plaited palm fronds, which leave a pattern when cooked in the kup maori. Banana fronds provided a less decorative wrapping, while everyday dampers are cooked directly in the hot coals. The best of these are made with coconut milk. The Murri women of Cape York also prepare dampers like this. The coconut milk gives a fine texture and subtle flavour, resulting in one of the best white-flour dampers you are ever likely to eat.
3 cups self-raising flour
1 teaspoon salt
1¼ cups coconut milk
- Combine the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Pour the coconut milk into the centre of the flour, stirring it with a flat-bladed knife until roughly combined. Turn out the dough and any flour left in the bowl onto a lightly floured board. Knead a little until all the flour is smoothly incorporated into the dough.
- Shape into an oval loaf about 4 cm high and dust with flour. Place the loaf on a baking tray and cook in a preheated hot oven (200oC, 400oF) for about 35 minutes until golden brown and a fine skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
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Traditional Australian Cookery 