Breadfruit, A Trukese Staple

Breadfruit is one of the food staples in Truk.

It can be cooked and eaten green, although it would taste very bland that way.

The preferred time to cook it is when it's ripe. The fruit is soft, and emits a rather fermented sweet aroma. The fruit grows on the ends of branches, which makes it very difficult to hand pick. So a picking stick is implemented.

 

 

 

Breadfruit is prepared several ways, which ninety percent of the time ends up presented this way:

Preparations:

1. Boiled, sliced, and drizzled with coconut milk. Mai.

2. Boiled, quartered, pounded into a sticky mush, portioned into fist size balls, then drizzled with coconut milk. Kon.

3. See #2, minus the portioning and coconut milk. Wrapped in its leaves, and buried for about a year. I won't go into details about the rest of the process. But I will say that the resulting sour product is portioned into fist-size balls, and drizzled with coconut milk. Apwet.

4. Sliced paper thin, and deep fried. No, no coconut milk involved. This is the Trukese version of potato chips. Breadfruit chips.