Lu Pulu Parcels

Lū pulu is Tongan Sunday food — beef and onion and coconut cream folded into lū (taro leaves) and cooked in the ʻumu, the earth oven, while the family is at church. Tinned corned beef is the traditional filling in most households; fresh beef is the fancier version. Either way the parcels come out of the ground after hours of stone-heat and wet steam with the leaves collapsed into something close to creamed spinach and the coconut cream broken into fat and sweetness.

Be clear about what this is: an ʻumu dish adapted to a smoker. Hot stones under wet leaves and earth produce a sealed, saturated steam that a pit can't reproduce. What we do instead is smoke the parcels open for the first stretch so kiawe can get in, then seal them tight in foil for the long haul so they steam the way they're supposed to. One thing is not negotiable — taro leaves contain calcium oxalate crystals that irritate the mouth and throat, and they are only neutralized by long, thorough cooking. Do not shorten the time and do not taste them early. Silverbeet or spinach is the common diaspora substitute when leaves aren't available, but call it what it is: a substitute, not lū.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs beef chuck, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (or 2 x 12 oz tins corned beef, broken up)
• 30 fresh taro leaves (lū), thick stems and central ribs cut out, washed
• 2 large onions, diced
• 1 1/2 cups thick coconut cream
• 2 Tbsp shoyu (optional)
• 1 1/2 tsp salt and plenty of cracked black pepper
• Banana leaves for the outer wrap (optional but better)
• Heavy-duty foil
• Steamed rice or boiled taro, to serve

Cook Sequence

1. Fire for 300-325°F indirect with three kiawe chunks. Cut the ribs and stems out of every taro leaf — that's where the oxalate concentration is worst and where the toughness lives.
2. Build each parcel: overlap 5-6 leaves into a cup in your palm, drop in a handful of beef and onion, salt, pepper, shoyu, then pour 1/4 cup coconut cream over the top. Fold the leaves up and over into a tight package, seam down. Six parcels.
3. Wrap each parcel in a softened banana leaf if you have one, tie with twine, and set them seam down on the indirect side. Open — no foil yet.
4. Smoke open for 45 minutes. This is the only window where kiawe gets into the food; once the foil goes on, everything after is steam.
5. Pull each parcel, wrap tight in a double layer of heavy foil with the seam folded up so no coconut cream escapes, and back on the grate. That foil is standing in for the ʻumu.
6. 90 minutes sealed at 300-325°F. Do not open to check before the 80-minute mark — every peek dumps the steam you're relying on.
7. Open one to check: the leaves should be fully collapsed, dark, and silky with no structure left, and the beef should shred under a fork. Anything still firm goes back on for another 20 minutes. Undercooked lū is not a texture problem, it's a throat problem.
8. Rest 15 minutes in the foil, then serve straight from the parcel over rice, coconut cream and all.

Round Out the Plate

• Coconut Rice — the standard base, and it catches the broken coconut cream
• Thai Cucumber Salad — cold acid to cut a very rich, very fatty parcel