Fiji Food Memories

After my family moved to Fiji in 1977, we were introduced to many food preparations that I had never experienced before. Due to the ethnic diversity in Fiji there was a whole array of diverse dishes.

From the Fiji Indian community, there were the delicious Indian rotis (chapatis) which are the Indian flat breads, being the main food of the Indian community in Fiji. Rotis were made out of wholemeal flour known as 'Atta' also known as 'Sharps'. In Fiji they also used 'ghee' (clarified butter) in the preparation of roti. Thus the roti ended up rich but delicious. The Indian roti was quite different in texture to the pol roti we eat in Sri Lanka.

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Everyone in Fiji loved roti, even the Fijians, although they did not make it themselves. We used to get invited often for dinner at a Sri Lankan family home and they always prepared Indian roti. The accompaniment was either curried fried canned corned beef or curried fried potatoes. It was quite delicious and it was not long before my Mother also learnt to make Indian roti. However, at that time our rotis never turned out soft like the Indians made them and I used to long for genuine Indian roti which we ocassionaly had if we got invited to an Indian home or bought it from a school Bazaar or restaurant. It was funny, when I travelled by bus to High School when I was older, I used to see some guys going to work carrying their roti packets in their pocket.

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I was ten years old, I skipped a Grade and began school in Fiji at Class 5. My parents sent me to a Chinese Catholic school and I had one Indian classmate there. She always brought an Indian roti filled with curry and rolled up like a pancake and wrapped in newspaper. The way she ate it was to open out her roti taking her time to eat it the traditional way, breaking off pieces of roti and eating it with the enclosed curry. The curry was always a bright yellow color but smelled delicious. She also brought a crunchy corn cheese snack packet such as 'Twisties', 'Bongos' , 'Cheesums' or 'Fonzies' along with the roti. In contrast, my Mother gave me a boring sandwich for lunch or fried rice. While on the subject of school lunches, it reminds me of some of the other delicious lunches my classmates brought to school. I remember a boy named Peter used to bring roast chicken, smelt so good. Ingrid often brought roast beef sandwiches. Some kids brought sandwiches which had unsual fillings such as canned Heinz spaghetti with cheese sauce or baked beans. I later found out that both of those sandwiches were an Australian tradition.

Other interesting Indian foods were mango pickles, deep fried green peas, booja, sooji halwa and gulab jamun. The Indian mango pickles were called achchar. They were pickled in mustard oil and smelled and tasted wonderful. They were quite different to the Sri Lankan achcharu which has no oil in it. Indians also used to make a savory snack out of boiled green peas that were fried with spices and sold by pushcart vendors, kind of similar to 'kadala' that was sold by pushcart vendors in Sri Lanka. The Indians also ate dhal as a soup which was in contrast to the dhal (parippoo) curry which was a standard dish in Sri Lanka.

The Fijians, who are the indigenous people of Fiji, used to eat mainly boiled or baked rootcrops such as dalo (taro) which was a tuber with leaves similar to the 'alakola'. They also ate the leaves and a favorite way to cook it was make a packet of the dalo leaf with a filling of canned corned beef, onions and chillis. The packet was then boiled in coconut milk (cream). The creamy extract of the coconut flesh was called coconut cream in Fiji versus coconut milk as it is called in Sri Lanka. Other root crops eaten were yams and cassava. They also ate a lot of fish, pork, beef and chicken along with a rootcrop. The traditional way to cook the meats and fish was to cook it in an underground earth oven called a 'lovo'. They usually only cooked in the lovo for large gatherings called 'feasts' where the food wrapped in leaves would be cooked under hot stones for several hours. This gave them a tender taste with a smoky flavor which was quite delicious. Whenever schools had their annual bazaars I used to especially ask my Mother to bring us some lovo meals.

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Western food found in Fiji seemed to be directly influenced by the cuisine of Australia and New Zealand. Some of the popular items were egg with steak and chips, fish and chips, rotisserie chicken, scones and cakes with cream.

The really good fish and chips that I have tasted were sold at the Cafe that was next to the Nabukalou Creek which ran past the store known as Morris Headstrom in the Suva city center. These chips were chunky and the moist white fleshed fish was covered in crisp batter. It was always served in a brown paper bag with Fijian chillis and wedges of lemon. Incidentally, those chillis looked like bigger versions of the Sri Lankan kochchi. That was the only variety of chilli available in Fiji and was a yellowish, reddish color. I was always homesick for the 'amu miris'(green chillis) found back in Sri Lanka. The taste of the 'Fijian' chilli just was not the same, it had too many seeds as well. At the same Cafe they used to sell whole rotisserie chickens which could be seen turning around in the oven. They smelt divine and tasted even better.

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The cakes in Fiji were strange to my eyes. All the cakes were piped or iced with fresh cream. I think they were sponge cakes. Coming from Sri Lanka and being a kid I was expecting butter cream icing like back home. Fresh cream on a cake seemed strange to me and not as appealing. Although now I would love to eat a cake topped with cream. Scones also were foreign to me since we had never heard of them in Sri Lanka, but later while in Australia I did become a big fan.