Sweet potato slipped under the hot ashes of the hearth until its flesh becomes soft and caramelized. The humblest and most beloved dish: sweet, tender, comforting.

Why this dish? Kumara was the mainstay of Arawa gardens around Lake Rotorua, where Hinemoa, a chief's daughter, lived. It is the simple, sweet food of daily life, the kind a high-ranking young woman would have eaten every day before her nocturnal adventure.

Place it there, right at the edge of the fire, under the still-warm ash. We grow the kumara in terraced gardens above the lake, and my mother taught me to turn it with a stick without burning it. When the skin blackens and splits, the flesh beneath is sweet as wild honey — it kept me going on days when I dreamed, on the shore at Ōwhata, of my beloved's flute. Eat it hot, right from your hand: that is the true taste of home.

How it was made : Kumara, brought by Polynesian ancestors long before Europeans arrived, was cultivated in carefully tended gardens and stored in pits (rua). Cooked simply under ash or in a steam pit, it was the quintessential daily food.

The contemporary twist : Split open and drizzled with a touch of homemade smoked syrup, the ash-roasted kumara becomes a comforting dessert without betraying its simplicity.

Sources : Elsdon Best, Maori Agriculture: The Cultivation of Food Plants (1925)

Hinemoa · Charactorium