Laplap, Vanuatu's national dish

Laplap, Vanuatu's national dish, is made by grating manioc (cassava), taro roots or yams into a doughy paste. The mixture is put onto taro or wild spinach leaves and soaked in coconut cream. Pieces of pork, beef, poultry, fish, river prawns or flying fox are often added. Leaves from the laplap plant (similar to banana leaves) are wrapped around the doughy mix, tied with strands of vine and then placed in a ground oven, with hot stones above and below.