PNG soup

Kovol gardens produce the following vegetables: sweet potato, yam, taro, Singapore taro, cassava, corn, banana, pandanus seeds, soy beans, green beans, peanuts, cabbage, chayote greens, aibika greens, aupa greens, green onions, cucumbers, sugar cane and papaya.  I realise that is quite a list but I think what people here eat daily is very monotonous.

There are different ways of cooking all this goodness. Usually for breakfast people here cook roots straight on the fire, scrape the black off and then eat it. For dinner often a soup is made, when these roots are boiled together with various greens. On a normal day there is no meat.

Throughout the years we have lived here, people have shared their garden produce with us for which we are very grateful. Flying food in can get quite pricey, and we don’t fly in a lot of fresh food. Most of our vegetables are frozen. I am so thankful for the greens we get!

We get enough vegetables given to us for me to be able to make a soup out of them about once a week. I thought I’d give you some insight into how I prepare this dish which has become a regular for us but would be foreign to most of you. I remember coming new to PNG 10 years ago and part of our orientation was learning how to make banana soup. I had no idea what to expect! A very sweet yellow soup? Nope, cooking bananas are basically a starch and not always sweet. They are now one of my favourite ingredients to make soup with!

The name PNG soup is what I have given this dish; it’s not the country’s national soup or something like that. A lot of people in PNG though boil their roots and greens for one of their meals each day. Over the years of living here I have used different methods from different people and come up with this way of cooking my PNG soup. We all enjoy eating this soup. And a bonus too is that it is a quick 1-pot dish, which means I can make it whilst homeschool is going on and there aren’t lots of dishes afterwards!

Here’s what I usually use:

For starch I use any of these I have on hand:

• sweet potato
• yam
• taro
• Singapore taro
• cooking banana
• corn

For vegetables I use any of these I have on hand:

• chayote greens
• aibika greens
• white cabbage
• green onion
• onion
• carrot

For seasoning:

• chicken stock cube
• curry powder
• minced garlic
• minced ginger or ginger powder
• pepper
• coconut milk powder

Sometimes if I don’t have many roots I will use some 1 minute noodles in the soup to bulk it out. I might also add some chicken or pork. Regular potatoes don’t grow here in Kovol. Since they are heavy to fly in and other roots are abundant, we don’t usually eat potatoes.

How I make this soup:

1. Peel the roots, wash them and chop into chunks.
2. Add the chopped roots to a pressure cooker and fill with water until the roots are almost covered.
3. Add chopped carrots, chopped onion, and the seasoning.
4. Put the lid on the pressure cooker and when it’s up to pressure cook about 5 minutes or so longer.
5. Clean the greens and wash them.
6. Remove the lid from the pot, add the greens and coconut milk powder and cook a minute or two longer.
7. Soup is ready!

I recently made a short video where you can see me preparing this soup.

If you would like to make this soup with ingredients you can get in the UK or the Netherlands, you could try substituting  spinach or some sort of cabbage for the greens. You can of course use potatoes too. Also, you don’t need a pressure cooker, that’s just what I do since it helps reducing our gas usage.