Bougna inspired Hot pot

I have bought the wrong kind of bananas- bananes dessert - which are similar to plantains (starchy and not so sweet like you may think from their name!). So, I have decided to create a dish and boil them up, taking inspiration in flavour from New Caledonia's bougna- meat, potatoes, sweet potatoes, ignames and plaintains/ bananas covered in coconut milk and then all wrapped up in banana leaves before being cooked over fire/ hot rocks in the ground. Mmmmmmm Caledonian hangi! I am pretty sure there will be a similar dish here that I just haven't discovered yet. So now I'm making it up!

This is only going to vaguely ressemble an actual bougna- I have no meat and am boiling it so it won't have that beautiful smokey earthy flavour. It is also more like a soup/curry, but oh well! Hopefully it will work out!

Ingredients
1 clove of garlic, diced
1 small onion, diced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
3 plantain bananas- chopped into medium chunks
3 medium potatoes- chopped into medium chunks

1 beef stock cube, dissolved in 300 ml of  warm water
1 can coconut milk (about 250 mls)
1 tsp minced chilli

1. Fry the onion in olive oil over a medium heat. Add garlic about 2 minutes later, once the onions have softened a bit. Fry for a further 2 minutes.

2. Add bananas and potatoes. Mix and fry for about 1 minute

3. Add stock, increase heat to medium high and bring to the boil. Boil for about 15- 20 minutes- until potatoes are softer and almost done.

4. Turn temperature to low/ medium low and add cocnut milk and chilli. Simmer for a further 5- 10 minutes untill potatoes are cooked through.

5. Serve over rice

You could make a lot of variations- curry and spices to turn it into a curry, add more veges and/or fish/meat to beef it out and give extra flavours.

Pikelets from Edmonds cookbook!

I have run out of breakfast foods, and am trying not to buy anything unless I really have to due to still not being paid (not happy! If they continue not to pay us I may not continue to come to work). So, although I've made pikelets  before, I wanted to keep it here so I can have an easily accessible record of the Edmond's recipe.

Wish I had brought an Edmonds cookbook with me!

Here's the recipe:

Edmond's Pikelet recipe


1 Egg
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup Milk (about)
1 cup Flour
1 tsp Edmonds Baking Powder
1/4 tsp salt
25g (1 oz) butter optional


Beat the egg and sugar until thick and add with the milk to the sifted flour, salt and baking powder. Lastly add melted butter. Mix until smooth and cook in spoonfuls on a hot greased girdle.