The Chefs Redefining Polynesian Cuisine

THE KAWAKAWA LEAVES are dark as jade and riddled with holes, the telltale bites of looper moth caterpillars. In another kitchen they might be thought compromised and tossed aside, but to Monique Fiso, a New Zealand chef of Maori-Samoan heritage, they are taonga, or treasure. According to Maori herbal medicine, the more holes, the better — because caterpillars choose only the finest leaves to feast on.

In Aotearoa — what the Maori, indigenous to New Zealand, call their home — the leaves were traditionally chewed or brewed for tea to ease toothaches and abdominal pain, wilted over flames to make a poultice for cuts and stings and burned to banish mosquitoes. The kawakawa tree’s branches cast blessings on the launch of canoes, the birth of children and the dawn of battle.

Source: New York Times