Essays on the Marshallese Past Arrowroot Flour: Food & Other Uses

Traditionally, as well as today, flour is the only form in which arrowroot is used as a food, mainly as thickener in numerous dishes. In addition to the dishes, arrowroot flour was sometimes added to dried and preserved mogan during the production process, thus prolonging the preserve and adding further starch. The addition of arrowroot starch gives many dishes a gelatinous, brain-like appearance; for this reasons these dishes are called in Marshallese K�m�lij.

Aikiu: A soup made from iu (spongy coconut) and arrowroot flour.

Benben in mokmok: The most common way to use arrowroot flour was to boil it in water and to add coconut sap (jekaro) until it attained a thick jelly-like consistency. The matter would then be shaped into small balls or patties and rolled in grated coconut.

Beru: Soft pulp from the ends of boiled pandanus keys combined with arrowroot flour, poured into a cone-shaped receptacle made of two fresh breadfruit leaves; cooked together as a dessert.

Bobo: Arrowroot flour mixed with coconut water and cooked in coconut shells. This food is mainly used for sick and old people (and infants?).

Buiabui: An emergency and starvation ("typhoon") food could be made by pounding the internal part of a kind of driftwood tree to pulp and then mixing it with arrowroot flour and water. A variation of this seems to be to pound the internal wood of an old coconut palm and mix it water and with arrowroot flour.

Bwiro ii�k: Preserved breadfruit mixed with arrowroot flour and coconut sap (jekaro), wrapped in breadfruit leaves and baked.

Jamok(ok): Arrowroot flour with grated coconut meat from semi-ripe coconuts and baked.

Jup in mokmok: Arrowroot flour, iu (coconut embryo), fish and coconut milk.

Kebjeltak: Arrowroot flour, crackers and jekaro.

Lik�bla: Arrowroot flour and jekaro or arrowroot and water mixed together at a ratio of three to one. The starch is first mixed with water, sugared water or jekaro unto a watery consistency. Then the mixture is slowly poured into a pot of boiling water and stirred until a soft, sticky substance is obtained.

Managedjen: Bwiro mixed with arrowroot flour, kneaded and shaped into a ball. It is then sun dried and can be stored for a limited period of time. When it is to be eaten, the ball is immersed in water and allowed to soak for an hour. At meal time the water is poured out and the ball is mashed with a Tridacna pounder.

Peaut: Iu cooked with water or coconut milk and arrowroot flour.

Wagakgak: Meal prepared from arrowroot flour boiled with grated coconut.

no name. An innovative dish, apparently introduced by the UNDP Integrated Atoll Project was reported for Taroa, Maloelap Atoll, where Papaya (Carica papaya) and arrowroot are mixed with water, apparently to make a poi-like dish.