I know the title’s a bit awkward, but even the UN lists this country under “M”.  What are we supposed to do?

Micronesia is another geographically enormous country like the Maldives and Marshall Islands that is almost entirely water.  It has four states, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae, and we’re going to be making a dish from the last one.

We’ve been at this project for something like eight or nine years now, and while there were a few (much better researched) online blogs doing something similar when we started, as time has gone on, there have been more and more.  Sadly, they all seem to quote each other more than they do any actual source.

For example, while Chicken Kelaguen sounds tasty, and gets quoted all over the place as a national dish of Micronesia, I can’t find any actual evidence that this is, in fact, the case.

So instead, we’re going with a soup that I found described on several blogs from Peace Corps volunteers who actually spent time in FSM, which is made as a sharing dish for Sundays after church. Seriously – the missionaries were apparently SUPER successful in this part of the world, because there’s a LOT of overtly religious content mixed in with the recipes. (Our recipe is literally from “Grateful Ministries Micronesia.”)

After looking at the various ones I could find, we decided to go with a video that appeared to be a decent average of the available options, and had the advantage of actually listing QUANTITIES for the various ingredients.  Link at the bottom.

The basic Kosrae soup has seafood, rice and coconut milk.  If it weren’t for the coconut milk, you could call it a thin congee.   Here’s the ingredients we opted for:

The process is dead simple too. (Which means the pictures are going to be kind of boring.)  First, you cook the fish in a pot of boiling water.

Then you pull the fish out and shred it, and use the same water to cook rice.

At this point, the video got somewhat vague about times.  Do you put the fish back in NOW?  Wait for the rice to be done?  Somewhere in between?

We opted for “mostly done” on the rice, and then added in the fish, some shrimp, and some garlic and onion.

Seriously, yes – these are all just pictures of the same damn pot with some more or less opaque liquid in it. I know.

It got even MORE opaque when we tossed in the coconut milk.  Let that all heat up and thicken a little, season with salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes, and you’re done!

The light’s a little weird here – our apartment faces west, and the sun was going down, so I had to cast a shadow over the bowl to get it to come out at all.  The picture, that is – the soup itself came out great.  Rice, fish, and coconut makes for a very hearty, satisfying meal.  It was even better reheated the next day.

This was one of our simpler outings, but they don’t all have to be all day productions, and this was delicious.

Next up, a nation so small that the cruise ship dock is visible on a map of the entire country.

Recipe: Soup Kosrae