On the islands we do not cook laplap in a hurry. You heat stones until they are white. You lay banana leaves. You cover the food with earth. Then you wait.

People who did not grow up with this call it primitive. It is not. It is control. The leaf keeps the moisture. The stone holds the heat. The earth keeps the steam in. You can walk away and do other work. When you open it, the food is done and it tastes like the fire, not like metal.

If you are away from home and you miss that taste, you do not need a pit in the ground to start. A heavy pot, banana leaves (or baking paper if that is all you have), and low heat will get you close. It will not be the same. It will remind your hands.

What you cannot fake is the knowledge of when the stones are ready, which leaves will not tear, how much coconut milk the yam will take. That is what we are writing down at Tanongu — from Vanuatu, for the Pacific — so it does not live only in the people who are already tired of repeating it.

If your island does it differently, that is the point. Come say how.