Koreha (Rapa Nui Grilled Eel)

At the far eastern corner of our Triangle, Rapa Nui sits with the whole sea pressing on it, and that ocean is not scenery there, it is kin. Koreha, eel, belongs to that Rapa Nui shore: a prized old-island catch from the rocky shallows, salted plain and set against hot stone heat until the skin crisps and the rich flesh shines. This is not Hawaiʻi's puhi, eel from our reefs and stories, and not Aotearoa's tuna, eel treasured by Māori families in the rivers. Those are cousins. This hand is Rapa Nui's.

I cook this one open-handed, because Rapa Nui is not my home seat. The old people there know the deeper layers, the right places, the right seasons, the stories tied to each shore, and for those parts you go to them. What I can bring you is the kitchen path: clean eel, good salt, a hot grill or safe cooking stone, and enough restraint not to bury the fish under sauce.

The why is simple. Eel is rich, so it wants dry heat and a little patience. The salt firms the flesh, the skin protects it, the stone or iron gives it that crisp edge, and the rest after cooking lets the fat settle back where it belongs. No need make it precious. Eat what you have, but name whose table fed you. One ocean, one canoe, one root, and still every island keeps its own name.