Puaka Tunu (Tongan Spit-Roasted Pork)

The first time I sat at a Tongan feast, the pork didn't arrive like one dish. It arrived like a relative everybody had been waiting for. Puaka tunu, roasted pig, belongs to Tonga's table, to the ʻeiki, the chiefs, to church halls and weddings and birthdays, to families laying food wide on woven pola so nobody has to count portions.

Back home in Hawaiʻi, we know the pig through the imu, the earth oven. In Tonga the ʻumu, the hot-stone oven, carries its own law, and the whole pig may be laid there or turned on a spit until the skin tightens and the fat bastes the meat slow. Sāmoa has its umu, Tahiti its ahimaʻa, the Cooks their umukai, Aotearoa the hāngī. The umu by any name is one oven, but each island keeps its own hand.

This version keeps the Tongan name and the Tongan feeling, then brings it into a kitchen most people actually have. If you've got an outdoor rotisserie and a small pig, bless the fire and turn it slow. If you've got an oven and a pork shoulder, still feed the family well. The deep ceremony of a Tongan katoanga, a feast, belongs with Tongan elders and aunties and uncles who carry it. I cook this open-handed, and I send you to them for the parts that are theirs to teach.