Mauke Recipe Book turns ancestral food knowledge into a legacy for future generations

A new cookbook from the island of Mauke in the Cook Islands is helping preserve more than recipes with elders’ knowledge, island language and food traditions now recorded for future generations.

The Mauke Recipe Book was launched in late September by the Auckland-based Akatokamanava Mauke Enua Association, in what organisers say is the first cookbook for and by the Mauke community.

The project was led by Lianne Bishoff-Towgood, association Programme and Funding Coordinator, who says the book grew from a desire to keep knowledge passed down through generations alive.

“It's the first time ever our island, Mauke, has ever published a written recipe book collected by our own Mauke people,” Bishoff-Towgood tells Pacific Days.

“The stories, the recipes, the proverbs around food all came from our elders, our metua, to ensure that our language through cooking lives on.”

Bishoff-Towgood says that connection is personal.

Watch Lianne Bishoff-Towgood's full interview below.

Some of her earliest cooking memories come from her grandmother’s are umu, or outdoor cook-house, where food was prepared using knowledge handed down through the family.

The book brings together recipes and traditional food practices including techniques for preserving food that Bishoff-Towgood says have never been documented in print.

One example is peivere pani, made from mashed banana and arrowroot starch and fried in oil or butter.

“The trick is how much oil and ingredients you add to make sure you get the right texture, and that can only come from those knowledge holders and those special mamas,” she says.

The recipes have also been adapted for families living in Aotearoa.

“We did try to incorporate more of our traditional recipes…a mixture of new recipes, because while we're in New Zealand, we had to adapt…modernise a little bit. It's a mixture of recipes from what you could do with banana, what you could do with taro, what you could do with kuru,” Bishoff-Towgood says.

The cookbook is part of a wider community project that includes weaving workshops, Cook Islands Reo Māori classes and youth-focused umu cooking programmes.

Cook Islands High Commissioner to Aotearoa New Zealand, Kairangi Samuela, who is from Mauke, attended the launch and spoke about growing up eating kuru (breadfruit).

Samuela says the project reflects the way food connects people to their identity and family.

Maukae community members at the cookbook launch and blessing in September. Photo/Facebook

“This book is particularly special, because it reminds us that our food is not simply about what we eat, it carries our stories, it carries the knowledge of our mamas, it carries our memories... Thank you for reminding us that food is also about family, identity, memory and love,” Samuela said.

The project was funded through the Ministry of Pacific Peoples’ (MPP) Pacific Language Community Fund.

Nafanuatele Lafitaga Mafaufau Peters, the Acting Deputy Secretary for MPP, says the work could provide a model for other Pacific communities.

“What you have done is set the example for us, not only here in our Mauke community, but also for many of us in other communities such as Sāmoan, Tongan, and our many Pacific Islands that can now follow in your footsteps,” Nafanuatele said during the launch.

Bishoff-Towgood says the value of recording the recipes became clear through conversations with Mauke elders.

“We are so thankful to our elders, who are our knowledge holders, for openly sharing the recipes from our islands for us young people to learn about and to make in our homes,” she says.

“When they're no longer around, we will know how to make the poke that's uniquely Mauke, and the peivere pani that is uniquely well known to our island.”

The book has been dedicated to the Mauke leaders who guided the project but passed away before its launch. Bishoff-Towgood acknowledged the late Tauraki Rongo, former PMN Cook Islands producer and a Kūki 'Āirani leader with Mauke heritage, for his invaluable input.

The Mauke Recipe Book will be distributed free to community members to help keep the island’s food knowledge and language accessible for Mauke families in the Cook Islands and across the diaspora.