Recipe: Tastes of the Torres Strait

Back in my concrete truck driving days I lived with a woman for a while who hosted an international night. So many people came to the dinner and brought a plate of food that originates from their home country. Us native Aussies were a bit stuffed though. Meat pies and pavlovas were the best we could pull off. However, a well-known Filipino lady brought a wonderful rice dish, there were spring rolls, lovely desserts, all traditional foods of other countries, made by people that now call Australia home. But there was one dish that stood out above all others. It was called Sop-Sop. This sweet stew hails from the Torres Strait and was cooked up by a woman whose family migrated to the mainland when she was a child. It’s a simple dish and you could be forgiven if you thought it was a dessert. I had only eaten it once but its unique taste lingered. When I discovered a friend of mine also knew of Sop-Sop I got very excited and she was who I turned to when I had forgotten half of the ingredients. With the complete recipe now in my head I was able to knock it up for myself and didn’t it go down a treat!

The recipe as extracted from my head:

2 Bananas
1 Small Sweet Potato
2 Large Potatoes
1 Brown Onion
2 Cans of Coconut Cream

Chop all ingredients into 1 inch sized pieces. Put the lot into a slow cooker or pot and pour over both cans of coconut cream and give it a bit of a stir. If using a slow cooker, set it to auto or low and cook it for 7-8 hours stirring every couple of hours. For a pot on the stove, set it to the lowest temperature possible and cook it for 3-4 hours (or until the potatoes are cooked) stirring it every hour or so. This should serve about two people.



Sop Sop in the slow cooker all ready to eat!