Coconut-cream leaf-baked chicken — the Melanesian earth-oven dish: chicken pieces (often also fish or lobster) with taro, yam and cassava, soaked in coconut cream with ginger, garlic and salt, wrapped in banana leaves and slow-baked over hot stones for hours. Called bougna by the Kanak of New Caledonia and bunya/bunia in Vanuatu; a festive communal dish. A simplified home version is braised as a pot of chicken, island cabbage (or bok choy) and coconut milk.
Bougna is the traditional feast dish of the Kanak people of New Caledonia; its name comes from the Drehu word 'puhnya' (bundle/pack), describing the banana-leaf parcel cooked in an earth oven. The same dish is eaten in Vanuatu, where it is called bunya or bunia. Root vegetables (taro, yam, cassava) plus chicken, fish or lobster are soaked in coconut cream, wrapped in leaves and slow-baked over hot stones for several hours — a communal celebration dish, the Melanesian sibling of Vanuatu's lap lap.
Spoon up boungna — chicken pieces tender in pale golden coconut broth, dark green cabbage wilted around, ginger fragrant. Bite: chicken absorbs coconut richness, the cabbage adds gentle bitter-fresh contrast, ginger's warmth lingering. Simple, sustaining, deeply Pacific. With rice underneath catching the broth, this is the Vanuatu weekday dinner.
Browning builds Maillard depth. Coconut milk's fat carries flavors. Greens added late preserves color.
Variations
With pork instead of chicken. With added pumpkin. With more chili. With added taro. With curry powder. With added bamboo shoots.
On the Palate
Where Boungna sits in the Vanuatu flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
9 steps · 25 min active + 35 min waiting
- 14 min
Cut 800 g chicken into 8 pieces. Season with salt, pepper.
- 212 min
Heat 2 tbsp coconut oil in a heavy pot. Brown chicken in batches 4 min per side; remove.
Watch outGet a deep brown crust before removing the chicken — pale, steamed-looking pieces mean the pan wasn't hot enough and you lose the depth.
- 36 min
Sauté 1 sliced onion + 4 minced garlic + 1 thumb grated ginger 5 min.
- 44 min
Add 1 minced chili, 1 chopped tomato; cook 3 min.
- 54 min
Return chicken; add 400 ml coconut milk + 200 ml water + 1 tsp salt.
- 626 min
Cover; simmer 25 min until chicken is tender.
- 76 min
Add 400 g island cabbage (or bok choy) cut into wedges; cook 5 min until wilted.
Watch outDrop the greens in only at the end — pull them while still bright and just-wilted, not olive-drab and soggy.
- 81 min
Taste; adjust salt.
- 91 min
Serve hot over rice or boiled cassava.
