The first time I saw these loaves was on an island on the southeastern most tip of Sulawesi called Wangi-wangi. Vendors at the morning market were selling it with raw sea urchin, fried fish and different trays of vegetable curry. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the taste reminded me of a loaf of sourdough bread like I might get back home in California.
On Wangi-wangi, which I visited for my research on coral fish, many local families own small gardens where they grow papaya, guava and other fruit trees and very often cassava. Families harvest the long roots of cassava. They shave the tough brown skin off the outside of the root and dry the white pulp in the sun. Then they grate the dried root until it's crumbly. From this point, the process to make the loaves takes 15 minutes. Ground cassava is packed into a cone of woven palm fronds. The cone is placed over a pot of boiling water so the cassava can steam into a cake. Flip the leaves over, and out pops a cake!
Today, rice is the main starch eaten in Indonesia. Rice traditionally grows in paddy fields filled with a foot or more of water. In drier areas, including the land in Sulawesi, there is not much water. Cassava does not have to grow in such pools. It does not even have to be watered every day, so it is easier and more water efficient to grow in drier areas like many parts of Sulawesi.
