Sapasui: cooking with Samoan mother handfuls

Everyone claims their mother’s is best and I am everyone.

My friends were celebrating the Lunar New Year with a potluck and we were asked to bring a dish from our culture. I ummed and ahhed for a while. It’s hard to choose a crowd pleaser, but also – though I love Samoan food and understand the basics for most dishes, I hadn’t quite nailed any of them. 

Embarrassed to admit this, I considered copping out of the potluck completely. Then I thought of one of the simplest dishes (no, not corned beef and canned spaghetti). I loved to eat it and had always wanted to master it: the Samoan staple sapasui.

Sapasui is a trusted meal at every family gathering. It seems simple enough to make; what you see is what you get: oily rice noodles in soy sauce with ginger, garlic, onions, then your choice of protein.

But every household has their own iteration of it. Some prefer lamb over chicken, or they don’t like their noodles too soggy, so there’s less sauce; others go too far trying to make this comfort food healthier with veggies (🤢). I’ve had my fair share of sapasui variants, but my mother’s reigns supreme. 

I am the third of seven children, and we grew up with at least one grandparent in our household – common for Pacific Island families. Cooking for and feeding my family is no leisurely affair or soothing Nara Smith video. There are stacks of unwashed dishes, someone making Nana’s cup of tea, Dad wanting a post-work snack, siblings egging each other on, all whilst dinner is to be prepared. 

Though I was always around sapasui – inhaling the fragrance of ginger and garlic leaping around our house, then slurping the soy-stained vermicelli noodles with just the right amount of sauce – I was never close enough keep up with my mother’s pace or know each step of the way. 

Mum mastered her method long ago, executed every recipe with efficiency despite the constant chaos. In my previous attempts to learn, she could never slow down to my pace. Consumed by the rhythm of cooking for her family, beaten into her from a young age, she’d forget I was even in the kitchen.

First, she’d ask me to help peel and chop the garlic, then she’d skip three steps – and would be already done cutting a whole chicken apart by the time I was on my third clove. It never made sense to disrupt the system by inserting myself as sous chef. And for the longest time, I happily ate without asking.

I’m now in my twenties, so you can imagine my discomfort with the fact I still hadn’t given this “simple” dish a go – put off by my inability to match my mother’s tempo. 

Much to her dismay though, this time I was persistent – begging enough times to be guided through the recipe, because following lifeless words on paper wouldn’t do it justice. 

That was never an option anyway though, because there are no recorded recipes. All Mum’s dishes were either handed down through demonstration or developed from scratch. To top it off, there are no measuring cups on site either – she just knows when to stop pouring. Hell, she’s out here using her palm to measure. 

So you can see my dilemma with making this damn dish: metric units weren’t something I could rely on, and I was unfortunately born without the gift of telepathy.

Once the grocery shop was done, we gathered in my kitchen – meaning Mum was a tad disoriented, but she wasted no time. I was delegated to garlic duty again (somebody’s gotta do it), but this time I didn’t get discouraged and ensured my mother showed me each step of the way. She chuckled at my pleas, but came to realise the importance of this.

Mum was not distracted by the rest of my family’s needs (she even ignored my siblings blowing up her phone). I isolated her to focus just on me, and she slowed down in step with my pressing approach. 

This was not an instance where the mouths of the masses were relying on Mum to deliver. Sapasui to me was more than just a dish I knew my Mum could cook in her sleep. This was me as her daughter wanting to observe and absorb – desperate for connection to my culture. 

My mother guided me with grace. We were of one mind, and my eyes brightened with the satisfaction of seeing each step through (yes, even without the measuring cups). 

The same fragrance of ginger and garlic danced through my kitchen; aromatics infused the oil; the chicken absorbed the dark flavours of soy and oozed with juices; the vermicelli noodles expanded, doubled in size. 

I took it all in and stood with gratitude for this long-awaited moment. Samoan pride filled my chest. This all-too-familiar dish was no longer a stranger to me.

I can welcome it whenever I please!

My mother beamed too, as she knew this meant I could take over sapasui duties for all future toanais / Sunday feasts.