Lau lau is old-style Hawaiian cooking: pork (and often a piece of salted butterfish) bundled in lūʻau leaf — the leaf of the taro plant — then wrapped again in ti leaf and steamed for hours until the pork is fall-apart tender and the taro leaf has cooked down into something silky, almost like the richest, most savory spinach you've ever had.
Traditionally these went into an imu for a whole day. This stovetop-steamer version takes a few hours instead, but the result — unwrap the ti leaf, and everything inside just collapses — is the same payoff.
