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Remembering
Diamond Head, Remembering Hawaii
A Cookbook Memoir
of Hawaii and Its Foods
By
Shirley Tong Parola and Lisa Parola Gaynier (Diamond
Hawaii Press)
Shirley Tong Parola is no Roy Yamaguchi, but then,
she never intended to be. Over the last decade or
so famed Hawaiian chef-restaurateur-cookbook author
Yamaguchi has, along with fellow chichi chefs like
Sam Choy and Alan Wong, helped usher into the American
consciousness a style of gourmet Hawaiian fusion cooking
which dazzlingly melds local ingredients with the
world's best ingredients and cooking techniques. What
has been left in the dust (or the sand along Waikiki)
is Hawaii's hearty home cooking which boasts its own
ingredients and techniques that are usually anything
but gourmet, but no less delicious (and probably much
more yearned for by expatriates) than the cooking
of Yamaguchi and his cohorts.
Parola
and her daughter, Lisa Parola Gaynier, have taken
it upon themselves to make sure such fare doesn't
just wash away with the tide. Charmingly, in the form
of a "cookbook memoir of Hawaii and its foods,"
the pair preserves their past in 300 tasty pages.
Even casual, daily Hawaiian local food is fusion (though
not the gourmet newfangled variety of the last few
years). There is, of course, the poi, roast pig and
lomi salmon of ethnic Hawaiians, but there is also
the cuisine of the large numbers of Chinese (like
Parola), Japanese, Koreans and others who are longtime
inhabitants of the islands. This makes for an interesting
mix.
When
writing about the plate lunch, a Hawaiian staple,
the authors (who opened Hawaiian home-cooking restaurants
for several years in Michigan, where they had relocated)
quickly admit some of the authentic food is less than
sophisticated:
"Plate
lunches in Hawaii are served on paper plates with
plastic forks or rough wooden chopsticks. They are
definitely not elegant…They provide the standard
dishes most Islanders cannot seem to do without: teriyaki
beef with two large scoops of white rice and one large
scoop of macaroni salad; beef stew or curry with two
large scoops of rice and one large scoop of macaroni
salad; or even oven-roasted pig (and the rice and
macaroni salad). Plate lunches are not elegant, but
they are as much a part of Hawaii as hulas and luaus,
as dear to the hearts of native Hawaiians as to their
Asian neighbors, enjoyed equally by state officials
and bankers as well as beach boys and construction
workers. You're local if you eat plate lunches."
You're
local, too, if you indulge in this book. Start with
breakfast—perhaps the only place you'll find
Hawaiian breakfast recipes, as Choy, et al, tend to
concentrate on lavish dinners served at their restaurants.
Everything is there for the asking—and easy,
too—including poi muffins, pineapple-macadamia
nut muffins, lomi salmon cream cheese crêpes
(lomi salmon is a type of ceviche made with salmon
and rock salt), coconut crêpes, seafood scrambled
eggs, coconut cardamom or pineapple coffeecake and
your own homemade coconut and pineapple syrups. Almost
all recipes, though delicious, take just a few ingredients
and not many steps.
Equally
addicting are chapters on salads, soups, pupus/snacks,
rice/vegetables, main dishes, desserts, beverages
and party foods. The latter chapter perhaps best illustrates
how far this kind of cooking is from chichi, while
still easily achieving star status at your next home
luau. That's because it comprises the hearty luau
food most of us remember from kitschy tourist outings:
kalua pig (make it at home with pork butt, liquid
smoke and Hawaiian or kosher salt!); luau chicken
slathered in coconut milk; and lau lau (in ancient
times the pork butt-butterfish dish bundled in taro
leaves was cooked underground in an oven called an
imu with the pig, but now it is mainly steamed).
Even
without any of the new Hawaiian celebrity super-chefs
in sight, such homestyle specialties from Parola and
Gaynier should have guests begging for seconds. To
make that as sure a bet as sunshine is in the islands,
turn to the dessert chapter. You simply cannot go
wrong with choices like papaya ambrosia, mango cream
cheese pie, macadamia nut cream pie, mango macadamia
nut ice cream and Kona coffee flan.
RECIPES
—Luau
Chicken
—Pineapple–Macadamia
Nut Muffins
(Updated: 12/23/08 SB)
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