Lisa Messinger's
Cookbook Corner

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

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