Sonia Tastes Hawaii

Hilo's Bayfront is ablaze with color.....

My friend Noel Morata posted some beautiful photos in his A Plant Fanatic In Hawaii blog of the exuberantly blooming Cassia fistula x javanica or as they are commonly called, the Rainbow Shower trees at this time in downtown Hilo.

The trees are not really very old...it wasn't so long ago they were planted, and even though they have bloomed in the past, this is the first year the blazingly gorgeous trees have outdone themselves.

I wish the camera lense could capture and do justice to the beauty surrounding Hilo right now...it is breathtaking!

I had wanted to stop last Sunday morning on the way back through Hilo from my visit to the Volcano Farmers Market and take pictures, but rain and a headache made me breeze through and decide to come back another day.....

.....then I saw Noel's photos and of course, had to make sure that on my next trip to town I stopped to enjoy the spectacle and record it for myself...and to share with you!

The clusters of flowers start blooming sedately in pale yellow.....then start turning pink....then on to darker shocking pink before exploding into flaming orange and hot corals...

The sidewalks and grass under the trees look like they're covered in multihued 'snow petals'...

Hilo's Kamehameha Avenue can now rival Washington's Basin and even Kyoto during Cherry Blossom Time (IMMHO but then, I'm not prejudiced!)

Mahalo, Noel, for giving me the little kick I needed.... I just wish the clouds had parted....I so wanted to take a photo with Mauna Kea looming in the background!

 

Tropical Still Life

I visited the Volcano Farmers Market really early on Sunday morning and came away with all sorts of great stuff...among them these mangoes and the cutest tiny little bananas ever...

I got the mangoes from Marla and Pete Hunter - Eke Nui Nursery in Na'alehu - with names like Mapuleha, Golden Glow, Manzanillo and Gouveia and many more, their booth was deliciously looking.... We ate the MaPulehas last night before I took the photo...they were gorgeous and very fragrant and sweet.

The tiny fat 'naners I got from Debbie Ward of the La'iku Organic Farm in Kurtistown are called 'silk bananas' and Debbie said the green ones can be fried as you would plantains... I'm letting some ripen to eat as fruit and tonight I will cook some of the green ones as veggies...

The round yellow fruit in front center is a passionfruit picked from our yard

Cacao - From Tree to Chocolate

Chocolate making is spreading on the Big Island!

There are several farmers on Hawai’i Island planting varieties of Theobroma cacao trees that produce cacao seeds or pods from which cocoa and chocolate is made. The best known varieties are Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario which is a hybrid mix of both Criollo and Forastero.

 

The quality of the chocolate depends on the variety of the tree, and Criollo is considered the best chocolate producing trees.

I recently participated in a fun one-day chocolate making workshop that took us from harvesting the cacao pods to making the chocolate and all the steps in between.

 

We arrived at the site early on a beautiful, sunny but breezy morning and were given a short orientation talk by Tom Sharkey, the owner of the little farmstead and a coffee and cacao grower.

Our group got paired up in teams of twos, one picking the pods and the other carrying a burlap sack to put them in. As we walked through the cacao grove, Tom explained and demonstrated what to look for and how to pick. He explained how the trees need to be trimmed by cutting all but the main trunk as the little trees grew to make it easier to harvest.

 

 

The pods are harvested approximately every two weeks and the ‘ripe’ stage can be red, yellow, orange or mixed, depending on the variety of cacao tree. We harvested approximately 300 pods that morning.  

As sacks were filled and dumped into a wheelbarrow they were taken to the shed where the processing started.

 

We were taught how to open the pods by giving them one or two sharp blows with a mallet and how to shuck the pods by removing the placentas with the seeds. Each pod can contain anywhere from 30 to 40 seeds.

After all the pods were opened and shucked, the seeds were placed in a large plastic container with drainage in the bottom to collect the juices. We were given ice-cold juice from a previous harvest to taste and found it delicious. The empty pods are recycled as composting material and nothing is wasted.

 

 

After the juices are drained, the beans are placed in a different container to ferment for 5 to 7 days, turning them each day, making sure that the beans are heating up.

After fermenting comes the drying stage; the beans are turned onto a mesh bottom drying rack in a single layer, in a well ventilated area and stirred daily. This process can take up to 6 days, depending on heat and air circulation, but dryness can be tested by opening a bean.

 

 

 

The dried beans need to be ground or cracked using a machine called Crackenstein or for small batches just simply a rolling pin. Tom has a machine he rigged up to separate the dried husks from the nibs, but a regular hand-held hair dryer can be used when processing small batches.

 

When roasting small batches of nibs, set a toaster oven at 425oF and roast for 9 minutes, then down to 325oF for another 9 minutes and finally bring the temperature down to 259oF for 10 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To grind the nibs a large Champion juicer can be used or a peanut butter machine to turn the nibs into paste. The paste is then placed in a Santha wet grinding-mixing machine for conching, for 2 to 4 days, adding sugar and vanilla slowly after paste is liquefied (about 12 hours). At this point you may also add cocoa butter and lecithin (emulsifier), but we didn’t add anything but sugar and vanilla to our batch.

Sugar can be adjusted according to your taste. Our dark chocolate was made using 75% cacao to 25% sugar.

 

 

 

 

To temper, the chocolate should be brought up to 115 to 120 degrees, then removed from heat and cooled to approximately 82 F. Bring the temperature back to 88-90 degrees and maintain while pouring into molds by working quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Squirt bottles work well for pouring the liquid chocolate into the molds. To minimize air bubbles, first tap the squirt bottle and after pouring, tap the molds to remove as many bubbles as possible. Chill for about 15 to 20 minutes to set and pop loose from mold.

Each participant left on a chocolate high with a few packages of the chocolate and a potted one foot Criollo variety of cacao tree.

For more information on Tom Sharkey’s chocolate making workshops contact him at tshark@hawaii.rr.com Tom also runs Sharky's Cafe on the first block of Waianuenue Avenue in downtown Hilo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glossary:

Cacao: the name of the tree and the pod, not to be confused with cocoa a product derived from processing the cacao beans

Nibs: the clean, roasted and slightly crushed cacao bean. The taste is slightly bittersweet and richer than the chocolate made from them.

Conching: the process by which the chocolate is processed to avoid grittiness by keeping the chocolate in a hot liquid state until completely smooth.

Tempering: the final process which gives the chocolate a satiny and glossy finish by removing all crystallization from the liquid.

Recommended reading:

The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Chocolate with Recipes by Maricel Presilla

Naked Chocolate: The Astonishing Truth about the World’s Greatest Food by David Wolfe

Open-faced Eggplant Sandwich

I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a long time and decided finally to make it today.  I think I can improve on it a little bit, but at least, this was good on the first try.

Our eggplants are doing great in the garden and I've been trying to come up with different things to make with them.  The eggplant I found today was not too big, but firm and really tender.

We had some 99% fat free multi-grain wheat bread in the freezer, so I took 2 slices out to thaw.  The slices are a bit bigger and wider than regular sliced bread. 

I cut the eggplant in slices about 1/4" thick, dipped them in milk and then in seasoned white cornmeal. 

Sautéed the slices in a small amount of olive oil, then when turned over I placed a slice of sorf mozzarella on each slice of eggplant and continued cooking until cheese had melted - I actually left it just a tad too long, but it was still fine.  Next time I will cover the pan and let it sort of steam a bit so the cheese will be soft and slightly melted but not cooked.

Meantime the bread slices were put in the George Foreman grill so it could toast with the grill marks on it.  After they were done I brushed the top of the bread slices with garlic infused olive oil.

On the dinner plate, place a lettuce leaf and then one of the slices of the bread.  On the bread, at an angle, place a slice of ggplant and mozzarella.  Add bits of  sun-dried tomatoes marinated in oil and a couple of sprigs of fresh basil.  Top with another slice of eggplant and mozzarella and repeat with the sun-dried tomato and basil.

I added a sprig of watercress to the plate as an edible garnish.  A delicious and easy, light summer meal.

Grilled Lobster & Mango Salad

We invited two couples friends of ours to an afternoon picnic at Kolekole Beach Park, which is a county park about a mile north of us. 

Liz and Mike brought a delicious salad of mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, avocado, sliced mushrooms, green peppers and cucumbers and her delicious homemade onion dressing

Linda and Howard brought an almond pound cake with buttercream icing made like a sheetcake.  It was delicious.

I made a grilled lobster and mango salad.  The lobsters were part of the 'haul' of seafood I bought recently at the NELHA Seafood Market

Besides the above dishes, we had some gorgeous fresh sliced tomatoes, French Fried Eggplants with Wasabi Mayo and we tasted for the first time, the homemade feta that I had marinated in olive oil with a sprig of rosemary, garlic cloves and Hawaiian red hot chile peppers....the marinated feta was the nicest and creamiest feta I've ever tasted.

Grilled Lobster & Mango Salad

7 small lobster tails - seasoned and grilled

3 medium sized mangoes - peeled and cut in about 1/2 inch cubes

1/4 cup macadamia nuts - chopped and toasted

 

For the dressing:

 

2 Meyer lemons - juiced and drained

1 1/2 Tablespoons Queen Creek Olive Mill Blood Orange infused Olive Oil

1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Fresh ground peppercorns - to taste

Place the greens in the salad bowl or platter - I used two different kinds of lettuce and chopped watercress - add the mango pieces and the grilled lobster slices.  Sprinkle with chopped, toasted macadamia nuts. 

YIELD: 6 servings

SOURCE:  Sonia's Kitchen

The blood orange infused olive oil has become my favorite flavored oil.  I was introduced to it by a friend from Arizona who sent a bottle of it with other assorted goodies during a Christmas gift exchange.  I was hooked.  I had her send me another bottle recently....I use it sparingly as the shipping is ridiculously expensive, but it was delicious as a back note to this dressing.

It was as delicious as it was pretty!

Slow Food visits the Hilo Coffee Mill

A group of members and a couple of visitors of the Slow Food Hawaii Convivium spent the morning yesterday, Saturday, August 7th touring the Hilo Coffee Mill in Mountain View.

Coffee was introduced to Hawaii Island in 1828 and at one time the Puna area of the Big Island had about 6000 acres of coffee trees making it the largest coffee growing area in the whole island until sugar cane was introduced and then all of the coffee acreage was turned to cane.  The Hilo Coffee Mill is trying to revert back to the original use of the land.

In the past, I've written about a coffee tasting for the now defunct Hawai'i Island Journal and also about the Farmers Market @the Mill (see below for 2 links), but this time we toured the farm and followed the process from planting to harvesting, roasting and finally tasting the coffee...ending our visit with lunch on the front lanai and shopping in the Farmer's Market.

The pineapple field yields about 200 white pineapples a year...of course, the tops get planted for yet more pineapple plants

Coffee trees were loaded with coffee berries or cherries

Some were beginning to ripen

Kathy explains below the harvesting of the trees

 

Coffee trees are actually evergree shrubs with a center trunk that grows fairly straigh and from which the branches spread in a beautiful outward pattern - in the 18th Century, botanists classified coffee as a member of the Rubiaceous family, but there are several varieties within the family and also several cultivars within the varieties. If I caught the names correctly, while Kathy was explaining them, at the Hilo Coffee Mill they are growing. Typica, Caturra, and Catuai,  Typica is the oldest coffee cultivar known and from which come many of the coffees we're familiar with today.

A beautifully shaped variety of a Typica coffee tree

The Coffee Mill farm has permanent residents... a colorful collection of hens that provide them with an astronomical amount of eggs daily...and of course, there is the 'King of the Roost'

The eggs are sold through the Mill Gift Shop, the Farmers Market and also used for the breakfasts which are served during Market hours on Saturdays.

The Mill Farm also has an experimental planting of Camellia sinensis, the tea plant from which all teas derive.

Many of the plants were blooming at this time and there were also seeds on many of them.

The process of oxidation and fermentation is what determines if the end result is white tea, green tea, oolong, black tea or pu-erh.   The twigs and stems (no leaves) are also used for Japanese teas such as Sancha or Matcha.

Back from the walk and inside the roasting and tasting room, Kealani explains the process frpm planting to getting the coffee ready to drink

 
The best way to start coffee plants is as seedlings which get transplanted to fields after they reach 2 to 3 feet in height. The progression from there until you are able to get a cup of coffee takes several years and more than a few steps; going through blossoming, green cherry, ripe cherry, picking, pulping, hulling, fermenting, washing, then on to parchment, drying, storing to reach the right moisture content, green beans and roasting…..all of this for that wonderful wake up call cup of coffee in the morning!

Christie roasting a fresh batch of coffee beans

 

Just roasted coffee beans!

 

We tasted three different coffees; a medium roast grown in Ka'u, a dark roast from the Hilo Coffee Mill and a flavored one that tasted a bit like a subtle blend of raspeberries and blackberries to me but actually was pineapple.

 
 
  Coffee seeds take 90 days to germinate and 5 years to produce enough cherries
to make it worth while. It takes an estimated 4000 regular coffee beans to make a pound of coffee after roasting. An average tree produces 10 to 12 pounds of ripe cherries which in turn ends up as one tenth of that amount after the coffee is roasted.

It's a wrap!

For lunch on the front lanai, we were served vegetarian, chicken or pork wraps, a delicious white and purple sweet potato salad, pasta salad, iced tea made from Hilo Coffee Mill grown tea and deliciously big fat chocolate chip cookies!

Below are links to two articles I shared about visits to the Farmers Market @The Mill

Hilo Coffee Mill's Farmers Market @ the Mill

Farmers Market @ The Mill

Mozzarella Cheese Class

A few weeks ago I blogged about a cheese making class I attended in Waimea taught by cheesemaker Vicki Dunaway where we made several cheeses and about my successful efforts at making ricotta with the left over whey after I got back home.

This time it was a mozzarella making class taught by Chef Sandy Bar-Rivera, an instructor at the Hawai'i Community College School of Culinarty Arts in Hilo and sponsored by Slow Food Hawaii at the Hilo home of Kim, one of the members.

View from Kim's house includes Saint Joseph's Church, downtown Hilo and the bay beyond. 

We had been given a list of equipment to bring with us, and juggling my heavy-bottomed 8 quart stock pot, long-shaft food thermometer, 4 quart Pyrex measuring cup, fine mesh sieve, assorted long-handled spoons, long knife, funnel, apron, kitchen towel, plastic container to store the cheese in and a gallon of KTA's Mountain Apple brand whole milk, I made it upstairs to Kim's aerie home perched over a beautiful view of old Hilo and the bay.

There were 8 of us vying for two burners at the stove, so we worked in pairs. 

Friend and blogging colleague Lucy Lee Jones was part of the group and she and I took turns taking photos of each other as we were part of different cheese making duos.  Lucy was very detailed in her explanation on the cheese making part, so I won't be going into the details and urge you to click on her name above and get the instructions there.

Pouring the milk as we get started.  As you can see, Kim was a thoughtful hostess providing wine to give us courage for the task ahead...

 

Waiting for the milk to reach between 50 - 55 degrees before adding the citric acid

Continue heating and stirring after adding the citric acid to reach 95 degrees.  Curds are beginning to form.

At this point, the pot was covered, taken off the heat and left for about 10 or 15 minutes before checking for curds.

Curds are supposed to form a thick layer on top, but mine was the consistency of cottage cheese and sort of in lumps.  Sandy said not to worry, so I didn't.

Cutting the curds with the long knife.  Both my batch and Lucy's were similar in that the curd was not as solid looking, but 'cutting' through it made the curd smaller

 

Lifting the curds out with a slotted spoon to place in the sieve

Spooning curds into sieve to let whey drain into the large measuring cup

At this point it looks like the ricotta I made a few weeks ago.  I saved the whey and Lucy helped me pour it into my empty milk gallon jug to take home for more ricotta making.  I love it that nothing gets wasted, since other cheeses can be made from the leftover whey or as I was told at the Waimea cheesemaking class, it can be fed to chickens to make their feathers shinier and the eggs bigger and richer.  Unfortunately, I don't have chickens....yet, so I use it to make ricotta

After draining as much curd as I could from the pot, it was transferrred to a microwaveble bowl to start the drying out process.

Into the microwave for a minute

At this point a bit of salt was added and then popped into the microwave for 30 more seconds

Checking the temperature and stirring once more - my batch had to go in the microwave three times for 30 seconds each time  - funny how all batches reacted differently

There!  Now it looks ready for kneading

At this point you take a spoonful of the cheese and with your hands you quickly form balls - this stuff is hot, so you work quickly.  Rubber gloves were part of the list of equipment we were asked to bring, but Sandy said, she didn't like to use them as she could taste the rubber in the finished product...so we all braved it and used our bare hands.

It's mozzarella!

Dropping them in iced water stops the cooking process.

Four of them and enough to make two more....Lucy got 10, but mine were just a little bit bigger than hers.

  

My finished 6 balls of mozzarella.

As Lucy explains in her blog, the written instructions sound much more complicated than the actual process.

There are several simple and interesting recipes in the Home Cheese Making book by Ricki Carroll and I'm planning to try them soon.

  

Not the most flattering picture of me, but we had it taken with both our cameras and since Lucy used it as her opening photo, I am using it as the last.

Sandy, it was a wonderful class. 

Kim, you turned it into a party.  Mahalo for the use of your lovely home

...and mahalo to Slow Food Hawaii for making the class available!

The Second Annual Mango Festival

Someone wisely said "Life is uncertain, eat dessert first" and I guess I must believe it since I wrote about Hector's Heavenly Rose Mango Cake presentation at the recent mango fest in Kona instead of writing about the festival itself first.

Hawaiian Mangos poster by Ken Love - Hawaii Tropical Fruit

By all appearances, The Second Annual Hawaii Healing Gardens Mango Festival held this past Saturday, July 31st at the Keauhou Outrigger Beach Resort in Kona was a smashing success!

 
There was mango everything....from the fresh fruit, to mango gazpacho (delicious), mango upside-down cake, mango smoothies, mango talks, mango posters, mango products, Hector's previously mentioned mango cake and even honey bees making mango honey.

 

I had first attended another event in Kona on Friday afternoon, so I spent the night at the hotel to be there for the mango fest on Saturday.  My room had a beautiful view of both the ocean and the mango fest location. Photos above were taken from my 5th floor room balcony. 

There was hula, educational talks on how to make preserves, beekeeping, how to graft a mango tree, how to treat your trees so they would bear luscious, healthy fruit, food demonstrations and so much more!

Ken Love, Mark Suiso and Stuart Johnson spoke about growing mangoes and how to keep your backyard mango trees healthy.  Most of the audience for this talk stayed on for Hector's mango cake presentation.... which you've already read about.

The whole event was a kaleidoscope of images, colors, music and aromas coming at you from all sides!

Kudos to Randyl Rupar and everyone else involved in making this festival a huge success....see you next year Randyl!

Photo - Sonia spotted looking at Ken's mango poster at the Mango Festival by Craig Elevitch

Hector's Heavenly Rose Mango Cake

Hector Wong is a young man from Honolulu whose passion is baking and decorating cakes....He does have a day job, but that is only fuel to feed his cake baking obsession.

Hector's idol and mentor is Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of The Cake Bible and other cookie, chocolate and cake related books.  Hector was one of two cake testers who made all of the cakes in Rose's newest book, Rose's Heavenly Cakes before the book was published.  As his inspiration, Hector used the rose as his decoration of choice at the recent 2nd Annual Hawaii Healing Garden Mango Festival held on the grounds of the Keauhou Outrigger Beach Resort on Saturday, July 31st.

Before appearing at the Mango Fest on Saturday, Hector demonstrated how he decorates his cakes on Friday afternoon at the NELHA Seafood Farmers Market and that same evening for the local chapter of the American Chef Association in one of the ballrooms of the Keauhou Beach Resort.  Hector flew to Kona carrying all his own tools and several cakes he had baked before leaving Honolulu.

 
The macadamia shortbread cakes demonstrated at the mango festival were baked for him by Patti Kimball, culinary arts instructor at the Konawaena High School.
The cake consisted of 6 tiers of macadamia shortbread layers; each layer was spread with a different flavor of tropical fruit jellies and the fresh mango slices forming a rose. 

.................and here is the spectacular Heavenly Rose Mango Cake

 
The setting is the wall outside the lobby of the Keauhou Outrigger Beach Resort, Kailua-Kona, Hawai'i Island.

Fun filled day in Volcano

Until yesterday, Gail was a friend of a friend whom I enjoyed meeting through Facebook and we became FB friends.  We are now face to face friends...

Gail and her husband Robert live in a gorgeous piece of property near Hawai'i National Volcanoes Park where they have an open pavillion in the forest used for weddings and parties.  They also have an adorable vacation rental 'tree house' -

Gail invited the two of us to join her for a day of gathering wild berries and flowers in her neighborhood.  I jumped at the chance.  Devany met me at the Puainako parking lot in front of KTA supermarket and then we drove together to Volcano.

Gail took us to several 'secret places' to collect blackberries.  We also found some berries that Gail called ohelo berries, but these grew on a taller bush and the leaves were not like the ohelos I was familiar with.  They are quite tart.  Other berries I found in a real 'Brer' Rabbitt thicket of brambles was what Devany and Gail say are Himalayan raspberries.  Needless to say they are invasive and quite ruthless, as I can attest by my pricked and bleeding right hand after I got out of there....I later noticed neither of them went in with me!

The flowers!....what can I say about the flowers....actually, not much more than they were spectacular. 

Wild Kahili ginger......

The Kahili are very invasive and are being pulled in many areas, but they are so beautiful and smell delicious. 

...............nasturtiums growing wild next to ginger among tall grasses

.........................and a spectacular stand of hydrangeas that were huge bushes all intertwined with tall grasses. 

 The color range was from cobalt to sky blue to very light blue and the faded flower heads were striking in shades of old fashioned dusty rose and rust orangey-rose.

Terrestial wild orchids growing at Gail's

 
Afterwards we drove over to the Kipuka Puaulu area (aka Bird Park) on Mauna Loa Road (just off highway 11) to eat our picnic.  There was enough to feed several more people.  I'm sorry I didn't get a photo of  Devany's salad as it was not only delicious but it was very colorful.

Tomatoes from my garden....

Sweet ham, pepper baked turkey, deliciously creamy Brie and guava wood smoked chevre pyramid from the Hawai'i Island Goat Dairy

After arriving back home I made several arrangements with the flowers and placed them all over the house....

My friend Sue loved nasturtiums and her favorite colors were blue and white with an Oriental theme, so I chose this porcelain basket shaped container in her honor.

Sue's flowers and the berries picked

To prove that we did get some berries, though they weren't as prolific as we would have wanted, it was still a lot of fun to hunt and pick them.

Not sure what I'll make with them but will share the recipe when I do...

 Hydrangeas on the lanai

Hydrangeas with yellow heliconia from our yard on the back lanai -

 

Hydrangeas in the bathroom

I already had an arrangement of flowers from the Hilo farmers market I got last Saturday; lilies, tuberoses, zinnias, yellow heliconias and one tall sunflower to which I added the terrestial orchids I picked yesterday.

the Kahili ginger arrangement is on the back lanai - I put in some stems of wawae'iole or 'pipe cleaner' ferns that grow in the higher elevations of Volcano and middle elevations of Saddle Road between the two large volcanoes; Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.  The Kahili was picked with buds closed and they just started opening a little bit this morning...should be in full bloom in a couple of days.