Heart of Palm and Garden Salad
We recently attended a wonderful food event nearby which I predict will become "the foodie event of East Hawaii" very quickly.
I will share more on this a bit later, but I wanted to share this salad which I made with Hawaii grown heart of palm I received as a gift from our friends Michael and Leslie who own Wailea Agricultural Group not too far from us. Leslie and Michael's company had a booth at the 'Hamakua Alive' event.
First, let me explain, there are some varieties of heart of palm that to get to the edible part you need to chop down the whole plant, thus killing it, which never made sense to me. The heart of palm grown and sold by Leslie and Michael is from the peach palm, which sends out 'shoots' around the main palm trunk, and these shoots are what is cut, so the palm continues to grow and produce without having to be killed. (*) I will write more about heart of palm in the near future, but today I just wanted to share this wonderful salad.
(*) CORRECTION: Michael was here this morning and he corrected my impression of how the heart of palms were harvested.....
Actually it is the main trunk that is cut, but there are always several keiki (baby) plants coming around it to renew themselves, so using this variety is a sustainable way of harvesting... Eat your heart and grow it too.... ;-)
Heart of Palm and Garden Salad
(*) I used a combination of Malabar and Moluccan (Dawn Dewa or Sambung Nyawa) spinachs from our garden. The pineapple sage leaves and blooms also came from our garden. The passion fruit vinaigrette was also made from fruit collected from our yard.
Pick and wash the greens early in the morning. Pat dry with paper towels and refrigerate stored in separate ziplock bags until ready to put the salad together.
Slice the heart of palm stem in thin slices. Store, covered in refrigerator until ready to assemble the salad.
Scatter the Malabar spinach around the platter. Take bunches of the Moluccan (Dawn Dewa) spinach and cut into a thin chiffonade (*). Scatter some over the Malabar spinach and save some to scatter over the sliced heart of palm.
Scatter some of the pineapple sage leaves over the two other spinachs.
Place the sliced heart of palm on top of the greens and then scatter a bit more of the chiffonade of Moluccan (Dawn Dewa) spinach and a few more pineapple sage leaves on top. Scatter the red blooms of the pineapple sage over all. Drizzle with the liliko'i (passion fruit) vinaigrette.
For instructions on how I make my passion fruit vinaigrette check the blog entry for the Demo at the Farmers Market
(*) A chiffonade of greens is actually any fresh greens that have been cut in thin ribbons. To make a chiffonade, take a handful of green leaves: basil, lettuce, cabbage, spinach, etc. and loosely wad up under your hand over a cutting board. With a very shap knife (I like to use my Santuko knife) and with rocking motions, cut across the wad of greens to make thin slices to form the ribbons.
As you can see, it makes a very festive salad. It was also very ono (delicious) or like we sometimes say in Hawai'i, onolicious!
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