Sonia Tastes Hawaii

'Ike 'Aina: From the Seed to the Table Cookbook

Kua O Ka Lā Public Charter School in Pū‘āla‘a, Lower Puna on the Big Island of Hawai'i (Hawai'i Island) recently published their own cookbook titled 'Ike 'Aina: From the Seed to the Table - Cooking with locally grown foods.

An enticing cookbook full of mouth-watering recipes, this cookbook will certainly grab your attention.  The cookbook is filled with recipes prepared by Culinary Instructor Mariposa Blanco and the 'Aina Life Culinary Arts Program students using only locally grown and sourced fresh produce and local foods of our islands.

Delicious ways to use breadfruit, taro, coconuts, guavas, mangos and many other tropical produce and fruits.  From homemade coconut oil mayonnaise, juice extracts from ginger and 'olena (turmeric) to their award winning breadfruit tamales.  No rice, butter or wheat based products make an appearance in this little gem. 

The book is written in both Hawaiian and English, filled with beautiful full color photographs of the students from kindergarten keiki to seniors planting, tending, harvesting and cooking with the very vegetables and fruits mentioned in the recipes. 

The cookbook begins with an ancient Hawaiian prayer used as a chant for opening new gardens to grow food.  Early Hawaiians fed themselves with only what they could grow, forage in the forests and gather from the sea.  There were no imports until the rest of the world learned about the islands.

'Ike 'Aina means to know the land.  The school has a garden, plants in containers and a grow-house where several crops are growing vertically to save space.  They are learning to know the land!

The curriculum of the school includes an agricultural experience where all of the kids get to participate: from seed to table, and the book reflects it.  Every Friday, the culinary arts class students and their instructor, Mariposa, feed a healthy snack to the elementary school students and then a sit-down lunch to staff and invited guests.  I have been fortunate to have been invited to several of these lunches.

Their award winning 'Ulu Tamales recipe can be found on page 56 - and in a post I made on September 25th, 2011 

A Breadfruit Kind of Day

For a couple of recipes from the cookbook that I was able to taste during one of the school's Friday lunches, please check my article in the Hamakua Times of Honoka'a

The Revitalization of Breadfruit

The cookbook's first printing is a limited edition and the books are becoming scarse, but if interested in obtaining one, you can reach the school for information

Kua o Ka Lā Public Charter School 
P.O. Box 1413 Pahoa, HI 96778
Phone: (808) 965-5098 Fax: (808) 965-9618 
Email Info@kuaokala.org

 

 

 

The Akaka Falls Inn Cooking School...

 

For some reason, I've had the Akaka Falls Inn on my mind quite a bit lately...specially the cooking school part of it...maybe because I've been trying to get the recipes we tested, shared and taught in the many cooking classes we offered and put them together into a possible cookbook with bits of stories and anecdotes about the Inn and the classes.

Image - The Akaka Falls Inn, B&B and Cooking School façade - watercolor by Wanda Boyer, circa 1998.

All one summer, our cooking school hosted a series of keiki (children's) cooking classes, designed as a trip around the world. Food from a different country was chosen for each class. Countries covered were, if I remember correctly, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Greece, China, India and Japan.

The menu for each class consisted of a salad, entree, dessert and an appropriate beverage. We gave the students the name of the country we were going to cover a week ahead and they were to learn all they could about that country during the week - since our classes were all during the summer, they were out of school and their research did not interrupt their regular schooling homework.

The backyard at the Inn was quite large and housed over 30 varieties of fruit trees and plants (bananas, papayas, pineapples, mango, macadamia, mountain apples, vee apples, coconuts, figs, plus several different citrus), as well as an herb and small veggie garden (lettuces, mesclun mixes, spinach, cherry tomatos, basil, assorted peppers, rosemary, dill, chives, garden onions, etc) and quite a few tropical and exotic flowering trees and plant.

The kitchen and dining room used for the keiki cooking classes were the smaller and more intimate B&B kitchen and dining areas, with a homier feeling than the larger kitchen used for our regular cooking classes.

During the class, we would discuss the recipes, prep the ingredients, cook the food and while the food was cooking, the kids took turns going into the backyard in separate groups (some foraged and others cooked) to pick the garden stuff for the salad and to pick flowers and greenery for the table centerpieces.

Photo: Stacy and Melanie

The girls expressed an interest in making the table arrangements and learning complex napkin foldings from the many books on the subject in our Inn library.

When the food was served and we sat at table, after the young gentlemen pulled the chairs for the ladies, we would discusss all they had learned during the week about the country we were featuring.  It made for very interesting table conversations.

Besides the recipes, cooking and the learning of the different countries, the keiki also were 'gently' instructed on table and dinner time  etiquette.

Photo: Daniel & Asa admiring and serving the Spanish Paella they had just helped cook.  Salad in the foreground.

For one of my favorite Spanish Paella recipes click HERE

For my favorite Flan recipe click HERE

For the Spanish Paella class, we started with a mixed salad, the paella and ended with flan.  The beverage was a mock (virgin) sangria.

Virgin Sangria

 

1 quart pomegranate juice

2 cups orange juice

1 cup white grape juice

1/2 sugar

1 orange sliced thinly - rind on

2 lemons liced thinly - rind on

2 limes sliced thinly - rind on

2 kiwis, peeled and sliced thinly

Any other fruit you wish to add

Just before serving add a liter of Sprite for fizz.

 

In a large glass or ceramic pitcher, mix juices and sugar until sugar dissolves. Wash orange, lemons, limes and slice into thin slices.

Remove kiwi skin and cut into thick slices.

Place all fruit into juice and let flavors meld in refrigerator.

My friend Georgia Banyon used to help me with these Saturday morning classes.  I think we enjoyed them as much as the keiki seemed to.

 

On the morning of July 23, 2000 a fire destroyed the Akaka Falls Inn.  The photos above were collected from family, friends, previous Inn guests and neighbors after the fire destroyed all of ours.  The quality is not as good as I would want because they had been saved to floppy discs, but we are very happy to have these and many more that were sent to us from everywhere afterwards.

 

 

New Year's Day & Italian Pasta

This post is way overdue...too much has been happening and for some reason or other, I kept putting it aside, even though it was the highlight of our New Year celebrations!

My friend Hector Wong has appeared in this blog before, the first time was right after the 2nd Annual Mango Festival when I shared his Heavenly Rose Mango Cake in late July of last year and recently when I attended the 5th Annual Avocado Festival and he presented his Savory Avocado-Sweet Potato Tower

A week or so before the New Year I received an e-mail from Hector, who lives in Honolulu, saying he would flying to visit his friend Luca in Hilo and that Luca was inviting us to an Italian New Year Day pasta lunch.  Luca is from Italy and has been living in Hilo just a relatively short time, but his pasta and bread making feats are already legendary among his friends, so we jumped at the invitation.

 
Our menu consisted of a Peruvian Chicken dish made by Hector (he is of 100% Chinese descent but was born and grew up in Peru), handmade tortellini and handmade tagliatelli by Luca and an assortment of desserts made by Hector.  Luca left a few tortellini wrapers for me to learn and practice on.

 
The filling in the tortellini -  Mortadella, prosciutto, ground pork loin seared in wine, rosemary and sage.  Parmesan cheese, one egg, salt, pepper and a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg - Typical dish of the Bologna area in the Emilia-Romagna region

 
Tortellini in Brodo di Pollo (Tortellini in Chicken Broth)

 
Fresh tagliatelli hanging on a clothes drying rack waiting to be cooked

 
Luca, checking the pasta

Tagliatelle -Smoked salmon lightly cooked in butter olive oil wine and vodka. Add a little cream and, once off the fire, some lemon juice - a dish more common in the north regions of Italy.

 

Tagliatelli Pasta al Salmone Affumicato (Tagliatelli with Smoked Salmon)

 

Hector made gingerbread cookies to go with the Ginger Cardamon Cheesecake.  He also had samples of a Pistachio Cake and Starfruit Charlotte. 

Hector's desserts are all 'takes' on Rose Levy Beranbaum's cookbook Rose's Heavenly Cakes (2010 IACP cookbook of the year)

 
Clockwise from bottom: gingerbread cookie, Ginger Cardamon Cheesecake and a slice of the Starfruit Charlotte. 

Fresh Hawaiian ginger and fresh cardamon from Malaysia (a gift from a friend) was used for the Ginger Cardamon Cheesecake, which was lighter than air....

 
Sicilian Pistachio Cake - pistachios from Sicily

 
The Starfuit Charlotte, inspired from the Apple Caramel Charlotte by Rose Levy Beranbaum

You can find the original recipes which inspired Hector's desserts in Rose's Heavenly Cakes cookbook

Needless to say, the whole meal was thoroughly enjoyed. 

Mahalo nui, Luca and Hector!

To read both of the posts about Hector in Gather.com click on the following:

Hector's Heavenly Rose Mango Cake

Hector Wong's Savory Avocado-Sweet Potato Tower

BTW, you can visit Hector's blog by clicking on My Yellow Kitchen

 

REVIEW: The Three Guys from Miami Celebrate Cuban

Can there be anything wrong with a cookbook that starts with desserts up front.......?  Definitely not in my opinion, especially when the first recipe is for Coconut Rice Pudding! 

This is the second cookbook by this winsome trio and in my opinion also destined to join their first one on the best seller list!

In their own inimitable bantering style, Glenn Lindgreen, Raul Musibay and Jorge Castillo  deal in serious business.....seriously good food business, I mean...   Whether you are familiar with Cuban food  or not, the book is a promise that 'if you read it, and, of course, cook from it, they will come...to your table', to paraphrase a well known movie's most famous line.

The format is easy to read and follow and none of the recipes are very complicated... You will find a few comments on the margins by Glenn, Raul and Jorge, sometimes explaining a recipe, a name, an ingredient, a cooking term or even making fun of themselves.

The beautiful color photos throughout the book make your mouth water in anticipation and you will find little bits of information scattered among the pages explaining certain customs, holiday traditions and everyday way of life in the Cuba we used to know.

I hope you enjoy this cookbook as much as I have.....and yes, the first recipe I will make from this cookbook is the Coconut Rice Pudding!

Aloha and welcome!

Aloha and welcome to my brand new blog!

I’m new to the world of blogging, and this will be an adventure for me as I try to share my world of food, gardening and cookbooks with you.

Why a blog you ask? Well, I have been reading other people’s blogs and the idea appeals to me as I feel it is a friendlier format than a website…I love to write about food, cooking and cookbooks…..and would like to hear back from you on these and other subjects.

I have become friends with several foodies who have written excellent cookbooks and would like to introduce them to you. Please visit the links to their work on these pages.

You can also check out my cookbook Tropical Taste , which is a compilation of articles that appeared for several years in the Hamakua Times

My cookbook collection is quite large and I hope from time to time to share reviews with recipes I have tried from each.

Gardening and using the fruits from the garden go hand in hand with the whole experience for me, so there will also be bits on gardening and using my garden's harvest.

As we start on our newest garden project, I hope to share with you our ideas, triumphs and (hopefully not many) mistakes….!

I hope to write in this ‘journal’ at least once a week and depending on the subject matter, maybe more often, so feel free to drop in at anytime….or better yet, why don’t you take a minute to sign up to receive notices when something new is added?

Our island is a very exciting place in which to live and I can’t wait to share it with you, so please, grab a cup of your favorite morning beverage and sit with me a while. I would love to ‘talk story’ with you so anytime you feel like sending a comment I would be pleased to hear from you…

Mahalo…..and let the adventure begin!

Sonia