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

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

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.

Eggplant Parmigiana

Since I made the ricotta night before last, I've been dreaming of making Eggplant Parmigiana using my own garden grown eggplants and herbs, my homemade ricotta and my own roasted tomato sauce...(Move over Martha....!)

Yesterday was a sort of complicated day, and it wasn't until this afternoon that I could spend a little bit of time in the kitchen.

My version of this dish is just a little bit different than most in that I like to dip the eggplant slices in beaten eggs and then in seasoned panko before frying.  I use a mixture of ricotta and sour cream for 'creaminess' and a mixture of good olive oil and vegetable oil for the frying.

Eggplant Parmigiana

 

Eggplants - sliced about 1/4 inch thick

Eggs - beaten

Panko - seasoned to taste

Ricotta

Sour cream

Herbs - chopped

Eggs - beaten

Seasonings - to taste

Roasted tomato sauce - click on link

Parmesan cheese - grated

 

 

Mixture of olive oil and vegetable oil to fry the eggplant slices

 

Slice the eggplants about 1/4 inch thick.  You may peel or not, depends on your own taste.  I leave them on.  Dip the eggplant slices in the beaten egg, then in the seasoned pank.  Fry at medium-high until golden.  Drain.

 

 

 

Mix ricotta, sour cream, chopped herbs (I used basil and fresh oregano), eggs (I used the leftover beaten eggs from dipping the eggplant slices) and seasonings together.

 

 

 

Start layering fried eggplant slices on a baking dish or gratin pans.  Spread with some of the cheese mixture, then a thin layer of the tomato sauce, sprinkle with Parmigiano (I had a chunk of Parmigiano-Romano which I grated).  Repeat layers as needed.

 

 

If using gratin pans, you might be able to do only one layer.  My deep-sided glass baking dish let me do three layers - I started with 3 small eggplants and 1 pound of the ricotta.

I topped it by sprinkling with the leftover seasoned panko.

 

 

Baked at 350 F for about 45 minutes.  Let it rest about 10 minutes or so when you take out of oven before spooning or cutting.

 

 

The panko gives a nice crunchy texture to the top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making homemade cheeses.........

(Photo credit) - Chef Olelo pa'a Faith Ogawa with her mobile phone...

 

I attended a fun all day cheesemaking class yesterday in Waimea, offered by Vicki Dunaway who works with Dick and Heather Threfall at their Hawai'i Island Goat Dairy.

 

We donned aprons and hairnets and after reviewing the packed full folder-packets Vicki had put together for us, we got started with the cheesemaking process.

 

(Photo) Olelo pa'a adding renet to the feta mix

 

We made several cheeses in class - cottage cheese, feta, havarti and camembert, but the camembert didn't turn out so it was added back to the whey from the other cheeses.

 

(Photo) Feta cheese in molds 

 

My share of the feta cheese was brought home and set to brining in a 10% salt to water mix.  I will be packing it in olive oil and adding fresh rosemary, garlic cloves and some of the red hot Hawaiian chile peppers to it.

 

Several members of the class took half gallon jars of whey home to make ricotta with.  I took 2 half gallon jars. 

 

(Photo) Filling half gallon jars with whey after the class.

 

I started to make my ricotta when I got home - it was a very primitive set up since I had to use my meat thermometer to make sure I reached the right temp for the whey/milk combination and my meat thermometer shaft was not long enough to just clip on the edge of my stockpot... I had to hold the thermometer with one hand and stir with the other...hot work...but I got it done and to the mix I added the bit of salt and then apple cider vinegar...and made ricotta!

(Photo) Vicki during class 

 

Ratio of whey and milk to acid for ricotta = 2 gallon fresh whey - 1 quart milk - 1/4 cup acid (lemon juice, lime juice or apple cider vinegar)

 

I started with about 1 gallon of fresh whey (Ph of about 5) and added 1/2 qt no fat milk - if you want it creamier use whole milk or add a tablespoon of cream -  and 1/8 cup apple cider vinegar

Heat to 200 degrees slowly on low temp - use a long shaft thermometer that you can clip on lip of stockpot - stirring often.

 

(Photo) is it cheese yet? 

 

It took a while of stirring the whey, milk combination to reach the 200 degrees needed and since my thermomether is a meat one and not one of the ones with long shaft, it was ackward to hold it with one hand over the edge of the stockpot and into the liquid to get a constant reading....but I will certainly be investing in a proper thermometer now....

At about 140 degrees add salt. I used less than a Tbsp. ...
Continue heating and stirring periodically until it reaches 200 degrees.  do not let it boil

Turn off and add acid (lemon juice, lime juice or apple cider vinegar- I used the apple cider vinegar) and stir.

Let it sit a while

Prepare a colander lined with layers of cheesecloth and set it over a grid (I used one of my cookie cooling racks) or an oven rack - and set it over a larger container to catch the whey dripping - I used a large glass bowl.

Start laddling the mixture into the cheesecloth covered colander and keep adding as it drains - let it sit a few minutes. You can squeeze it to drain more but I didn't want a very dry ricotta so I let it retain some moisture.

 

(Photo) my ricotta - I got about a pound of ricotta for my gallon of whey and milk  mix.

The leftover whey I saved to add to our dog Phoebe's food - she loved it!  If you have chickens or livestock mix it with their water.  According to one of the attendees, a couple of days after starting to mix whey in the water for her chickens, the eggs were actually bigger and better.

I bought a cheesemaking book and will be trying my hand at others...  I'm strting with the easier ones...!  I think either mascarpone or queso blanco will be next...