Da Kine Recipes

Finally, the long-awaited RECIPES! Yes! I finally got off my okole and typed 'em in and here they are!

Kalua Pig

This doesn't really have a recipe per se; what I did to it is completely documented in the description and pictures. The only thing the pictures don't show is:

• The pig weighed in at ~30 lb dressed
• I rubbed it all over, inside and out, with Hawaiian salt (which you can get at Myles')
• We put hot rocks in its belly cavity and also at the joints of its shoulders and hams
• We set out a sheet of chicken wire, laid banana leaves over it, laid the pig on it, and tied the pig up in it before laying the whole mess in the imu.

Dass it! When it's done, shred the meat before serving -- assuming you can even get it into the kitchen past the fingers of your hungry guests... ;)

Don't want to do a whole pig? Do a roast the way Local Kine Recipes suggests. (In addition to what that recipe there says, I'd suggest wrapping the roast in ti or banana leaves after rubbing in the salt, before roasting it)

Chicken Luau

Bone out the chicken thighs, cut them into pieces and saute them. Or just leave the bone in and pan fry 'em, however you like.

Wash the luau and strip out the stems, then put them in a large saucepan with the water, bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer covered for 1 hour, stirring frequently. Burnt luau is Bad.

At the end of the hour, drain the luau, stir in the coconut milk, the chicken, and the salt, and serve.

Serves 6.

Chicken Long Rice

Make a marinade of the soy sauce, salt, ginger, and rum, and marinate the chicken parts in it for 20 minutes. Then, brown the chicken parts in the oil in a big pot, add the onions and the long rice, and water or broth (to cover; use more or less if need be). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the long rice is tender.

Some folks cook the chicken separately and shred the meat while the long rice boils in the broth the chicken cooked in, and then add the chicken back later...

Serves 6 to 8.

Laulau

Dis stuff da kine! I still have a few in my freezer -- they freeze GREAT. If you like, you can make some with just fish or just meat, you can use chicken instead of or along with pork, or whatever. I'm tellin ya brah, dey broke da mouth!

Wash and stem the leaves (all kine). Cut the pork and fish into 6 pieces each, then munge the salt and the pork together in a bowl.

Arrange 5 or so luau leaves on the palm of your off hand, then put one piece of pork and one piece of fish in the middle of them with your main hand, and then fold the leaves up to make a bundle. Then, put that bundle on the end of one ti leaf and roll it up, then set that bundle crosswise (90 degrees out from the first ti leaf's longways) on a second ti leaf and roll it up. Secure it with string, or mo betta fo be authentic, a stem or two of the ti leaves you took off in the first paragraph.

Bury in the imu with the pig. Or if you're not doing the imu thang, steam them for 4 hours (or just 1 hour in a pressure cooker).

Makes 6 laulau.

Haupia

Mix together the cornstarch, sugar, salt, and coconut milk at room temperature; make sure there's no lumps from the cornstarch before you start heating, or they'll be more of a pain to squash out. Heat the mixture to just about boiling and hold it there, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens to about corn syrup thickness. If you're using the vanilla, add it now.

Pour the mixture into an 8" square pan and chill it until it's set. Cut it into 2" cubes to serve.

Serves 6.

Lomi Salmon

Now. Traditionally, one uses salted salmon, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Just remember what I told you about the canned, I mean it. If you want to salt your own, like I did, then buy your salmon in filets, take a glass dish, put a layer of Hawaiian (or you could use kosher for this purpose) salt in the bottom, lay a filet on it, sprinkle more salt on top, lay the other filet on that, and then more salt. Let it sit overnight in the fridge.

If you use honestagod Hawaiian salted salmon, you'll have to soak it for a couple hours; if you salted your own, just rinse it off. Remove the skin and bones and shred or flake the fish. Mix it and all the rest of the ingredients, except the ice, in a bowl, and chill it.

Just before serving it, mix in the ice really well.

Serves 6.

Poi

I didn't make my own poi. That is to say, I didn't buy taro root and pound it and ferment it. I did do what local folks mostly do, which is to say:

1. I bought a plastic bag of poi (frozen, from Myles, though in Hawaii you can buy em unfrozen in the grocery store)
2. I thawed it, squoze it out into a bowl, added some water until it was the right consistency, and then let it sit out a day, covered, in my kitchen.

Some folks like it fresh, some like it sour, as Pupus to Da Max says; as for me, I think that fresh poi just tastes like library paste, where after a day or so of sitting it's developed a really nice sourdough taste.

Kimchee

I used storebought kimchee, but it's not too difficult to make your own kimchee. There's a stack of kimchee recipes at Local Kine Recipes.

Manapua

I did make my own manapua. If there's a Chinatown where you live, and you want these but don't want to make them yourself, go find a bakery or other place that does Dim Sum, and order up as many Char Siu Bao as you like. ;) Manapua, by the way, is from the Hawaiian mea ono pua'a, which means (more or less) "yummy pork thing".

Mix up a dough out of all the stuff in the lefthand column above (the same way you would regular bread dough, with one rise and punch down). Mix up a filling out of all the stuff in the righthand column.

Break up the dough into a couple dozen rounds, then flatten each round, spoon a spoonful of the filling into the middle of the round, fold it up, and put it folds down on a square of wax paper.

Let them all rise an hour, then steam them for 15 minutes (in batches, if you have to).

Makes 24 yummy pork things.

Spring Rolls

I haveta admit, I can't remember what recipe I used for these (*blush*). But there's a million recipes out there, go find 'em! (Tip: you could look also for lumpia...)

Lion Head Balls

From the Schindler's Hawaiian Cookbook

Combine the meats, vegetables, egg and shoyu and munge 'em up good with your hands -- they're gonna get covered with stuff in about a minute, so you might as well start early.

Make about 25 meatballs out of the mixture; roll each meatball in cornstarch and saute in the oil (actually, I got Martin to deep fry them while he was doing the spring rolls, and it worked great), drain them on absorbent paper, serve hot on cocktail picks with mustard and plum sauce.

To make mine look more lion-like, I actually bashed up some long rice with a rolling pin and rolled the meatballs in that after the cornstarch -- I also made mine a little bigger, about 15 meatballs per recipe.

Rice

Come on now, I don't really need to tell you how to cook rice, do I?? Besides, you probably have a method you like better than mine anyway.

What I will tell you here is that the Hawaiians, like folks westerly of them, prefer short grain (ie Calrose) rice, and that it was for Greg's party that I bought my first electric rice cooker. I now swear by it, it's the coolest thing, and I went out and got a cute little tiny one for my office, which makes my Guam-born coworker wonder if I wasn't really born in da islands and am just masquerading as a haole. ;) National/Panasonic sells them, Zojirushi sells them, you can buy them at just about any Asian market. Do it. You won't be sorry.

(Did I mention I like poi? Maybe Richard's right! ;)

Strangely enough, at about the same latitudes but in the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, Caribbean islanders prefer long grain rice. Go figure. (In all seriousness, I think it has to do with the Asian influence on the Pacific islanders versus the East Indian influence on the Atlantic islanders...)

Portagee Bread (aka Pao Doce)

I used the recipe from Local Kine Recipes, but if you're feeling lazy, just buy a loaf or three of King's Hawaiian Bread. Same kine.