Honeymoon eating: the food in Hawaii

Food for honeymooners. One of the best parts about our trip to Hawaii was the opportunity to eat a radically different cuisine for two whole weeks. No one's body is really meant to eat take out or restaurant food for that many meals in a row, but it definitely helped that there was so much fresh food in Hawaii.

Here are some of our highlights:

Poke from Side Street Inn -- we went here on a recommendation from friends (they all recommended the pork chop, but neither of us are huge pork chop people). This was easily the best poke we had in Hawaii. Rich, buttery, and super delicious.

The spicy fried chicken at Side Street in was also awesome. The menu warns you you'll wait a little longer for it, but the extra 10 or so minutes were worth it. It was crispy and juicy, and almost tasted like it had been marinated in sweet spicy may ploy sauce.

Kalua-style pig sliders - these were awesome. I'm a huge fan of any kind of pork bun (especially char siu bao or Momofuku pork buns) and these were such a nice combination of salty pork with the sweet grilled pineapple.

This was our first experience with roadside fruit stands. We bough cold coconuts from a nice lady on the North Shore. She also let us sample lilikoi (passionfruit), which were incredibly delicious. Sweet but tart, and with seeds somewhat similar in texture to pomegranates.

The North Shore is also home to more food trucks than I have ever seen in Minnesota. Most of them specialized in shrimp. We stopped at one at the ruins of an old sugar mill and got garlic shrimp and mahi mahi. I love how many of the lunch plates come served with rice and/or macaroni salad.

Spam musubi are everywhere. Perfectly wrapped little bundles of white rice, spam, usually at least one other ingredient (egg, cheese, furikake seasoning are common). They're a nice snack, and even the ones in the convenience stores are not bad. I even picked up my own musubi press to make them at home.

Eggs N Things was another place that came highly recommended by our friends. We stopped there one night for breakfast for dinner. This is definitely the way to go, as we drove by another morning and the line was out the door.

The spread at Ono Hawaiian foods. This was on Anthony Bourdain's list of places to go in Honolulu. He stopped here for authentic Hawaiian plates, and we had the same. Poi, a kind of beef jerky, lomi lomi, purple sweet potatoes, coconut gelatin and of course, spam, all came alongside our meal.

In the windward side of the island, we stopped in a town called Kailua (the subject of a recent NYT Travel story) for lunch and went to Agnes' portuguese diner for malassadas for dessert. These were great. We also had more malassadas the night we were at Aloha stadium -- after the game, the vendor was apparently trying to get rid of the excess dough. We got a huge bag of freshly fried malassadas for $5.

Our big night out in Honolulu was at Alan Wong's. We had gotten recommendations to come here but also warned that it was expensive. We bit the bullet anyway, and had a really incredible night out. Above, the bread. It's incredible. Warm, light and fluffy on the inside. I was tempted to ask for more of these instead of ordering dessert.

Jake's tomato salad - a whole blanched tomato, then sliced crosswise, and served with cucumbers and li-hing (sour plum) dressing. He liked it so much he almost ordered a second.

And, because we were honeymooning, the staff not only brought us a complimentary dessert (after we had ordered separate desserts!) but we got to take home custom menus from the night with our name (they spelled it wrong, but oh well!) and signed by the staff.

On Kauai we went to a fun tapas place for dinner the second night. Our waiter talked us through the menu, which led us to things like this dish: poke served with avocado foam. The appetizers leaned more toward the style of being sort of couture food, eclectic but not too weird.

This was some kind of char siu dim sum ball. They were awesome.

And our final stop on the "Anthony Bourdain went there" tour was Puka Dog (he went to the one on Waikiki, but we went to the one in Kauai). I was hesitant to try this at first, as I'm not a huge eater of hotdogs, but I was sold when I heard they offered a spicy lilikoi mustard. I had mine with pineapple sauce.

#LetsLunch October edition: Brown Sugar Shortbreads for High Tea

Before I get to my post on high tea for this month's LetsLunch, I have two pieces of news to share!

First, I got married!

 (photo by Glen Stubbe Photography)

Which was then followed by two amazing weeks in Hawaii for our honeymoon:

 

(me, after our amazing dinner at Alan Wong's -- which we went to Cheryl Tan's recommendation!)

The second bit of news, is that I made my debut in the Star Tribune Taste section yesterday, with my piece about baking my friends' wedding cake in August (previous posts about my cake baking trials here, here and here). You can read the piece here.

But back to LetsLunch: this month marks my one-year anniversary of contributing to LetsLunch, after being invited by Cheryl late last summer. All of my LetsLunch posts are archived here.

I'm only an occasional food blogger, so I love coming up with a recipe and photographing it each month. This month I've been a bit busy (see previous two pieces of news) and we just returned from Hawaii last weekend.

The topic we picked for September, then slid into October, is High Tea. Who doesn't love a good cup of tea? Karyn, the recipient of the wedding cake baking, is the friend who first turned me on to looseleaf tea in college.

My boyfriend-then fiance-now husband (!) and I really got back into looseleaf tea last winter, leading up to the current moratorium on buying new teas.

(Our current tea stash and Teavanna tea maker)

When you drink a lot of looseleaf tea, you start to find out about how most tea really doesn't get brewed with boiling water and it really does matter how long you let the tea steep. I have little notes on all of my tea with the different specifics for herbal teas (tisanes -- there's no actual tea leaves in most of these blends), white teas, green teas, etc.

My LetsLunch to go along with the High Tea theme is a shortbread cookie with a dollop of pineapple-passion fruit jam -- both purchased at the Aloha Stadium swap meet in Honolulu.

RECIPE: Brown Sugar Shortbread (adapted from The Essential Baking Cookbook)
(makes one half-sheet pan of shortbread cookies)

8 ounces of butter, softened (two sticks)
3/4 cups soft brown sugar
2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup rice flour, semolina or corn flour (I used instant masa flour)
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp all spice

Preheat oven to 315 degrees F. Line a half-sheet pan with parchment paper.

In a medium sized bowl cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy (at least 5 minutes).

Sift together the flours. Add slowly to the sugar and butter, with a pinch of salt and the spices. Mix with a butter knife until the dough comes together. Gather and knead for 1 minute.

Chill the dough for about 20 minutes, then press into your pan. Bake 15 to 20 minutes.

Cool the shortbreads 10-15 minutes in the pan, then make slices with a butter knife. Spread a tiny dollop of jam on each (about 1/4 tsp-1/2 tsp). Cool completely before eating.
--

LetsLunch is a monthly meeting for food bloggers and I was invited by fellow AAJA-er, Cheryl Tan. Our group chooses a date and a theme, then we all post our recipes on the same day.


Our group is always growing! If you'd like to join us, we'd love to have you! send a Tweet to us using #letslunch (I'm @emmacarew).

See what everyone else made this month:

 High Tea at The Kitchen Trials
Tea and Kaya Toast at Spicebox Travels
Rich Tea at Grongar blog
Little Lemon Meringue Tarts at Monday Morning Cooking Club

Pierogies

Sometimes I cook when I get stressed. Keeping track of ingredients, keeping my hands busy with making something delicious helps keep me calm.

The other night, I was feeling stressed, and knew I wanted to make something delicious and handmade. After squeezing all the liquid out of those zucchinis previously, I had been thinking about my Aunt Kathy's cabbage pierogies.

Not wanting to go quite as far as to steam and squeeze multiple heads of cabbage, I instead opted for the comfort food of cheese, potato and onion filled pierogies.

Aunt Kathy uses a Martha Stewart pierogie dough recipe, which I like. My filling consisted of salted boiled potatoes, some lactose free coffee creamer, crumbled queso fresco (it's what we had in the house -- but any salty cheese will do), and onions that I had carmelized into a sweet paste-like consistency. 

About half the little dumplings got fried in the handy cast iron, while the other half were boiled in salted water. I like mine served with sour cream and any leftover carmelized onions (there weren't any this time). We also had leftover of the curried yogurt sauce from the zucchini fritters, so I dipped in that as well.

They're not quite the crunchy flaky consistency of the pierogies at Veselka but they have a nice, doughy, homey flavor to them. Sweet and savory, hot and filling -- the perfect comfort food.


Aunt Kathy's Pierogies:

(adapted from Martha Stewart)
1 beaten egg
2 TBS sour cream
1 cup water
1 cup milk
5 cups all purpose flour

Whisk the sour cream into the egg, then slowly add the milk, then the water. Stir in most of the flour, then use the rest to knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes.

Invert a bowl over the dough and let it rest for about an hour.

Cut off a softball sized chunk of dough, cover the rest with a damp towel. Roll the dough into an inch-wide rope and divide into walnut sized balls. Roll each one out until it's 4-5 inches in diameter and thin.

Use a small cookie scoop to fill in the center, shaping the filling slightly with your fingers. Fold the dough over and pinch on all sides.

Boil or fry (or in some cases, boil all of them, then fry -- depends on what you're in the mood for).

You made need to salt before serving.

Filling:

Mashed potatoes + carmelized onions (I follow Serious Eats' guide to carmelizing onions) + a salty cheese

Steamed, squeezed cabbage + cream cheese + shredded cheese

plain potato

farmers cheese

Delicious zucchini fritters

Fritters seem to be the delicious side dish of the summer. In the past week alone, I've seen recipes for corn fritters, chickpea fritters and the recipe I finally decided to make: zucchini fritters.

I took a few liberties from the Smitten Kitchen recipe. For one, I doubled it. I used 4 small zucchinis and 2 small yellow squashes. Deb from SK recommends putting the squashes through a food processor fitted with the shredding disc.

After about 10 minutes of salting, you have to drain the squashes. Last year when Aunt Kathy taught me how to make pierogies we drained pounds and pounds of cabbage. Draining the zucchini works the same. I wrapped them in a flour sack towel, twisted the towel and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until all the liquid drains out.  It's actually kind of incredible how much liquid gets drawn out of the vegetables from such a small amount of salt. But, this helps keep the fritters from getting soggy

I mostly stuck to the batter recipe put forth in the original recipe. I added a clove of garlic and substituted wheat flour for the regular white flour. I shaped about half of the batter into patties on a baking sheet, then fried the rest.

In the end, I liked the fried ones a little better. The baked ones were a little softer than I would have liked. I think if I had flattened them a bit more before the baking, they would have been crisper.

RECIPE: Zucchini Fritters (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
4 small to medium sized zucchinis, washed and ends cut off
2 small to medium sized yellow summer squash, ends cut off
1 TBS coarse salt
4 to 6 scallions, diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
3 eggs beaten
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Shred the zucchini and squash using a food processor, then toss with salt. Set aside for 10 minutes, then squeeze as much liquid from the vegetables as possible.

Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, stir in scallions, garlic, and zucchini. Mix to combine. Add flour and baking powder and mix until the flour is completely incorporated.

Drop walnut sized balls into a cookie sheet or into a cast iron pan. If baking, bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then flip, and bake another 5 to 10 minutes. I used a standard sized "small" cookie scoop to form the balls and they were perfect. Flatten with a spatula before baking or flipping in the frying pan.

Serve with greek yogurt sauce (greek yogurt + minced garlic + fresh herbs of your choosing + lemon zest and lemon juice).

#LetsLunch: cold entrees edition (August)

The first time I had mulnaengmyun was the first day I arrived in Korea the summer of 2007. One of my housemates took me out to lunch and to beat the heat, she suggested we get a cold lunch.

When I came back to the States, I was obsessed with finding a way to make the cold, chewy noodle soup on my own. During my internship the next summer, I finally took the plunge and purchased a naengmyun kit from the local Korean market.

I got it home, only to realize I couldn't read the instructions on the packet of "soup" base. Did I just freeze it? Did it need to be mixed with water like condensed soup?

Luckily, a fellow intern was also Korean and so I brought the packet in and asked if he could read it. He couldn't -- but called his dad and read the packet to him, so his father could translate for me. Patrick and I still laugh about the ridiculousness of that day, and last summer, we reunited in L.A. for a journalism convention and went out for mul naengmyun.

These days, I make my own broth for Korean mul naengmyun (which translates roughly to water noodles, there's also bibim naengmyun which is noodles with cold toppings mixed in), though if you ever do buy the store-bough packages, all you have to do is chill the broth packet (some people like it semi-frozen) and serve.


Naengmyun continues to be one of my favorite summer meals. When I'm feeling ambitious, I'll occasionally pack it for lunch. The great thing about naengmyun is that it cools you from the inside out, so it's perfect for a lazy week night dinner when you don't feel like heating up your house.

I consider there to be four main components of great mul naengmyun: the broth, the noodles, the toppings and the seasoning.

The broth is easy enough. Some recipes just call for simmering a brisket in water, then cooling. I like to boil mushroom pieces (usually stems from shitaki mushrooms or leftover baby portobellos) with dashi (which, I think can best be described as Korean beef boullion) and a few dried anchovies (kelp also make a decent substitute here). I make my broth extra strong then dillute by pouring over ice. But if you make your broth on a day when it's not so hot in the kitchen, make it to regular strength and cool.

If you have some leftover kimchi liquid, that makes a good addition too (though it's not 100% neccessary).

The noodles should be chewy and chilly. If you're using noodles from the fridge packs (that you purchase in the store), they only need to be cooked for about 60 seconds. If you're using dried noodles, usually more like 90 seconds. Do *not* over cook your noodles!!

My trick is to just boil a tea kettle, then pour the hot water over the noodles in a bowl, and check after 90 seconds, before rinsing. To stop the hot water cooking the noodles, you have to rinse the noodles under cold water (watch Maangchi's naengmyun video to get an idea of how aggressively you need to rinse!)

The toppings should be made while the broth and noodles are cooking (or ahead of time). My favorite toppings are cucumber, pickled daikon, pear (traditional is Korean or Asian pear, but I usually end up using regular Anju) and beef or pork. Some people also like to include a hardboiled egg.

I use a vegetable peeler to make thin ribbons of daikon, then quick pickle in 3:1 sugar to salt (adding a dash or two of garlic salt gives a nice flavor too!) Cut the cucumbers into matchsticks, and slice the beef or pork thinly. It's best if you have leftover bulgogi or a steak, because then the meat is already cold. But, if you're bbqing it fresh, just toss it on a plate in the freezer when you're done.

The seasoning is really the easiest part, but for each bowl you should have sesame oil (just a little -- I sometimes will drizzle a spoonful over the noodles to keep them from sticking), rice vinegar, Chinese mustard and a big dollop of gochuchang (Korean chile paste -- you can substitute sriracha rooster sauce if you don't have/can't find).

Fill each bowl with noodles, pour cold broth and a few ice cubes over, top with cucumbers, daikon and meat. Season with vinegar, mustard and gochuchang until sour and spicy enough for your liking!

RECIPE: Mul Naeng Myun (Korean ice water noodles)
NOTE: I usually substitute with a regular pear, but if you can get Asian pears cheaply, go for the real deal! And the meat can really be anything you have on hand -- double points if it's seasoned or marinate like Korean bulgogi.



4-6 oz dried naengmyun noodles (often labeled "buckwheat" or "arrowroot" noodles in the store)
1/4 cup mushroom pieces and stems, shitaki or portobello work well.
2 TBS dashi powder
4-8 dried anchovies (can also substitute a similar amount of dried kelp)
2 quarts water

Toppings:
1 4-inch piece of daikon radish (more if you plan on having more than a single serving)
1 tsp salt, 3 tsp sugar
1 small pickling cucumber
1 Asian pear
1/3 cup thinly sliced beef or pork
optional: 1 hard-boiled egg, thinly sliced scallions, toasted sesame seeds
ice cubes
Rice vinegar, spicy mustard and gochuchang for seasoning.

* In a medium saucepan, combine mushroom pieces, dashi powder, anchovies and water and bring to a boil. Then reduce to a simmer and cover 15-25 minutes.
* While the broth is cooking, use a vegetable peeler make thin ribbons of the daikon. Mix with the salt and sugar mix in a bowl and set aside.
* Slice the cucumber into matchstick style pieces. You can also quick pickle these, or leave them raw.
* Thinly slice the pear. If it's going to be a while before you eat the soup, mix with a tsp of sugar and cover.
* Boil enough water to cover the noodles generously. Break the noodles in half and add to the water for 90 seconds. Test the noodles for doneness by pulling on them. They should snap but have not easily.
* Rinse the noodles in cold water vigorously to stop the cooking. Drizzle with sesame oil to avoid sticky noodles and set aside.
* Fill stainless steel bowl (it needs to be pretty big) with 4-6 ice cubes and ladle in 2 cups of the concentrated broth. Stir to cool the broth completely, then add your noodles.
* Rinse the daikon pieces well and squeeze to remove excess water.
* Top the noodles with equal amounts of meat, daikon pickles, cucumber and pear pieces. Start with about 1 TBS of gochuchang.
* Drizzle mustard and rice vinegar on to taste. I like mine very spicy and very sour.

Enjoy!

--
LetsLunch is a monthly meeting for food bloggers and I was invited by fellow AAJA-er, Cheryl Tan. Our group chooses a date and a theme, then we all post our recipes on the same day.

See what everyone else made this month:

Cathy‘s Jasmine Tea-Poached Shrimp Summer Rolls at Showfood Chef

Charles‘s Cold Olive Oil-Poached Chicken, Potato & Watercress Salad with Buttermilk at The Taste of Oregon

Cheryl's Spicy Sichuan Sesame Noodles at A Tiger In the Kitchen

Danielle‘s Cous Cous with Cilantro Pesto & Halloumi at Beyond The Plate
 
Eleanor‘s Cold Noodles with Stir-Fried Vegetables, Hoisin Pork & Spicy Shrimp at Be A Wok Star

Linda‘s Gazpacho Rolls Gone Wrong at Free Range Cookies

Lisa‘s Byron Sprout Salad with Chargrilled Chicken at Monday Morning Cooking Club

Mai‘s Strawberry Soup at Cooking in The Fruit Bowl

Maria‘s Croque Monsieur with Bechamel at Maria’s Good Things

Rashda‘s Indian-Style Gazpacho at Hot Curries & Cold Beer

Rebecca‘s Cold Roasted Lamb with Mustard & Rosemary at Grongar Blog

Victor‘s Seafood Napoleon at The Taste of Oregon

Our group is always growing! If you'd like to join us, we'd love to have you! send a Tweet to us using #letslunch (I'm @emmacarew).

Summer dinners: pizzas on the grill

Jake and I have been talking about grilling pizzas pretty much since the day we purchase our new grill. Last week, we finally got around to it.

And, since I've been trying (with on-again-off-again success) to eat lower carb, we decided to walk from our house to Cosetta's Italian grocery (and restaurant) in downtown St. Paul to pick up our ingredients. If you're not familiar with St. Paul's geography, this walk, though only a mile each way, involves the trek up a GIANT hill from our neighborhood to downtown.

Not wanting to make that trek again any time soon, we picked up an extra pizza dough for the freezer. Here's my dough, stretched out on my cookie sheet (we split the dough into 4 and each made two little pizzas)

We made a quick sauce out of a can of San Marzano tomatoes seasoned with basil. This made a ton of leftover too, so I split the remainder and popped it in the freezer. I also added hot pepper flakes and sliced garlic to mine.

The toppings station: tomato sauce, basil, spinach, artichoke hearts, garlic, oregano, red onion, zucchini, and fresh mozzarella

Pizza 1: basil, zucchini slices, artichoke hearts and cheese:

Pizza 2: sliced garlic, artichoke, red onion, spinach

Some tips? don't over do it on the sauce! Mine got a little wet in the process. Jake likes to use foil on the grill under the pizzas to make them easier to get on/off the grill.

The pizza was delicious, and made plenty for leftovers. And, since we had extra supplies, we'll be able to grill pizzas again sometime soon!

And, as an added bonus, I made cannolis! We picked up some shells from Cossetta (the Alessi brand ones -- they were $6 for six shells, but totally worth it). 16 oz of whole milk ricotta was enough to fill all 6, with a good amount left over. I mixed the ricotta with powdered sugar (about 1/2 cup), cinnamon (about 1 tsp), chopped chocolate and crushed pistachios, then piped into the shells. Delicious!