Travel Eats: Ono Kauai Kau Kau

Apologies to Hawaiians for whom I may have mangled their language above (it should roughly translate to: Good Kauai Food)! But I just returned from a week on Kauai and am infected with tropical fever. I realize that this is far from Sacramento, but I really can’t resist sharing some of my delicious discoveries. There is a payoff for you in the form of a recipe, so don’t be too jealous!
The image above is of a 1964 cookbook that we bought in a vintage store. The title means “quick food.” The cover is a good representation of the mixture of cultures in Hawaii–native Hawaiians (generally Polynesian ancestry), Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Filipino, and even some Germans and Norwegians. It’s quite a melting pot and lots of tasty food has resulted, although much of what we saw listed as “native” cuisines are definitely more Polynesian mixed with Japanese and Chinese (the three main cultural influences).

But some of the most fantastic food on Hawaii is the fruit. We went to a farmer’s market (available every day on Kauai) and bought perfectly ripe pineapples (albeit $5 each), macadamia nuts in the shell, a coconut with a straw for drinking the flavorful “milk,” juicy tangerines, seedless grapefruit (Hawaii used to be a big citrus exporter), two kinds of small bananas, and star fruit. The red fuzzy things in the photo above are rambutans. When you peel off the skin, they have a translucent fruit similar to a litchi. There were also mangos, papayas, and the floral lilikoi (passionfruit).

Additionally fantastic is the seafood. I haven’t had fresher tuna or mahi before. The first night there, we ate tuna poke (po-kay), a traditional dish like ceviche. It consists of sliced or cubed raw fish, onions, seaweed, chile peppers, sea salt, and soy sauce. The seaweed tasted like crunchy ocean–like chewing a mouthful of the sea (in a good way!). We also had a fish called monchong, which is a bottom feeder with tender white flesh.

Now, Kauai is known for its feral chickens, which went wild after the big hurricane in 1992. You find them everywhere and they crow at all hours of the night and day. They’ve got beautiful feathers and a variety of colors, but we didn’t see a lot of chicken on the menus! I’d imagine these guys are pretty stringy.
Of course, the pork is renowned in Hawaii as well, and we had to try several variations of it. One of the favorites is kalua (not the liqueur) pork, which is a lot like shredded pork barbecue. It’s traditionally made from pork cooked in an underground oven until it shreds off the bone, then mixed with a barbecue-like sauce and served on a bun.

For snacks (which were plentiful!), we had freshly fried taro and Japanese sweet potato chips (above), passionfruit chiffon pie, cranberry crackseed (a category of Chinese snack make of dried fruits and seeds, with seasonings), malasadas (incredible Portuguese doughnuts filled with custard), coconut bread, and Filipino garlic corn nuts. Oh–and there was great goat cheese made on the north shore of Kauai, which we ate with Hawaiian soda crackers and in an omelet.
There was more, but I’m starting to be embarrassed at the amount of food we ate! Fortunately, we also made time for snorkeling, hiking, and walking some of the beautiful beaches.
So if you’re inspired to try a flavor from the islands, here’s a simple recipe for poke from Hawaiian chef Sam Choy’s Island Flavors cookbook.