The G’s secret weapon; note the new, expanded ending, please!
Back from Hilo but must make one bow to my favorite, favorite, favorite Hilo institution: Kawamoto Store, a family run operation in a space that used to be a produce shop, then turned into an okazyu, then changed hands from the Kawamotos to a Hawaiian family, but has...
Big Island, big eatin’
I'm on the Big Island doing some volunteer work. And I'm in foodie hell. I have no kitchen to cook in, very little money for dining out and I'm gaining weight so I shouldn't eat. But, oh the temptations... I had to drive today from Kona to Waimea (Kamuela) and on down...
Will you take tea…sandwiches?
We said aloha to a family member yesterday with a small but lovely and loving service and a small but equally lovely reception following in the church hall. The loving part of planning the reception? Not so much. The number of memos, phone calls and e-mails, the...
Check it. Check it good. Then check it again.
People think because I’ve been a newspaper food writer spanning the printing years from hot lead to the Internet, that I’m a cook. I’m not. A cook is a mechanic. I say this with great respect and admiration. A cook is someone who can be told how to make something and...
Surprise! A bag of (lilikoi) gold is worth the work
Just lately, my husband's been bringing home surprises. He drives all over the island setting up and clearing away protective equipment, barriers, road signs; sometimes he's stalled for hours out in the country while Hawaiian Electric or one his company's other...
What is a recipe? Just a dish, or is it something more elusive?
For many years, my stock in trade has been researching recipes people remember with fondness, finding out how our predecessors made that thing taste so good, trying to recapture flavors and textures that are now only memories. How DID they make it taste so good? I’m...
Let’s make some ‘man food’
The other day, our hanai son was visiting to be with his sister and the twins, who are living with us temporarily. (Have I mentioned this? Have I mentioned this repeatedly ad nauseum? Am I all about the twins? Do I spend half my day changing, playing, feeding,...
Poor me — wrong for 35 years about Poor Man’s Caviar!
Many years ago, when I began to be a cooking hobbiest, the first meal I prepared for company was a Middle Eastern feast: Tabbouli salad, Hummous, pita bread, Baba Ganoush, roast lamb. It was all from scratch, even the pita, which caused me almost to cry when they...
Salted eggs: Yes you can!
A reader wrote to ask for a recipe for salted eggs. I was skeptical, assuming there was some arcane trick to it involving strange ingredients, like that potassium carbonate stuff you need to make steamed rice cake. Not so. A 1978 book from my collection, "Chinese...
Doin’ the Portuguese shopping dance…
I do a lot of Portuguese dances. Not authentic ones, like the chamarrita. Made-up ones. I have the Portuguese cleaning lady dance. That's where I take an old towel, soak it in a solution of XX, drop it on the floor, step onto it and dance across the kitchen floor,...