I barley made it

Husband came down with a fluish cold this week. He must have been Portuguese in another life, because he’ll eat soup any day for any meal, in sickness and in health. But he especially craves it when he’s sick. So I reached back into the comforting past, to...

Fulfilling a promise: hek-ka

Hekka is a dish you no longer hear of or see very often, even though chopped, across-the-bone cuts of chicken are still called “hekka chicken” at some Foodland stores. A few years ago, chef Mark Noguchi and I went on a mission to find out where the name hekka came...

Beef stew, part deux

Before I tell you how my beef stew experiment came out, a few words about my approach to the dish. As I noted yesterday, my stew is very plain: beef, potatoes, that’s about it. Occasionally, I’ll get fancy and use another starch besides potatoes: chayote...

A lu’au of leftovers

Tomorrow: Mango salsa. Dinner was a local leftover bonanza the other night: laulau that our neighbor made, take-home from a dim sum lunch earlier in the day, the mac-and-potato salad I made too much of last weekend. Whew! On the Fourth of July, we were sitting in the...