Spirit of Aloha | Features | January/February 2008

Bites of Paradise

New Tastes for 2008
By Joan Namkoong


With dragon fruit, kohlrabi, ramps and wasabi turnips, Island chefs turn their flavors up a notch

PHOTO: ROY’S RESTAURANT AT PO‘IPU

Imagine being a restaurant chef, turning out anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds of meals a day, every day, seven days a week. Each day, you’re work­ing with the same ingredients, em­ploying the same cooking techniques, serving the same dishes for which you’ve become known. In this scenario, the life of a chef in the kitchen quickly becomes boring.

Then one day you flash on a new way of preparing something. A purveyor brings you a new vegetable or you read about a new gadget that can transform food into a sensational, flavor-packed bite. It’s that constant challenge to do something different that makes chefs eager to cook each day, inventing new taste sensations over which, hopefully, the dining public will swoon.

In this global world, where just about any ingredient from anywhere is available at any time, where the Internet quick­ly spreads the word about some new-fangled piece of equipment or technique, chefs are always on the edge of something new and different to whet their creative urges and the appetites of diners. As the new year unfolds, here’s what’s getting the attention of Hawai‘i’s chefs and what will hopefully tantalize diners’ taste buds in the year ahead.

Fresh Products to Love

When it comes to fresh food, “organic” and “sustainable” are two important buzz words in today’s restaurant kitch­ens. Everyone embraces the concepts, but implementing them can sometimes be difficult in a state where most of our food is imported and few organic farmers produce the quantity needed by the restaurant community, much less individual consumers.

Halekūlani chef Darryl Fujita has made it a point to seek out more organic producers, locally and from the Main­land. Ed Kenney of Town and Down­town @ the HiSam prides himself on his mostly organic, local sourcing, primarily from MAO Farm in Wai‘anae on O‘ahu. It’s no doubt a trend that’s on everyone’s mind. “Consumers are becoming more particular and aware of where the food is from and how it is raised,” says Jurg Munch, of the Lahaina Grill on Maui.

Diversified agriculture has produced a wide array of products over the past decade, and they’re appearing on fine-dining plates throughout the Islands. Visually, the most striking new item is the dragon fruit. Introduced a few years ago by farmers on the Big Island, it has caught on as an exotic and colorful ad­di­tion to a fruit salsa or salad, in blended cocktails like margaritas and dai­qui­ris and simply as a garnish on plates. Its sweet, mild flavor is contrasted by its stunning fuschia flesh, dotted with black seeds.

Kohl­rabi has become a favorite of Ken­ney’s. Also known as a cabbage tur­nip, this beautiful, purple-tinged, above-ground white stem looks like a turnip and has a crunchy texture when raw. “We shave it paper thin on a mandoline and use it in a crisp slaw seasoned with lemon, mustard and mint. I love the apple-cabbage flavor,” says Kenney.

Another turnip is appearing on the food scene: the wasabi turnip from Ya­ma­shiro Farm in Volcano, a crunchy veg­etable with the flavor of wasabi but not the heat. Chard, one of those good-for-you dark, leafy greens, is being provided to chefs by Hirabara Farms in Wai­mea on the Big Island. Chef Eber­hard Kintscher of Michel’s is using chard on his plates as well as fiddlehead ferns, which he recently rediscovered.

Ramp, a wild onion with a garlicky flavor, has become Beverly Gannon’s new­est favorite vegetable. At her Häli‘i­maile General Store in Upcountry Maui, Gannon serves it sautéed in butter and garlic with sea salt, alongside braised short ribs.

Speaking of salt, Island chefs are getting picky about the kind they use. Table salt like Morton’s is definitely out, good only for pouring liberally on an oil spill to mop it up, according to one chef. “Sea salt is big,” says Gannon, a comment echoed by fellow Maui chef Munch.

“I love using the Moloka‘i black salt on a tomato salad for the color contrast and the intensity of flavor, and the red salt with clay on fish for the nuttiness it adds,” says Munch.

Now there’s a new way to get salt on­to the plate. A noticeably salty, crunchy, green wisp has been appearing in many O‘ahu restaurants in the past several months. Sea asparagus, a pro­duct of Marine AgriFuture, an aquaculture farm in Ka­hu­ku on O‘ahu’s North Shore, is known in France as pousse pied, a type of edible plant that grows along coastal areas. Raised on floating platforms in brackish water where shrimp and fish are being farmed, this crisp, salty and aromatic product is being tossed into salads, sautéed in olive oil and used to garnish fish and seafood dishes to acccentuate the “oceany” flavor of a dish. “You don’t have to do too much with it,” says George Mavrothalassitis, chef and owner of Hono­lulu’s Chef Mavro and Cassis res­taurants. “When it’s raw, it’s aggressively salty. Heat it and the salt goes away.”

In the Protein Department

A couple of years ago, O‘ahu’s few re­maining poultry farms and its only processing facility shut down, seemingly leaving the Islands without any fresh, lo­cally grown chickens. But Medeiros Farm on Kaua‘i has been producing chick­ens all along, and has recently been discovered by Island chefs, providing them with a local alternative to chill­ed, week-old chickens from the Main­land. Kenney uses them at Town for his signature herb-roasted half chick­en, topped with torn croutons, aru­gula and grapes. Matt Dela Cruz of Roy’s Restau­rant at Po‘ipū, on Kaua‘i, likes to prepare them pūlehu (grilled) style, served with car­a­melized and smoked Maui onion demi-glace glaze, sweet potato and taro croquette and coconut braised lū‘au leaf.

When it comes to beef, the buzz is all about Japanese Kobe beef—the real thing, versus wagyu, the American Kobe-style beef. These premium beef items are sought after for their well-marbled flesh, unctuously tender and rich. Price is the ultimate factor when a chef decides which one to use: Japanese Kobe can cost $80 a pound or more. Hale­külani’s La Mer serves the real thing and Orchids at the Halekülani serves the wagyu; both are showing up on menus throughout the state.

Kurobuta pork continues to be a staple of just about every top restaurant in Hawai‘i. Known as the Kobe of the pork world and sourced mainly from Snake River Valley Ranch in Idaho, this Berk­shire black pig has excellent marbling—read “fat”—throughout, and exceptional flavor. The shank is particularly well liked in the kitchens of Kintscher at Michel’s and Jon Matsu­bara at Stage. Roy Yama­guchi, founder of Roy’s, likes to confit (cook in fat) Kuro­buta pork belly, no doubt a very rich taste sensation. Alan Wong of Alan Wong’s restaurant and The Pineapple Room likes Kurobuta pork, too, but he’s hoping that he’ll see some macadamia-nut-fed pigs from the Big Island transformed into pork, like the acorn-fed Iberico pigs from Spain. Stay tuned.

Kampachi from the Natural Energy La­b­oratory of Hawai‘i Authority (NELHA) at Keähole Point, Kona, has become a staple of restaurant menus and will hope­fully become more available to con­sumers as production increases. Moi, a favorite of Island chefs for steaming or frying crisp, has gone through some production issues, but the offshore O‘ahu cage production seems to be back on track for 2008. Fresh diver scallops from Mexico, the return of Chilean sea bass, New Zealand farm-raised oysters and spanner crab from Australia, which are similar to Hawai‘i’s Kona crab, are the hot sea­food imports.

Another NELHA product that seems to be making its way onto more plates is Big Island abalone. The availability of the product, especially the smaller, well-priced, bite-sized abalone, has at­tracted the interest of several chefs. Dela Cruz at Roy’s on Kaua‘i likes to brief­ly grill the bite-sized abalone with a touch of Korean chili oil, then serve it with traditional poke seasonings like inamona, Maui onion and ogo and topped with fresh chives, sesame seeds and an earthy drop of white truffle oil.

How It’s Cooked

“Slow and low” are operative words for several chefs who are cooking meats and fish slowly at low temperatures to optimize tenderness and flavor. “Pro­teins react to high temperatures,” says Wong. “When you cook it slowly for a long time, moisture is retained and the texture is unbelievable. Grass-fed beef is perfect for this.”

An eight-hour braised-beef oxtail ragu is an example of this technique, served at Roy’s on Kaua‘i. Slow-braised short ribs and osso bucco are other items that are getting this treatment, too, at a number of dining venues.

Playing on the other end of the heat spectrum, Peter Merriman of Merri­man’s in Waimea on the Big Island is touting his plancha—a convex, polished, stainless steel cooking surface that he’s using to sear fish, steaks and other foods over high heat. “With the convex surface, oils and liquids run away so you get a good sear,” says Merriman. “I love a crispy exterior and a moist interior.”

Sous vide, cooking in a vacuum-seal­ed bag at low temperature in water, has become a popular technique for many Island chefs. Hiroshi Fukui of Hiroshi Eurasian Tapas uses the sous vide meth­­od to enhance the soft texture and tenderness of baby abalone that he cooks whole in the shell, topped with butter, garlic and a little lup cheong.

Fukui places the abalone into a plastic, vacuum-sealed bag and cooks it at 120 to 130 degrees for several minutes or until barely cooked. The abalone is loosened from its shell, then served atop red and green seaweed and sea asparagus and dressed with sesame oil, garlic salt and chili pepper water. Sprinkled with slivers of shiso and takuan (pickled radish) and topped with lemon air, it’s an exquisite bite.

In the Food Chemistry Lab

Did we say lemon air? Yes—a playful, foamy garnish that chefs are making from lecithin, a soybean product. Food chemistry has been around for several years now, the result of a multitude of deconstructed and inventive dishes produced by Ferran Adria of El Bulli in Spain. Adria’s influence has spread and a number of chefs have picked up the techniques of molecular gastronomy. Mavrothalassitis and Fukui have dabbled in foams for a couple of years, using whipped cream siphons with carbon dioxide cartridges to produce sweet potato, yuzu, wasabi and other foams with which to garnish dishes. Now they are playing with airs, blend­ing granules of lecithin with simple things like lemon juice and water to make a foamy air, lighter than the foams they were producing.

Matsubara at Stage is playing with a number of other chemical transformations. With a little gelatin he can encapsulate a puree of fruit like mango and make it look like the yolk of a quail egg, but bursting with mango flavor. Fruit with carbon dioxide fizzes in your mouth and liquid nitrogen freezes anything on the spot, enabling him to make ice cream à la minute. “All of these are food-grade chemicals,” notes Matsu­bara. “We’re just trying to keep up with the new generation of chefs in Europe.”

At the Kona Village Resort, executive chef Mark Tsuchiyama has been experimenting with his Paco Jet machine, an instant sorbet maker. The beauty of this device is that proteins, vegetables and fruit can be made into savory as well as sweet sorbets in a flash. “I freeze whole fruit without any sugar or egg whites, and the Paco Jet shaves it and emulsifies it at the same time,” explains Tsu­chiyama.

The result is an icy bite of pure fruit. At a recent food event, Tsu­chiyama made a delicate but flavorful heart-of-palm sorbet, pushing the taste sensation envelope.

Old Is New

For many chefs and their menus, it’s simply a matter of going back to the land. “What’s old is what’s new,” says James McDonald of Pacific O, I‘O and the Feast of Lele on Maui. He’s creating menus based on products such as heirloom vegetables, micro herbs, wild fennel flowers and other items from his own 8-acre organic, biodynamic farm, just minutes away from his restaurants.

James Baian, chef at the Fairmont Or­chid on the Big Island, is sourcing heir­loom vegetables, too. “Tomatoes, green beans, pole beans, squashes—they all have a gen­etic makeup that makes them hearty and durable and able to withstand climate changes. The flavors are wonderful.” Edwin Goto, executive chef of the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel and Bungalows on the Big Island, is likewise focused on fresh ingredients. “I’m not looking for gadgets or cutting-edge stuff; it goes back to what the farmers are producing. I’m hoping there will be black cod and sable fish from NELHA, and maybe some grass-fed veal from Big Island ranchers.”

Using old ingredients in a different manner is another way to create something new. Alan Takasaki of East Hono­lulu’s Le Bistro had lots of lobster shells after serving up the succulent meat to diners. “I got tired of making lobster soup,” says Takasaki. Now he takes the lobster “bones” and roasts them deeply in the oven to make a rich, flavorful stock. The bones are then puréed to a very fine consistency, passed through a food mill several times, then blended with the glazelike reduced stock. Sake, mirin and sugar are added and the resulting paste is used to marinate black cod. “It looks and tastes like miso, so I use it in place of miso,” says the chef.

No doubt 2008 will be a year of delicious new tastes as chefs continue to search for unique, delectable ingredients and novel gadgets and techniques. Em­boldened by their talent and dedication to scrumptious flavors and textures, they will surely have us be eating well.

Hawai‘i-born and -raised, JOAN NAM­KOONG is a foodie, a free-lance writer and an organizer of farmers’ markets and food events. She is the author of Food Lover’s Guide to Honolulu, Go Home, Cook Rice and Family Traditions in Hawai‘i.

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