What's Cookin', Good Lookin'?: Hawai'i Day Seven: Ken's, Candies, and Fruit Poke

After saying our goodbyes to The Falls, and following a morning drive through the UH campus, and some time exploring the `Imiloa Astronomy Center, Dan & I headed to Ken's for some lunch. Although we've both had some local food and some nouveau twists on local food, the one thing we hadn't yet had was a classic Hawaiian plate lunch - two scoops of white rice, a scoop of mac salad, and a main dish of some sort.

Plate lunch has been a tradition in Hawai`i since the days of the sugar plantations when the workers - first generation Hawaiians from Portugal, China, Korea and Japan, as well as native Hawaiians - sat down together and shared the various dishes they'd brought for lunch. Back then, I imagine the plate lunch was a little more varied, featuring small portions of Korean ribs alongside some Portuguese sausage or sweet bread, a little teriyaki chicken, and maybe some kalua pork. These days, the white rice & mac salad side dishes are damn near mandatory, and often accompany just a single main dish.

That modern version of the plate lunch is what Dan & I enjoyed at Ken's today - with Dan going for the teriyaki chicken (aka "Teri Chicken") and me opting for yet another pile of kalua pork, paired with cabbage this time around.

After lunch, we swung over to Big Island Candies where we took our time exploring all the various confections they produce, piling Dan's arms higher and higher with chocolate covered mac nuts and toffees and a special treat for me: chocolate covered li hing mui (dried plums with a salty sweet seasoning).

We also took some time to watch the workers hand-dipping cookies and other items into chocolate - which felt a little conspicuously voyeuristic, but I guess they wouldn't divide the showroom and the factory with big plate glass windows and label all the areas of the factory with big signs, if they didn't expect us to look. Despite feeling like a peeping tom, it was cool to watch a tray of shortbread cookies go from plain to half-chocolate dipped.

Afterwards, we made our way down the highway to Pahoa, stopped at the Malama (Hawaiian for 'care') Market for groceries, and then drove out to the edge of the island and found the home we'll be staying at the remainder of our vacation. In the Kapoho area, amidst tide pools and palm trees, we have our own little private resort of sorts. Amenities include a hot tub, an outdoor eating area, and perhaps most exciting of all for me: a really big, well equipped kitchen. Often when renting a vacation home, the kitchen is a little bare bones. For example, when we stayed in Moloka`i, we had to run to town to buy a kitchen knife, as they just didn't have one. Here, there's a block of decent knives, a full sized fridge and a gas stove, gadgets and gear galore, and most surprisingly of all: spices. Lots and lots of spices.

We were unsure what kitchen essentials we'd have available, so our grocery trip was spare. But when I opened the cupboards our simple meal was able to get a little more flavorful. I started by cutting some banana and Maui-grown strawberries into small cubes (sort of), sprinkling them with a little lime juice, and mixing in some macadamia nuts. I popped that in the fridge to chill while I added a little water to a bag of poi, mushed it together to thin the consistency a bit, then popped that in the fridge, too. Finally, thanks to the well appointed cupboards, I was able to mix together a little salt, a little pepper, a little cornstarch, some wasabi powder, and a spoonful of sesame furikake, and then coat a piece of sashimi grade ahi tuna with it. Furikake, for the uninitiated, is a Japanese seasoning with dried seaweed (nori) as it's base, and may include sesame seeds, wasabi powder, or other additions. If you've eaten inside out sushi (the kind with the rice on the outside), it may have been rolled in some furikake - giving it a green speckled look (and making it easier to pick up with your fingers).

I seared the coated tuna off in a pan over high heat, cooking just the outside, just enough to sear the furikake mixture onto the outside. To serve I sliced up the tuna, plated it with the poi, and then served the fruit 'poke' alongside it in a martini glass. Poke (pronounced poh-kay) is a staple of the Hawaiian diet, most traditionally made with cubes of ahi tuna mixed with Hawaiian salt, seaweed, and onion to make a delicious salad. But the word poke simply means to cut into cubes or bite sized pieces, so varieties of poke dishes have abounded - from steak poke and taco (octopus) poke to my little fruit poke. All together, it was a nice, light meal after our somewhat heavy plate lunch, and made for a great introduction to the kitchen at what will be our home away from home the next couple weeks.