Ethnic Epicure

Festive Dishes from Hawai‘i’s Melting Pot

 

Rita Goldman

 

Growing up with a Jewish mother, I learned early on that food is not merely nourishment; it is consolation, comfort, reward. It is also metaphor. On holidays, we ate foods of dubious nutrition but ancient significance: deep-fried potato latkes at Hanukkah to
commemorate when the temple’s single day of oil burned for eight. At Passover, matzos reminded us of the flight from Egypt, when there was no time to wait for bread to rise.

Multicultural Maui expanded my gastronomic horizons, and got me wondering what Hawai‘i’s other ethnic groups do for holiday dining.

To Honor the  Ancestors

Chinese were the first immigrant labor group brought to these islands; about 50,000 were recruited between 1852 and 1900.

Bobby Santos, a professor of culinary arts at Maui Community College, is part-Chinese and a member of Lahaina’s Wo Hing Temple. One of the most important holidays, says Santos, is Ching Ming, when families come to the cemetery to sweep the graves and share a feast.

“The celebration is in the spring. When I was a kid, my aunt had an altar in the house for her parents. On Ching Ming, we’d go there first and pray, then to the graveyard near
Lahaina’s Jodo Mission.

“We roast a whole pig and cook a whole chicken, preferably a rooster, with head and feet intact. We bring everything to the cemetery and place it in front of an altar there: pig, chicken, whiskey, tea, cigarettes, cookies, incense. Rice, of course, and noodles. You never chop the noodles, because they represent long life. We flew a priest in from Honolulu a few years ago, and he wrote down where things go, who stands where, who does what.

“We pray at the cemetery and make offerings to the ancestors by placing food items on the ground next to the graves. In Lahaina, we eat at the cemetery, too. In Keokea, they offer food and prayers at the cemetery, then take the food back to the temple to eat.”
Irene Chung, president of the Kwock Hing Society, says that for Ching Ming, the chicken is poached and dipped in oyster sauce, the pig basted with a flavorful bean-and-garlic sauce.

“We also make sour cabbage cooked with pork gravy and served with a mixed vegetable dish. You pickle the cabbage in vinegar, sugar and water; cut it up and cook it with the gravy from the pork.

“We don’t know all the reasons, like why the rooster has to have its head and feet,” Chung admits. “My grandparents came here 140 years ago, and the old folks didn’t tell us why.”

In 2006, Hawai‘i will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Philippine immigration. We asked several Filipino friends to share their recipes and recollections. Jackie Pias Carlin recalls hearing that her grandfather “roasted a whole suckling pig throughout the night during New Year’s Eve, in their backyard in Orpheum Camp, Pa‘ia. It was a way of
reminding the family of the good things we had, even though we weren’t wealthy.”

After her grandfather died, Pias Carlin’s aunt kept up the tradition, but instead of going whole hog, roasted only the head.

“On New Year’s Eve, the aroma of garlic and roast pork wafted through the house. In the morning my cousin Andy and I crowded my aunt when she opened the oven’s door to check on the pork’s doneness. The pig’s golden brown skin glistened and the pan oil sputtered. We waited impatiently while she sliced pieces off for us to taste. We ate them hot with ketchup—crisp crackled skin and tender white meat… Incredibly delicious!”
If you’d like to try Jackie’s recipe, visit the Maui no ka ‘oi website. If you’d rather prepare a dish that doesn’t stare back, check out Virgie Agcolicol’s recipe for sari sari, a mixed-vegetable dish made with chopped pork, garlic, fish sauce, okra, pumpkin, string beans, eggplant, onion and tomato—and is appropriate for all celebrations.

Joyce Afalla agrees with Jackie Pias Carlin that lechon (suckling pig, roasted whole) is the most celebratory of foods, prestigious largely because of the price, which—unless you can provide your own pig—runs between $400 and $500. For a recipe that won’t break the piggy bank, Afalla suggested a couple of

Filipino desserts: turon, an apple banana placed in a lumpia wrapper and deep fried to a light brown; and bibingka, a sort-of baked mochi made from coconut milk, sugar, rice flower, butter and eggs.

Portuguese laborers from Madeira and the Azores began arriving in Hawai‘i in 1878, bringing with them an indomitable faith in the Holy Ghost.

“These islands are very strongly Catholic,” says Audrey Rocha Reed, a leader in Maui’s Portuguese community.  “In the 1500s, the pope was concerned that the people were giving Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Spirit, more devotion than Easter.  The pope sent a message that Easter was the greatest holiday in Christendom, and urged the people to lessen the Pentecost festivities.”

The message went by ship, arriving first in Madeira.

“People from Madeira starting telling the Azoreans, “The pope has sent this message.  Why aren’t you toning down Pentecost?” But the Azores are partly on a fault line; the people have a deep devotion to the Holy Spirit, believing He has spared them from greater disasters.  So when the message arrived, the Azoreans didn’t open it.  They kept the Holy Spirit as their principal devotion.”

Kula’s Holy Ghost Church was completed in 1896; the church’s website confirms that in the 13th century, the Azores were rocked by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, plagued by famine and drought. Legend says the people prayed to the Holy Ghost, and on

Pentecost Sunday, a ship sailed into view, laden with supplies.

Each year, on Pentecost Sunday, Kula’s Holy Ghost congregation commemorates that time by hosting a free lu‘au, along with an auction whose proceeds benefit the church. Among the auction items are loaves of Portuguese sweet bread, known as pão doce (sweet bread) in Madeira, massa sovada (kneaded dough) in the Azores. Until very recently, some of these loaves would appear in unusual shapes: a baby, a limb, a truck… During the year, when misfortune occurred—a broken arm (or carburetor), a feverish child—one prayed to the Holy Ghost, and promised to bake a sweet bread to donate to the church auction. The shape of the loaf recalled the nature of the appeal.

As the older generation has disappeared, so has this quaint tradition. But Portuguese sweet bread is still a big part of the Kula Holy Ghost Feast. The congregation’s recipe is a closely guarded secret, so Audrey Rocha Reed offered recipes for two other holiday dishes: vinha d’alhos, pickled pork or beef that’s marinated and slow-roasted; and alcâtra, a beef dish baked in a small clay pot. You’ll find both on Mnko’s website.

It’s All in the           
     Presentation

Japanese immigration to Hawai‘i officially began in 1885. Most came from the poorer classes.   

Their foods were humble—but rich in symbolism and tradition.

At Shinnen Enkai, Japanese New Year, everything served has a meaning. “Kuro mame, black beans, ward away evil,” says Yukie Ueoka, a past president of the Japanese Cultural Society of Maui. “Kazu no ko, herring roe, are for fertility; we say, ‘from generation to generation.’ Tazukuri, tiny dried sardines, are for strength. And otoso, a special sweet sake, is the first drink of the new year. It is said to avert illness. Everyone in the family, even the children, takes a sip of it early in the morning, for long life.”

And then there is ozoni, New Year’s soup served with vegetables and mochi (rice cake).

Ueoka’s friend Morie Otsuka explains. “Long time ago, no refrigerators, so the rice gets stinky. But if you pound it into mochi, it doesn’t need to be refrigerated.”

Traditionally, mochi is prepared by filling a wooden bucket with steaming rice and pounding it to a pulp with a wooden mallet.

You can also buy mochi ready-made, or buy mochiko (rice flour) in a package that includes instructions for preparing it with a mochi-pounding machine. Whichever method you undertake, Otsuka says to use a big pot.

“Ozoni is served on New Year’s morning and for the next three days.

“We used to go from house to house on New Year’s,” she says. “When you come to my house, I serve soup. The mochi is a gift of good omen.”

Most of the ingredients are inexpensive, and—given the time of year—recipes emphasize dried or winter vegetables. It’s the presentation (and preparation) that makes ozoni special. Certain vegetables are added for color, others carved for aesthetics. Morie Otsuka whittles quarter-inch carrot slices into flower petals, but leaves the mushroom whole.

“Shiitake is not cut in pieces,” she says. “It is kept round so you will have happiness.

“You serve the soup in a lacquered bowl. You ask each person, ‘How many mochi you want?’ and put the mochi in, then the other ingredients, and pour the stock in last, just enough to cover the vegetables.”

Each prefecture in Japan has its own variation of ozoni. (Morie Otsuka comes from Yokohama, in Kanagawa Prefecture.) It’s her recipe you’ll find on our website

Between 1902 and 1905, nearly 8,000 Koreans came to work on Hawai‘i’s plantations. Lisa Shishido, president of the Maui Korean Community Association, is a more recent arrival; she left her native South Korea 22 years ago. Until fairly recently, Shishido owned Biwon, a Korean restaurant on Lower Main Street in Wailuku. She’s still a prolific cook; the grounds surrounding her Pukalani home are a vast garden where she grows Korean vegetables and herbs.

Shishido tells me that on Korean holidays, it is customary to serve soup with mochi (rice cake) and mandoo, a dumpling stuffed with chopped vegetables, ground beef and pork.

“Korean people love mandoo,” she says emphatically, though for her money, the real spice of life is kim chee—that spicy, salted cabbage that’s mixed with vegetables, seafood, and lots of chili peppers and chili powder.

Since we’re looking for special-occasion foods, and kim chee is a staple of the Korean diet, Shishido suggests miyeokguk, seaweed soup.
“A woman is given this soup after she has had a baby, and for the next week. It’s very healthy, and helps her regain her strength. The same soup is served every year on a person’s birthday.”

Lisa Shishido supplied the recipes for miyeokguk, tteok manduguk (holiday soup) and yes, kim chee, that appear on our website.

And then there’s the culture that makes all the rest of us rank newcomers: Hawaiian.

Hokulani Holt-Padilla, a cultural practitioner and teacher of hula, says that at New Year’s, many Hawaiian families today make lau lau (steamed beef, pork and fish wrapped in taro and ti leaves and steamed for hours). “It’s a remembrance of Makahiki, honoring Lono, the god of agriculture.”

Of course, New Year’s is a single day. Makahiki is a season, lasting from October through January. But as Holt-Padilla explains, Hawaiians before the time of Western contact didn’t have specific holidays in the Western—or Eastern—sense. Every day honored the natural and spiritual worlds.

Some ceremonies, connected to a particular deity, would require specific foods. “Red fish were special to certain gods,” says Holt-Padilla. “When you held a ceremony to that god, you had to have a red fish such as moano [goatfish]. Sometimes the offerings went only to the gods; other times it was acceptable for the people to eat the same foods, as at Makahiki.”

Kiope Raymond, one of the founders of Punana Leo, the Hawaiian language-immersion preschool, recalls a Hawaiian belief that strikes me as both ecologically prescient, and the most profound illustration of food as metaphor. It is the story of kalo, the taro plant from which is made poi, the staple of the Hawaiian diet.

In the time before humans, the goddess Ho‘ohokulani gave birth to a child by her father, Wakea, god of the sky. But the infant, Haloanaka, was stillborn. From his grave grew the first taro plant. Wakea and Ho’ohokulani’s second child, Haloa, was the progenitor of the human race. His descendants, the Hawaiians, were taught that kalo, the older brother of man, was his superior—to be tended and cared for. In return, kalo would provide the people their sustenance.

For Hawaiians, the meaning of the metaphor was that nature and humanity belong to the same family, and survive only when each takes care of the other.

Food for thought, indeed.