Cuisine

Traditional Hawaiian ‘Char Siu Manapua’ stuffed bread Sticker shock warning! Eating half-way decently on the island of Maui is expensive indeed. Really, if you can find a good value anywhere on the islands for anything, not just food, you’d be a lucky soul! Food products that non-natives normally look for in the markets are mind-blowing, outrageously high priced. How about a pint of potato salad for $10.00? Is that insane or what? I mean, what kind of potatoes were used, for Pete’s sake? When my husband and I visit Hawaii we carefully plan our spending for one of the most enjoyable activities on a vacation: eating the local foods, whether in a restaurant or in a mini-kitchen! We always spend our first morning enjoying a breakfast of macadamia nut and banana pancakes with coconut syrup. For this tropical treat we get up early to stand in line for the 14-table only Gazebo restaurant where you dine al fresco overlooking the beautiful Napili Bay with Molokai and Lanai islands in the horizon. A perfect morning aloha moment! With full tummies, we jet straight to the grocery store for ingredients to cook in our lodging unit. We bring our bonus cards for the stores that we shop at to save at least 10%. After all, every little bit helps when eating in paradise! When traveling, to figure out how to eat a bit more affordably, we also try the native cuisine! Besides saving some dough, the food will be authentic in traditional and local ingredients. One traditional local cuisine that is so unique in itself is from Hawaii! Hawaiian food is comfort food and perfectly reflects how the local natives create delicious foods out of inexpensive ingredients and how they have defied the expense of foods marketed to tourists and the wealthy new residents. Long before food trucks became trendy, they’ve thrived on the islands with ‘plate lunches’, shave ice, and other tropical specialities. One Hawaiian food that caught my eye is the Manapua, a tender steamed bread stuffed with a Chinese BBQ or roast pork filling. It can also be prepared with beef pot roast which is my husband’s preference and vegetables for those who prefer not to eat meat. Steaming versus baking is another element that makes this dish so unique: the texture is perfectly soft, fluffy and tender! the tender bread is filled with Chinese pork Print Hawaiian Char Sui Manapua: Steamed Buns Stuffed with BBQ Pork What You Need:Bun Dough: 1 package dry yeast 3 Tbsp. lukewarm water 2 cups warm water 1-1/2 Tbsp. cooking oil or shortening 1/4 cup sugar 3/4 tsp. salt 6 cups sifted flour 1/2 Tbsp. sesame oil Pork Filling: 1 cup water 2 Tbsp. cornstarch 2 Tbsp. sugar 1/2 tsp. salt 2 - 3 cloves of garlic, minced 1 tsp. fresh ginger, minced 1 pound char siu, diced Few drops red food coloring, optionalInstructionsTo prepare bun dough: Sprinkle yeast over 3 Tbsp water and allow to stand until yeast softens. To remaining water, add oil or shortening, sugar and salt, stirring until melted or dissolved. Cool and then add yeast mixture. Place flour in a large mixing bowl and add most of the liquid. Begin kneading. Add remaining liquid to make a very heavy dough. Continue mixing until you have a smooth ball that is beginning to show signs of long strands on the outside, indicating that the gluten has fully developed. Remove dough from bowl and rinse out bowl. Pour sesame oil into bowl, return dough and turn it around until covered with a thin layer of the oil. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise until double in bulk -- about an hour in a warm room. Placing the dough in the refrigerator and allowing it to rise there, 3-6 hours, develops the flavor. Proceed with the filling or gently deflate the dough and allow it to rise for a second time, which will further enhance the flavor. To prepare filling: In a pot, sti

What you need: 350g Linguine or Spaghetti 1 courgette sliced into matchstick pieces 1 clove garlic 170g bag of frozen prawns or fresh if you’re lucky enough to have access to them.. 2 tbls of olive oil 1 Tub of RIF Creamy Tomato Sauce bring a pot of water to the boil, add salt and cook your pasta until al dente… add your olive oil to a pan and crush your garlic clove and cook over a low heat for a couple of mins.. add your courgettes and cook until softened (about 7-10mins) add your prawns and cook for a couple of mins…  add your RIF Creamy Tomato Sauce… Simmer for a couple of mins until heated…  add your cooked pasta… serve and enjoy…

Sometimes, when I have a vegetable in hand, and am not sure what to do with it, I turn to my grandmother's simple upkari. Just add a coconut oil fanna/tempering of basic ingredients and a simple stir fry is ready. I do not add extra coconut, but for an authentic taste, a garnish of freshly scraped coconut is a must. PoddaLe Upkari Snakegourds South Canara Style Ingredients 2 medium snakegourds/PadwaL chopped, remove seeds and membranes salt to taste Tempering 1 tbsp oil - preferably coconut oil 1/2 tsp mustard seeds 1/2 tsp asafoetida 3-4 red chilies such as byadgi chilies Method 1. Chop snake gourds taking out seeds. 2. Heat oil in a kadhai/wok/bogaLay. Add the mustard seeds, asafoetida and red chilies. 3. As they splutter, add snakgourds. Saute for 1 minute. 4. Cover with a lid and place water on the lid. Let it cook on a medium flame. Check from time to time. Sprinkle some water if needed. 5. Add salt. 6. Serve with DaLitauy and Rice. Note - 1. Snakegourd seeds can be used to make a Konkani pancake - Sanna PoLo. 2. For an authentic flavor, garnish with freshly scraped coconut. Homegrown PadwaL/Snake Gourd Print Page

I love to read a good book review, one that’s full of insights tinged with humor and sometimes, a bit of well deserved snark. T. Susan Chang is one of the few professional cookbook reviewers in the United States. You may know her work from National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, or her website. She takes every book to task, testing recipes and evaluating the merits of each work on a variety of levels. Susan’s got twelve (12!) years of professional experience to back her up, plus a solid knowledge of cookbooks that goes back further yet. You may not agree with Susan on all of her calls but you don’t have to. Like all excellent reviewers, she lays out her deep assessment so that...

If you are a regular reader of my blog you know that I am in the Bread baking group started in Facbook by Aparna We Knead to Bake. And actually this Torcettini di Saint Vincent (Sugar Crusted Twisted Cookies from the Valle d’Aosta)  but as unexpected things happen in ones life I coudn't make the bread in April. So last week when I has time I made this yeasted cookies. They are really so

By now you have probably at least heard about the brouhaha over the owners of a restaurant/bakery that appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares show (U.S. version). If not, you can read about it here and many, many other places. There was a big to-do surrounding a TV food show here in France too. The show in question: Top Chef. (Yes there’s one of those in France.) read more

I dare you to eat just one of these amazing homemade beet chips. They are just downright addictive. This is healthy snack food that you can feel good about eating. They are super easy to make and only take about an hour in your oven. You don't even have to be a beet lover to love these chips. I've had a couple of people try them who loved them and were totally surprised to learn they were beets. I was slicing beets for a raw beet salad one day on my mandoline and was thinking about how it was like slicing the apples for my homemade apple chips. I wondered if I could make chips out of these, too. So I sliced a bunch farily thinly and tossed them with some olive oil, sea salt and pepper and roasted them slowly in the oven. I did several batches over several days, experimenting with the oven temperature and the cooking time until I was totally happy with them. The technique for making these kinds of chips is to slow roast them in the oven on a fairly low setting for a long time, dehydrating them. You draw out the moisture in the vegetable or fruit, which concentrates the flavor. You end up with an amazing flavor. You just have to try it. the stems on the beets make a great "handle" to hold as you slice them Slicing them on a mandoline really makes the job easy, fast and the slices uniform. If you don't have a mandoline, get one. You don't have to buy a really expensive one - they have become very popular and you can even buy a little handheld one. I have a nice stainless steel one, but I do use mine all the time. I love slicing things on it. One thing I learned from cooking several batches is that, unlike the apple chips, the beets cook up faster. You also do not need to flip them, like the apple chips. I tried flipping them halfway through the cooking time and then not flipping them, and it didn't matter. The cooking time will depend, of course, on the beets you get - how fresh they are, how large they are, how much moisture they have, etc. A convection oven will draw out the moisture even better and you will be able to make three pans at a time. If you don't have a convection oven, you will have to rotate the pans. So there are a lot of variables. Make a batch and see how your oven performs. Watch the beets - they will start to really darken and even burn a little if you let them go too long. Also, I made both red and yellow (or golden) beets. They are both delicious, but I did prefer the golden beets. I think the flavor was just a little different and they had less moisture, so they crisped up a little better. If you've never bought golden beets, try them. I love them anyway raw on salads. Homemade Beet Chips for a printable recipe click here You really can use any sized beet you like and make chips out of them. They shrink a lot in size, so bigger beets will make a nice size chip. The seasoning is totally up to you - adjust it the way you like. I like a lot of pepper on mine. If you have a convection oven, you can make 3 pans of these at one time. Ingredients: 2 large beets 2 tablespoons olive oil 1/2 teaspoon sea salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper Instructions: Preheat the oven to 300° F. (or 275° F for convection oven). Line two or three baking sheets with parchment paper. Peel the beets. Slice them to about 1/16" inch (1.6 mm) thick, at the most. Toss them in a large bowl in the olive oil and salt and pepper. (If you have time, you can wait for 30 minutes or so after this step - especially with the red beets, the salt will draw out some excess moisture). Lay them on the baking sheet, just barely touching. Bake for about one hour until the edges are crisped up and most of the beets have dried out. Because you will have different sized slices from the same beet, you will have some smaller chips and some larger chips. This will let you have a little bit of variety in the crispiness of the chips and you can decide how you like them for your next batch. Rem

Kamalika is a creative person who runs her own designer boutique side by side with a home based confectionery and bakery business. She believes home makers rock and can get their own identity while attending to home and hearth. An alumni of Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, Kamalika’s goal is to motivate home makers to establish themselves via home based businesses. She expresses her culinary thought and activities via her blog, Silence Sings with Kamalika C, where she shares her experiences in the kitchen. Her dream is to establish a Kolkata Food Blogger’s Society and help home makers become financially independent.

Crispy noodles dessert

Messy bum burgers. Sand witch platters. 6 incher Hawwt dawwgs. Chocorgasm. Stuffed mushroom dickheads. Titties Bitties. Now that I have your attention, let me tell you about a small café hidden away in Pratap Vihar, Ghaziabad with the quirkiest sounding dishes I’ve heard of in a while! Started only a few months ago by a young bar consultant, Café Lolz is the kind of place where you can put your feet up. It’s the place you go to in between classes at college, for a plate of fries and some cold coffee. A place where you feel at home even in your pajamas and where you know all the servers by name. There are comics to read, free wi-fi, and relaxed music – it’s the kind of place where a few hours could go by and you wouldn’t realize it. The menu is small, but diverse. After a hearty laugh at the names of the dishes, we started with a Tamarita Brain freezer (75) and BBW or Big brownie walnut shake (75). They were a study in contrasts. The brain freezer came in a pretty Margarita glass. A refreshing, icy tamarind mocktail, it was a pleasant mix of sour, sweet and spicy. The BBW shake arrived in an adorable pink sippy cup (with a straw of course). It was unabashedly sweet with delicious bits of brownie with every mouthful of thick chocolate shake. Next up, we tried an assortment of Titties Bitties (145). The basket contained Cheese poppers (filled with melty cheese, corn, and jalapeno bits), French fries (made in-house), stuffed mushrooms (with spinach in the centre), and smiley fries. I enjoyed them all, but the French fries were particularly excellent – holding their shape and crunch all through the meal. For our mains we tried the Chicken messy bum burger meal (165) and the Spenis Chica peeli peeli (195). The burger came with fries in a handy parchment cone and some creamy, orange-coloured spicy coleslaw. The burger itself was a double patty-double bun burger with lots of onion and a strong hit of pepper. I would have liked the meat to be a little juicier though. The other dish consisted of four large crispy-coated chicken pieces, stuffed with spinach, and smothered in a thick tomato, cream, and cheese sauce. It was served with corn on the cob, and garlic bread – perfect comfort-food. For dessert it was Chocorgasm (95), a chocolate-filled calzone served with vanilla ice cream. Unfortunately the calzone was a bit dry, and there simply wasn’t enough chocolate in it. Did not live up to its name, that dessert. One very interesting initiative in Loca La Zona is their “suspended coffee/tea/cooler”. You can buy a drink, but pay for an extra one which will be given to a person in need later. Isn’t that heartening? Loca La Zona is friendly, fun, and unpretentious. Their food is honest, portions generous, and prices seriously low. Stop by there and see for yourself!