North Carolina Cole Slaw

Part of our Superbowl Table included one of my favorite simple salads, North Carolina Cole Slaw. It paired perfectly with the chicken wings and other savory dishes. It is easy to make and disappears from the table quickly. It is also a "must" when serving East Carolina BBQ sandwiches... goes on top and as a side dish. And for those who care, this is a VEGAN dish.

Here is the simple recipe:

• 1/2 cup of cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup of white wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil (optional but I find it makes the salad smoother tasting)
• 4 tablespoons sugar or agave syrup
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons fresh cracked pepper
• 1 teaspoon celery seeds (optional)
• a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon of Tabasco (optional)
• 1 head green cabbage

Mix all ingredients except the cabbage together and stir well till the sugar is dissolved. 

Shred the cabbage. I use the slicing blade on my food processor, but you can slice by hand or with a grater that has a slicing blade. You do not want this to be grated in small pieces as with a creamy cole slaw. 

20-30 minutes before serving toss the dressing with the cabbage and chill till serving time, toss again and add more black pepper. 

Food Trip to Charleston

Fried Chicken Skin with Honey and Hot Sauce from HUSK in Charleston, South Carolina

 I was recently in Charleston, South Carolina for a few days visiting my friends Holly Herrick and Nathalie Dupree. Click on the title to see more.

 They are both food writers and so we had some incredible food and lots of fun. The three of us dined at the newly famous Husk, which was amazing and quite a treat for a girl that lives on an island in the middle of the ocean. I have lived in the Low Country before and love it hugely. The food scene there has really been on the cutting edge for the last several years, with the trend as in most places, local seasonal ingredients. Husk sources everything from "the south" so they take local a little farther than most, but this also gives them an amazing array of products and produce to choose from. Every day the menu changes and every day you can see the menu of the day on their website. They are all archived too, so you can go back and see some of the very creative dishes that they served.

Here are some of the dishes we enjoyed at Husk:

Sweet Tea Brined Chicken Wings with Kentuckyaki Glaze and  Scallions

Sweet Tea Brined Baby Back Ribs with a house rendered Chicharone

Rudder Fish on Rice Grits with Peas

Citrus Pana Cotta

BBQ Pig Ears in Lettuce Wraps 

Pecan Tart



You can see more fun food pics from this trip on my food blog, The Sassy Spoon.

Happy New Year!

2011 has come and gone. Time for a New Year! I wish you all the very best and know that this year holds some exciting changes ahead. I hope each of you has a year full of joy and love. It HAS to be better than 2011!

I am starting a new blog, just on food this year and hope it will become the basis for a book. It is called The Sassy Spoon. Starting this week I will be sharing recipes and food photos there. Come on over for a visit and follow the blog. It is hosted by Wordpress which I find to be a great format for blogging. I will still be posting here about life and food here in Hawaii and some posts may cross over.

Aloha from Hilo Bay.

Grilled Baby Bok Choy

So simple and so delicious! Grilled Baby Bok Choy…

Baby bok choy is one of many Asian greens available here year round. In our farmer’s market a bouquet sized bunch of it is just $1. If you live on the mainland, you may have to wait for Spring to get fresh local bok choy, but it does grow everywhere in temperate months. It is also very easy to grow in the garden. 

After you have soaked the bok choy in water and drained it, all you do is cut each baby bok choy in half and trim the thin upper leaves a little. Then drizzle with a simple lemon vinaigrette (1/4 cup of lemon juice, ½ cup of olive oil, a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, a pinch of salt and two tablespoons of agave syrup) and allow the bok choy to rest in the marinade. I also had some golden beets that I had roasted and I sliced them thickly and placed them in the marinade too. 

Heat a grill on high and once it is good and hot, turn down to medium. Place the baby bok choy on the grill, being careful of flare ups because of the marinade. I keep a water bottle handy. It only takes about 2-3 minutes on each side, just till you see some grill marks, you want the greens with just a little crunch. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper to taste. 

You can also use a more Asian marinade instead, but I like the freshness lemon adds to the dish. You could also use other baby Asian greens such as baby Tat Soy. 

Happy Thanksgiving from Hawaii!

Happy Thanksgiving from Hawaii. This morning we had a beautiful sunrise and I just wanted to share it with all of you. I have much to be thankful for, good health, a happy life, satisfying work and life in paradise. Mahalo to all of you for following my blog over the years.

The Best Carnitas EVER!

I love carnitas. They are not something I make too often, because they are fried, but when I do make them they are something that is really special. For those of you who have only seen carnitas on a menu, they can be made a variety of ways. Carnitas basically means “little pieces of meat” and while they can be made with various cuts of meat (beef or pork) they are most often made using pork butt or shoulder. Some cooks like my friend’s mother when I was growing up in Southern California brown the chunks of pork in lard and then finish them off in the oven, others of the more banal variety cut up chunks of pork and simmer or braise them for a very long time until they resemble pulled pork. There are several kinds of rubs or marinades people use for flavor enhancements, but quite frankly nothing can be substituted for really long slow cooked smoked flavor and a finish in a bath of lard. You can use canola oil with excellent results, but lard ads another element of deliciousness.

Now, before you start ranting about how awful lard is for us, take some time to do some research. My blog on how to render lard is a good place to start. You never want to buy a solid white chunk or tub of lard, that has been processed & hydrogenated and it is as bad for you as Crisco. Home rendered lard is pure as the driven snow. And in this recipe, I only lost 1 tablespoon of lard in the cooking process… meaning that the pork was already cooked and therefore did not absorb much of the lard. Of course there was already some fat in the pork, as pork shoulder is a well-marbled piece of meat. And because it had already been through the smoking and braising process, much of the fat was extruded from the pork.

This recipe came about when I tried to recreate the taste of some carnitas I had eaten in Mexico when I went to cooking school there. I still kept the flavor profile in my mind after all of these years and decided to just go for it.

If you do not have a smoker, you can simply braise your pork, even try adding some liquid smoke in the braising liquid. If you do have a smoker, you want to smoke the pork low and slow. A pork shoulder is not a small piece of meat, so you can proceed with this process and use some of the pork for other dishes like pulled pork BBQ sandwiches. Or you can add shredded pork and wild mushrooms to reduced veal stock for a pork ragu. I cooked the pork and after braising pulled it and put it in tubs in the refrigerator to use for various things. There is just enough left to make one more batch of carnitas J.


You can look here to see my blog post from Manhattan on making home made tortillas. 

Here is the recipe which I think you will find very easy, even though the cooking time is spread out over two days, the actual working time is not much at all:

• Pierce a boneless pork butt and fill the slots with garlic cloves cut in half. Take your favorite rub or even just salt and pepper and rub all over the pork butt. Place in a smoker on low heat (225) for 8 hours.
• Remove the pork from the smoker and refrigerate overnight. In the morning place the meat in a crock pot on a layer of potatoes, carrots and onions. If you do not have a crockpot, this can be done in the oven. Pour 2 bottles of root beer over the meat. The liquid should come up to the half way mark on the meat. If you need to add more, do so. Cover the pan and cook on low (250) for another 7-8 hours. Remove the meat from the pot and allow to cool.
• Using two forks pull apart the meat. At this point it should almost fall apart. Choose how much you want to use for Carnitas and refrigerate the remaining meat for other uses such as pulled pork sandwiches.
• Prepare all side dishes, garnishes and tortillas before frying the carnitas. I made homemade tortillas (but you can buy and grill some), guacamole, chopped cilantro and onions and carrots en escabeche. Another common garnish is radishes and lime. I also had some salsa verde that I used on the beans and carnitas.
• Just before serving, heat lard or oil in a deep pan to 350 degrees. You will need about 2” of oil or lard and it will be discarded after cooking. In small batches, drop in the meat with a slotted spoon or spider. Cook for one minute and then flip over and cook for another. When the meat starts to get a caramel brown coating, remove it and drain on a rack. Continue on until you have cooked all of the meat. Serve immediately. J
•