Easter Sunday Munch and Tropical Fruitcake Poke

I hope everyone had a great fun doing whatever it was to enjoy your Easter Sunday. Mine was low key.

The highlight of my day was chatting with Mom and Dad, and my sister via Skype. I previewed what I had been working on earlier in the day, which were my garments and accessories for the Art of Trash Maui's Trashion Show. I'll be posting more about the event as we near the show opening which is the evening of April 19th.

I also decided to make fun little dishes as opposed to a traditional holiday meal. I went for color mostly, yet everything had a sweet and savory play of flavors.

Seafood Salad of calamari mussels, shrimp and scallops marinated in olive oil, calamansi (a small, tart citrus the size and shape of kumquats), celery, fennel and fresh thyme over baby arugula. Crostini of goat cheese, candies mango, macadamia nuts and kalamata olives.

Clockwise: Sweet beets with horseradish and sour cream; New ginger and Hawaiian honey glazed tri-colored Kula carrots; Curried broccoli salad with raisins and cranberries.

Natural dye eggs: Beet juice for deep red and Turmeric for yellow on free range brown eggs

Flash forward a week. It's now Saturday morning, April 6th. I'm prepping to submit my entry for the Maui Ag Fest's cooking contest sponsored by the Maui Food Technology Center. My creation is Tropical Fruitcake Poke (poh-kee). Poke is traditionally understood to be, in Hawaii, cubed fish tossed with sea salt, sesame oil, chopped onions, soy and kukui nuts. The definition of poke in Hawaiian is to cut into cubes or slices.

Now, as I was going to present fruitcake for the event, I wasn't going to just slap a loaf of cake on a plate. Presentation or sight, the first sense perhaps after smell when it comes to food is just as essential if not more important than taste, since seeing the food set in front of you precedes eating. Cut into batons or pieces roughly finger sized, I decided the description poke would suit my needs and throw the understanding of what I was serving into question...

Tropical Fruitcake Poke drizzled with Waialua Estate dark chocolate from the Big Island

I haven't heard from the competition sponsors so I am guessing I didn't place this year and that's okay. It might have been nice to win 2 years in a row but that also might have been piggish. What matters is that I was completely satisfied with the cake, its presentation and I made quite a few contacts at the Ag Fest. I also bought some yummy things to play (cook) with... such as pickled strawberries and pickled pineapple from Maui Preserved, fresh Pahoa ferns, and right off the tree loquats. I'll be blogging about my use of these wonderful ingredients as I use or prepare them.