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.

My Week

How do you define wonderful, extraordinary and incredible? I'm sure for each of us there are a multitude of words one would use to describe these individual ideas... or are they simply defined by the experience themselves?

For me, as far as my week was concerned, it would be the latter. I cannot put into words what would properly express that which I would like to convey...

Okay, I lied. I could. But I think as much as I shall convey the meaning of my week, it most certainly will be something that is going to be a part of me for a lifetime, in memory and experience.

To recap (and put into words):

The anticipation of my meeting with the Maui Food Tech Center at first filled me with trepidation and then ended with being incredibly refreshing. It's been a while since I ventured into new territory and this time it wasn't and new hobby, or an off shoot of something I was currently pursuing, but this is something that could possibly alter my life, and for that reason I was a bit anxious and, prior to the meeting, couldn't focus on anything more than cleaning and doing a bit of filing.

So, you think you want to get into the food business, eh? Do ya? YEAH I DO! A lot to consider, but if taken in stride, with the focus and attention it requires to get all the information and necessary licenses, permits, approvals, contacts, batches of sorbet and gumption it takes to make the prospect of marketing and selling my product to retail establishments and venues on the island   happen - I sure as hell will try my hardest to give it everything needed to, at the very least, try and make it concrete. With the added dose of reality check to make sure I don't run pell mell into it, of course.

The sample sale / garage sale was a success on all levels. Connecting with friends and securing relationships, check! New direction and approval on a new design collection, check! Making the proper contacts by being in the right place at the right time check! That week, a few weeks ago, where nothing seemed to go right is just a (laughable) memory now. Am I ready to rumble? CHECK!

Am I rambling? Check! So now, I'll allow images so hopefully express the unspoken portion of my life:

Three images from the jewelry and fabric sale this past weekend:

Keri's beautiful batiks and hand-dyed embroidery floss (with Keri's arm on the left)

Penny's display of miniature Hawaiian Shirts and hangings with her elaborate wire trees and earrings

My new bestest friend Dina having her coffee before the rush of shoppers at the sale (she had earrings and braided bracelets - like the ones on her wrist - and necklaces)

Progress Report

Pineapple

Buddha's Hand: Look at all the the blossoms!

Nasturtium Flowers from the garden which usually end up as garnish on my plates

Cherry tomatoes from wild tomato seeds

FOOD

Braised Baby Bok Choy

Dry Fried Noodles with Sizzled Garlic

Raw, Unhulled Sesame Seed Crusted Steelhead Salmon Fillet, Spicy Mayo

Grilled Artichoke with Shrimp Butter-Whole Grain Breadcrumbs

 Grilled Rosemary-and-Mint marinated Lamb Chops

Spice Rubbed Wild Marlin Fillet, Roasted Tomato Bread-and-Butter Pickle Tartar Sauce

Ratatouille

Cornbread Stuffing 

Previous Post 11 Days Thence

It's been a week and a half since I last posted, and I dislike it when I know I have done much since that time yet cannot seem to break it down into individual moments. It's all a great big blur.

The sun has just set behind a low-lying layer of clouds and the West Maui mountains. The sky is turning shades of coral, purple, lavender and steel blue-grey. It's the prefect time to write on the computer as it's just dark enough that there's no glare, yet still light enough to move about without any lights on.

Follow up to the Maui Ag Fest food competition is that I get two hours of consultation with a food specialist who'll go over the basics of what it takes to bring my sorbet to the marketplace. We're already planning on a couple of tastings at local retail establishments, with the hopes that the buyers might pick up my product and carry it in the frozen food section of their stores. I'm also coming up with a few flavors to introduce with the Mai Tai sorbet, and those fortunate enough to be coerced into being my guinea pigs will be eating a lot of ice cream and sorbet over the next few weeks. 

A new collection for Michael Miller has been approved, so there's new fabric in work, and I hope to soon be approving and merchandising the collections "Tiki-tini Lounge" and "North Shore" for the July release. As soon as I can, I'll be previewing them!

 A few images taken over the last week and a half, starting with the full moon Easter Sunday

 Free-range brown eggs; too nice in their natural shades not to show them hard-boiled before becoming an appetizer...

The lovely eggs turned into a tray of deviled eggs topped with furikake (dried seaweed, sesame seeds, bonito flakes and seasonings) with heirloom cherry tomatoes from Hana

 Wild raspberries from the garden; they have very tiny seeds and are fragrant - almost like jasmine - in flavor as opposed to berry-tart

 Pineapple up-date: about 8" from stem to top of the crown

Buddah's Hand: obviously loving it outside in the back where it's going to get full sun for most of the day now that the sun is tilting for the summer months

Saturday 7

It's Saturday afternoon, and I'm taking it off, so to speak.Trying out a few new techniques to see how my thoughts on preparing a piece for "Art of Trash" this coming Saturday. Going to have another round with the downstairs storage room to get things further organized.


I was up early and in town to buy dry ice for the cooler to bring Hau'oki Mai Tai Sorbet to the Maui Ag Fest at 9:00.

Being an agriculture show, the spotlight is on cooking and food related venues.

 “Maui Food Product to Market Contest” is looking for a new locally made food product that utilizes the most amount of locally grown products. Submissions must have commercial viability and Maui Food Technology Center (MFTC) will help that local entrepreneur take the product from idea to the store shelf."

I've been making ice cream and sorbets for over a year now, and flavor combinations of my own creation, and I thought I would do what know best... so I created a Hau'oki* Mai Tai Sorbet. *Hau'oki is Hawaiian for frost, ice, cold.

I massed the ingredients for my concoction together.

I was very confident in what I had masterminded. The shade the sorbet finished after churning wasn't the color I was expecting, and the flavor could have been richer, with more intensity, yet it was enough to win me Second Place.

• 2nd place – Receive two hours of free consultation with Food Scientist and two free nutritional labels.

The finished product