50th Anniversary Best of Our Favorite Recipes 1946-1996 (Maui Cookbook)

Having picked up a few of the Maui Assoc. for Family and Community Education's books now and then over the years, I was elated to see this 50th Anniversary, best-of compilation of Our Favorite Recipes. If you want to cook like island aunties, popos or kamaiianas (old-timers), you must get this book! The recipes and ingredients may at first seem a little strange to mainlanders, but if you understand Hawaii's post WWII history, ethnic makeup, indigenous and definitely non-indigenous foods, the recipes will make perfect sense. Any time I'm looking for a dish from my childhood -- whether it's Spam Musubi, Laulau, Malasadas and much, much more -- I can find it here. Many of the sections are exhaustive. And this is no coffee table (there are no pictures) or humorous (a la "White Trash Cooking") cookbook. Every recipe has been used, tested and generously submitted by regular home cooks, so you can be sure whatever you make will turn out just as it should. Hawaiians enjoy eating and in fact have been food snobs for decades. This comprehensive cookbook reflects that in a loving and authentic manner.

If you are really serious about the Local cuisine that has developed over the last 100 years in Hawaii by the interaction of japanese, chinese, korean, filipino, portuguese, and puerto rican immigrant laborers living in "the camps" with native Hawaiians and haole managers, this is the book. Or on the other hand, if you had a great "plate lunch" in Hawaii and want to know how to make chicken long rice, spam musubi, or yaki manju - pie crust cookies filled with sweet black beans - this is the book. When I was born in 1950, my parents lived in Waikapu camp on Maui, where my father was a County Agricultural Extension Agent (semi-fresh off the Iowa farm by way of war in the South Pacific, with Marine training in Hawaii.) According to my Iowa farm mother, after one month she bought a rice pot and never looked back, except for Sunday dinners. The women and men who worked on the semi-yearly versions, of which this book is a compilation, were the friends and co-workers of my parents, and taught them to cook these recipes. This book contains a whole history of mutual assimilation and appreciation of the working-class "mixed plate" that is Hawaii "ono grinds."

My husband's family is from Maui so I have had the privilege of enjoying many of these recipes (what a blessing to have a husband who cooks!). At first, when I read through them I thought the combinations of ingredients sounded bizarre (Pacific Rim Cuisine meets Down Home Cooking), but after actually sampling dish after dish, I'm quite impressed. The recipes are all written by different people (a couple are from my husband's relatives) so there's tremendous variety. If you enjoy creative, experimental (i.e. mad scientist) type cooking, you'll have a lot of fun with this book...or if you just have a diversified palate (or want one), I highly recommend this book to satisfy your tastes. If you're curious about the recipes, email me and I'll send you a couple to try out.