Sam Choys Kitchen

This, along with Sam's Seafood cookbook, is without a doubt one of the best Hawaiian cookbooks I have used. Dishes illustrated on every other page, ingrediant and substitution guide, history of some of the dishes included, it just reveals the "ohana" nature of Hawaiian cooking. A couple of his poke dishes, a great deal of soups, fish, and desserts are here, each one easy to make and subtly wonderful. On the Mainland, Sam's dishes take a little while to get the ingrediants, but once your kitchen in stocked with kimchee base or Sambak, goma, dashi or fish sauce, and of course lots of shoyu (soy sauce), you can make just about anything in 30 minutes to an hour.Almost all of the recipes are for 4 or more people, so be warned that you'd better have people over, have a big family, or be *very* hungry!Sam does make some fairly lose measurements on his main dishes, allowing cooks to season to their own taste, but his dessert dishes are exacting, and when directions are strictly adhered to, wonderful.I didn't try the drink menu, but "over the rainbow" had great presentation.Sometimes when I don't have the time to cook, or the ingrediants aren't readily available, I'll just look at the pictures and salivate. Absolutely wonderful cookbook, I can't recommend highly enough.