No Mac Salad!

It's not every day that a couple of top chefs from Hawai'i come to town and offer to prepare a feast for me. Well, it wasn't just me, but I was part of a lucky group of travel and food writers who attended this delicious event Monday night at the Lake Oswego branch of In Good Taste.

The Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau sponsored the event, which featured Neil Murphy, chef at Merriman's Waimea, near Parker Ranch on the Big Island; and Faith Ogawa, a celebrity private chef also known as 'Olelo Pa'a.

There were a number of tasty appetizers waiting for us, but once we were all gathered around the kitchen we were served a starter by way of introducing Hawai'i's tea industry. Who knew? Of course, I'd heard of Kona coffee, but there are also some thriving artisan tea plantations on the Big Island. We were served a cup of organic green tea, along with a biscuit with diced taro baked in. Each little biscuit was cut in half and spread with macadamia nut butter and mango jam. The plate was garnished with the the three tender leaves that are picked from a tea bush for processing into tea leaves.

Neil and Faith just kept on cooking and plating small helpings to be passed out among us. There was fresh abalone cooked in butter and capers; filet mignon from the Parker Ranch, served with Maui sweet onions carmelized and cooked with bone marrow; pureed hearts of palm with lemon zest, milk and butter (move over, garlic mashed potatoes!); chili with tenderloin beef and Portugese sausage; kalua lamb wrapped in cabbage and served with a coffee BBQ sauce; fish; shrimp . . . and what have I forgotten? No, not mac salad. That didn't make it onto the menu.

For a palate cleanser we got a dollop of mango sorbet drowned in a healthy dose of Ocean artisan vodka from Maui. Between the vodka and the wine, there was a lot of toasting going on. Faith's exuberant toast was "Ho'o kahe inu!" She said it means, "Never drink alone." I'd better look that up in my Hawaiian dictionary before I yell it in a crowd.

A member of the contingent from Hawai'i was Charmaine Tavares, Mayor of Maui, who was celebrating her birthday on October 5. Dessert was birthday cake, as well as a yummy little brownie made with chocolate grown and processed on Hawai'i Island, along with ice cream. A perfect dessert.

As we departed we were each given an apron and a copy of the Hawai'i Farmers Market Cookbook. A lot of the ingredients listed are easily found in Portland, although a special trip to Uwajimaya might be in order to find some of the more exotic items.

Events like that one remind me how lucky I am to be a freelance writer, with opportunities for fine meals and travel popping up here and there. Most of us freelancers aren't rich in financial terms, but our experiences can't be beat. As another writer said to me after finishing off her abalone, "Aren't you glad you aren't a checker at Costco?"

Got Poi?

When it came time for me to share my Fun Fact at hula class this week, I announced that I had diet news. It had nothing to do with the fact that I had just watched the season's premiere of "The Biggest Loser" a few days earlier. My Fun Fact really did have Hawaiian cultural significance.

In my reading I had come across a mention of the Wai'anae Diet, developed in 1989 by Dr. Terry Shintani for the Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Health Center on O'ahu. In response to rising obesity and disease rates among native Hawaiians, he developed a new diet that he figured just might work.

The early explorers who came to Hawaii reported that the native people were trim and vigorous. But then along came Captain Cook in 1778 and ruined it all. After all, he paved the way for McDonald's, in a round about way.

Dr. Shintani decided to put a group of 20 obese native Hawaiians on a strict diet. Actually, he let them eat as much as they wanted. The only catch was that the food they ate was from the pre-contact (pre-Captain Cook) Hawaiian diet. On the menu each day was poi, poi and more poi. There were also sweet potatoes, breadfruit, greens, seaweed, fish and chicken.

The results: the average weight loss for the group was 17.1 pounds in 21 days. On top of that, they all experienced a lowering of their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose.

My hula sisters gave this diet some serious thought. One confessed that she really loved poi and would find that part of the diet no hardship. As for the breadfruit, those who had tried it said that it was quite bland. But someone piped up and said, "It's not bad with butter!" Then she realized that butter would not be on the diet. "Yeah, the early Hawaiians couldn't milk the chickens," I noted.

But those diet results were quite impressive. Just the thought of dropping that many pounds in that short amount of time has me suddenly hungry for poi. For now, I'll settle for popcorn.

Baibala Hemolele

I got all religious on my hula sisters tonight. For my Fun Fact I preached about the Holy Bible, or, as it's called in Hawaiian, Ka Baibala Hemolele.

I stumbled across an interesting item recently about the Hawaiian Bible Project and the work to create a new Hawaiian translation of the Bible.

But I already knew that the Bible was the first book to be published in the Hawaiian language and that many Hawaiians learned to read their own language by studying the Bible.

In fact, before the Congregationalist missionaries from New England came to Hawaii in 1820, the Hawaiian language was strictly oral. Rather than having written histories and stories, the people transmitted information through chants that were memorized by generation after generation.

The missionaries set up a printing press at the Mission Houses, which still exist, now as a museum, in Honolulu. Almost immediately after their arrival in 1820 the missionaries began transcribing the spoken language and publishing religious tracts in Hawaiian. But their main goal was to put the Bible in the hands of the native people. To that end, they formed a committee of missionaries and Hawaiians who translated the Old Testament from Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek. It took 19 years. The first printing of the Bible was in 1839.

The printing press didn't have characters for the diacritical marks now commonly used in Hawaiian, the 'okina and the kahakô. Subsequent editions, in 1868 and 1994, also did not have them. The American Bible Society, which had overseen those later editions, decided to stop printing the Baibala Hemolele after 1994 because at that time they deemed Hawaiian a dying language.

Of course, the situation changed rather rapidly after that, with widespread immersion schools creating a new generation of Hawaiian speakers. By 2002 the Hawaiian Bible Project was at work, not only creating a new translation complete with diacritical marks, but preparing to publish the new translation in digital form, complete with audio tracks. By the end of 2009 the full translation should be available at www.baibala.org. The previous editions of the Hawaiian Bible are already online at that site.

When I visited the Mission Houses in Honolulu last February, I saw the printing press, but I was told that it was not the original press. The original press had been replaced after about 20 years. A couple of months later I was researching an article about Forest Grove, Oregon, and I visited the museum in Old College Hall, built in 1851, at Pacific University. Pacific was founded by Congregationalist missionaries, the same denomination as those who went to spread Christianity in Hawaii.

A docent took me through the small museum, pointing out all sorts of odd artifacts that related to the history of the university. But in a dusty corner, there was an old printing press. That, he said, had originally been in Honolulu. But when the missionaries there got a new printing press, they sent the old one to what was then Tualatin Academy in Forest Grove.

It's rather amazing to realize that the printing press that completely altered the Hawaiian way of life by publishing a Hawaiian language Bible now sits in a little museum thousands of miles away in Oregon. The university, incidentally, has a large number of Hawaiian students. (See my post on their wonderful lû'au.) They might be surprised to learn that this forgotten treasure now sits under a layer of dust in their college museum.

Happy Birthday, Your Majesty!

In yesterday's hula class I shared the Fun Fact that the day before, September 2, would have been the 171st birthday of Hawaii's last reigning monarch, Queen Lili'uokalani. Ever gracious, my hula sisters remarked that she didn't look a day over 170.

Born Lydia Lili'u Loloku Walania Wewehi Kamaka'eha, she will not be soon forgotten in Hawai'i. Her slogan, Onipa'a ("Be Steadfast"), is remembered by the people engaged in the struggle for sovereignty, or those who are just plain unhappy at the disgraceful way her short reign ended.

She came to the throne after her brother, David Kalâkaua, died of illness in San Francisco during a state visit. She set out to undo some of the concessions he had made to the powerful American businessmen, who had sought legislation that would be favorable to their enterprises, such as sugar and pineapple. Kalâkaua had given in and signed the so-called Bayonet Constitution in 1887. It got its name because the king was, at least figuratively, at the point of a bayonet when he signed.

The businessmen, alarmed by the queen's intentions, quickly formed what they called the Committee of Safety, which was supposed to ensure the safety of Americans, who would be losing the vote if all went the queen's way. In 1893, after she'd been queen for a bit under two years, Lili'uokalani was overthrown by the Committee, with the armed support of 162 American sailors and Marines.

Grover Cleveland, who was president at the time, at first decried the overthrow and stated that it was patently illegal. He offered to restore the queen to her throne -- with one catch: that she absolve the Committee of any wrong doing. The Queen gave the wrong answer. She said she intended to execute them.

Sanford Dole, of Dole Pineapple fame, was declared president of the new Republic of Hawaii on the Fourth of July, 1894. The former queen was arrested Jan. 16, 1895, along with many of her supporters. She was held prisoner in an upstairs bedroom of the 'Iolani Palace.

Visiting that room is a heartbreaking experience. Her captors even covered the windows so she couldn't see the palm trees, the sky or the sea, or her own people. She was allowed one maid, who helped her make a quilt depicting events in her life that is on display in that room today. She also composed beautiful songs while she was held prisoner for eight months.

To save her followers from death sentences, the same sentences she had expected to mete out to those who overthrew her, she abdicated her claim to the throne.

She died at age 79 in 1917 in Washington Place, the Honolulu home where she had lived with her husband before becoming queen. Think of her the next time you hear her most famous song, Aloha Oe, and these haunting words: "One fond embrace before I now depart. Until we meet again."

Lu'au on the Island

I spent Sunday on the island, helping to prepare kalua pig for a lu'au.

The name of the island starts with an "S." Sorry, there's no "S" in the Hawaiian language, so where could this island be? Sauvie Island, in the middle of the Willamette River just north of the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon.

It was the annual summer picnic for Portland Culinary Alliance, for which I serve as president. When I learned that one of our member chefs, Mike Downing of Quimby's Restaurant in Newport (best clam chowder on the Oregon coast, if you ask me), used to be a lu'au chef on the island of Kaua'i, where he grew up, I began to think that this year's picnic would be more than just a potluck.

Mike was willing and eager. The next task on the list was to find a great location. Enter Don and Sandra Kruger, of Kruger's Farm Market on Sauvie Island, and we were all set.

On Saturday night, my daughter, Meriwether, and I packed a couple of shovels into the car and drove out to Kruger's. Digging the pit according to Mike's specifications (4' x 6' x 1-1/2') took us about an hour and a half. The sun had just set when we called it quits.

My other chore was to find the requisite banana and ti leaves. I found them at Uwajimaya, of course. But they were not cheap. I think Mike was used to picking them off a tree. I also lined up the wood delivery. I called a woman who'd advertised on Craig's List and when she called me back she said she was visiting her mother in Newport and was right next to Quimby's. So she personally arranged with Mike the type of wood (alder) and the quantity (1/3 cord).

On Sunday morning, Mike called me at 7:45 to say he was at the farm, after driving since 4 a.m. from Newport. Thirty minutes later, the wood lady called to say she was at the farm to deliver the wood. I showed up at 8:30, to help prepare everything before PCA members and guests began arriving at 3:30 p.m.

Mike's assistant, Tom, was already crouched in the pit, trying to light a teepee of kindling, with the help of some newspaper. The alder wood was stacked nearby. In time, Tom had every piece of wood in the pit, and the fire was roaring. Once the fire began to die down to coals, Tom put a layer of lava rock atop the wood.

Then it was time to prepare the pig. Our pig was about 80 pounds, nestled in a large cooler full of ice. Mike set it on a table and before he began I thought it was only fitting to sing an oli, or chant, to honor the pig. The only oli I know is the one we sing before we start hula class every week, but I figured it was better than nothing.

Mike sprinkled Hawaiian seasoning salt inside and outside the pig. Then he asked Tom to pick up a few of the smaller hot stones to put in the cavity of the pig, as well as in the armpits and groin, just to make sure it cooked through. The pig was laid on a bed of banana leaves and ti leaves, that in turn was laid atop a length of chicken wire. The leaves and then the wire were wrapped around the pig. Mike made similar packages of taro root, sweet potatoes and two turkeys, all wrapped in leaves and chicken wire.

The pig and the other packages of food were set atop banana leaves and corn stalks laid over the hot coals. Then we lay wet burlap over that and then a couple of tarps on top of that. Finally, we each grabbed a shovel and covered the pit with the dirt Meriwether and I had dug up the night before.

It was noon by the time we finished burying the food in the underground imu, oven. Mike and his assistants, Tom and Michael, should have taken a nap under the large oak tree that marked our picnic spot. But they kept going, getting other lu'au foods ready, such as lomi lomi salmon, ahi poke and, of course, macaroni salad.

We were just setting up the tables when the first guests arrived. As more people arrived, they drifted down the grassy hill toward the covered pig pit. At 4:30, Mike said he was ready to make the Big Reveal. He crossed himself -- privately he worried that we'd be having pork sashimi -- and began to shovel dirt off the tarps. Several men grabbed shovels and uncovered the tarp. It was pulled back to reveal . . . another tarp! That was pulled back to reveal a layer of burlap, then lots of banana leaves and corn stalks. Then Mike and Tom each grabbed an end of the bundle that contained our pig and brought it to the prep table.

The pig was perfectly cooked. It was, as the Hawaiians say, "ono." Delicious. The meat easily came off the bones and was piled high in a container that was moved to the group of tables that held our potluck feast.

There was well deserved applause for Mike and his helpers. As the party died down, they loaded up their SUV and began their 3-hour return trip to Newport. The lu'au had come to an end.

It wasn't Hawaii and we were under an oak tree, rather than palm trees. But we were on an island and the food was ono. All in all, a perfect day.

Dem Bones

Nâ iwi kûpuna was the topic of my Fun Fact for this week's hula class. Literally, it means the bones of ancestors. I'd been curious about the significance of bones since sharing with my class what I'd learned about the death of Captain Cook, who met his end on the Big Island in 1799 after answering the islanders' hospitality with hostility. Not the best of manners for an Englishman, especially when his life was at stake, and all over some pilfered nails.

Anyway, when I told what happened to him -- he got roasted, after being killed in a skirmish -- one of my hula sisters asked, "Did they eat him?"

In all my reading on Hawaiian matters, I've never come across any anecdotes about cannibalism. In fact, from what I've learned, after death the flesh on a body was of little interest. It was the bones that held all significance. The traditional belief was that a person's bones were the repository for mana, spiritual power. The greater the chief, the greater the mana, and hence, the greater the importance of the bones.

In the case of a great chief, which is how the Hawaiians viewed Captain Cook, it was important to preserve the mana by taking care of his bones shortly after death. His body was roasted, which made it easier to remove the flesh, and once the bones were stripped they were distributed among important or significant people. The meat from the bones was deposited into the sea. It was usual that the bones of a chief were buried at a secret place, sometimes in a cave or lava tube. That way, the chief's enemies wouldn't be able to benefit from the mana still residing in the bones. The mana was meant to reside in the 'âina, the land, and be received by subsequent generations in the family.

The thigh bones were thought to be particularly powerful. And now I understand why the Hawaiians delivered Captain Cook's thigh to his horrified crew. Surely the Hawaiians thought they were doing the crew a great honor by bestowing the mana-ful thigh upon Cook's ohana, family of sailors. And surely the sailors thought the Hawaiians were performing a grisly and barbaric act.

But the topic of bones has modern significance in Hawai'i. Probably the most significant occurrence was in 1988 when Hawaiians managed to stop construction of the Ritz Carlton on Maui after the ancient bones of about 1,100 people were dug up during construction. This sort of thing had happened time and time again during earlier major construction projects on other islands, but the protests had little effect. However, in the Ritz Carlton case, the hotel heeded the protests and ended up building far from the beach where the burial site was. The site, pictured above and to the right, is once again sacred ground.

Today there are Burial Councils on each island, to make sure any ancient bones disturbed during construction are returned to the earth where they can continue to spread their mana.

Aloha Tower

My hula class has been dancing to a fun tune called "Aloha Tower," as sung by the Brothers Cazimero. With our hand and arm movements and by making 180-degree turns, we tell the story of the tower, which has a huge clock on each of its four sides and at one time performed duty as a lighthouse.

Aloha Tower opened on Sept. 11, 1926 as sort of the Statue of Liberty of Honolulu, because it was the landmark that cruise ship passengers saw as they arrived. Locals referred to the day that cruise ships arrived as Boat Day and it was a festive occasion. The Royal Hawaiian Band Played, hula dancers danced and there were fragrant leis for all the newcomers. Colorful streamers rained down on the ship and from the decks passengers tossed coins into the water to watch the native boys dive for money.

At 10 stories high, Aloha Tower was the tallest structure in all of the Hawaiian Islands. It held that claim to fame for about 40 years. You can still take the elevator to the 10th floor and step out on to the observation deck, which sits above the four clocks. Each clock weighs 7 tons. Made in Boston, the clocks were among the largest in the United States.

In the early days the Aloha Tower also served as a lighthouse. Its beam was visible 16 miles out to sea.

By the 1960s there were taller buildings in Honolulu and fewer cruise ships, as more travelers chose air travel. Just for fun, here's a clip from the 1939 film, "Honolulu," showing Gracie Allen and Eleanor Powell anticipating fun in Honolulu while on their cruise to Hawaii.