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Learn to COOK - The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii's Culinary Heritage (Kolowalu Books)
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $26.95
Your Save: $ 3.00 ( 10% )
Availability: Usually ships in 3 to 4 weeks
Manufacturer: University of Hawaii Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.59969
EAN: 9780824817787
ISBN: 0824817788
Label: University of Hawaii Press
Manufacturer: University of Hawaii Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1996-08
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Studio: University of Hawaii Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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Hawaii has one of the richest culinary heritages in the United States. Where else would you find competitions for the best saimin, sushi, Portuguese sausage, laulau, plate lunch, kim chee, dim sum, shave ice, and hamburgers? Hawaii's contemporary regional cuisine (affectionately known as "Local Food" by residents) is a truly amazing fusion of diverse culinary influences. In The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii's Culinary Heritage, Rachel Laudan takes readers on a thoughtful, wide-ranging tour of Hawaii's farms and gardens, fish auctions and vegetable markets, fairs and carnivals, mom-and-pop stores and lunch wagons, to uncover the delightful complexities and incongruities in Hawaii's culinary history that have led to such creations as saimin, crack seed, and butter mochi. Part personal memoir, part historical narrative, part cookbook, The Food of Paradise begins with a series of essays that describe Laudan's initial encounter with a particular Local Food, an encounter that puzzled her and eventually led to tracing its origins and influence in Hawaii. Representative recipes follow. Like pidgin, the creole language created by Hawaii's early immigrants, Local Food is a creole cuisine created by three distinct culinary influences: Pacific, American and European, and Asian. In her attempt "to decipher Hawaii's culinary Babel", Laudan examines the contributions of each, including the introduction of new ingredients and the adaptation of traditional dishes to Hawaii's way of life. More than 150 recipes, photographs, a bibliography of Hawaii's cookbooks, and an extensive glossary make The Food of Paradise an invaluable resource for cooks, food historians, and Hawaiian buffs.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: NOT a recipe book - excellent historical work
Comment: Professor Laudan, who is primarilly a philosopher of the history of science, has produced an outstanding book on the origins and background to Polynesian food. It is not supposed to be a recipe book, and Heaven knows what the reviewer who talks about "sherbert" was on about. That was not a review.
It is well-written, engrossing and in beautiful English, a real rarity nowadays. Richly deserved to win the Julia Childs Award for America.
I gather that Professor Laudan's long-awaited magnum opus, the World History of Food, will be ready soon. Should be excellent and ground-breaking.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Well Researched, Good Resource
Comment: It seems this book was born out of Laudan's attempt to categorize and make sense out of the foods in Hawaii. I was raised in Hawaii and grew up surrounded by the foods that Laudan presents in her book. Many of the local cookbooks put together and sold by Hawaii's churches, schools, and communities give you recipes from local home kitchens; nothing too fancy and usually no description of the dish, because it is assumed you know what the ingredients are and how they are used. More than a cookbook, Laudan has written well-researched histories of how various local foods have developed throughout the islands before each main and sub sections (The Plate Lunch, The Matter of Mochi, Sorting Out Sushi to name a few). And, she includes a brief explaination of the dish before each recipe. I bought this book hoping to shed some light on "crack seed" and how to make it. Unfortunately, it appears that she was able to get only the more well known recipes due to the fact that the main ingredient (oriental flowering apricot) is not widely available. This book is a good resource, if not for the recipes, then for the history of Hawaii's local food for both non-Hawaii and island cooks. One caveat: a recipe found in a cookbook is no more than a base on which to add/subtract/change ingredients as you see fit. There is no such thing as "The Recipe" for teriyaki sauce - recipes vary from home to home and island to island.
Customer Rating:
Summary: where's maui sherbert?
Comment: Maui Sherbert2 (7oz) cans strawberry soda AND 1 can sweetened condensed milk AND 1 (7oz) can 7-up Mix together and freeze for 3 hours. Whisk. Freeze again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting to read, not the best recipes
Comment: Reading this book brought memories of a childhood partially spent in Hawaii flooding back. Rachel Laudan definitely seems to cover a the broad array of unique goodies that can be found in Hawaii; for instance, Hawaii is the ONLY place to truly appreciate shaved ice and the potential myriad of delicious flavors. Unfortunately, however, the recipes don't quite live up to expectation. I can remember one of my earliest memories in Hawaii -- I had made friends w/ another little girl at the beach and her family invited me to share in their cooked-at-the-beach lunch of steamed rice and teriyaki beef. It was sooo good and not something that my mom cooked for ME at the beach! I've been looking to re-create that taste and memory for a while and Rachel Laudan's teriyaki recipe falls far, far short. Her butter mochi recipe is also very heavy and greasy for my tastes (and I love mochi). Nevertheless, it's a fascinating account of Hawaiian cooking. I just wish the recipes were excellent, too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An outstanding historical perspective on Hawai`i's foods.
Comment: Read this book before or after you visit Hawai`i, and you'll increase your appreciation of the people, the place and the food. As one born and raised here and of mixed ancestry, I treasure this book. The only significant group the author missed is the Puerto Ricans, and consequently some of the Afro-Carribean influences in our cuisine.
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