A Korean Feast in East Hawaii

A Korean feast in store overlooking Keaukaha bay


There's no shortage of cuisine that our international food group hasn't covered from around the globe. Even though our island lacks many of the wonderful cuisines of the world, it's great that food groups like ours can experiment and share our cooking discoveries with our monthly themed events.

This month we are discovering Korean cooking and the many different and exotic dishes that our cooking group is presenting today, come join us. Usually we start off our get-together with pupus (small plates) or in Korean, they are called banchan. Usually the banchan covers an assortment of 2- 10 small side dishes in which kimchee is the most well known and popular offered at every meal.


Would you like to try some of these delicious offerings, some marinated quail eggs and pickled vegetables?





One of the most popular was this baked potstickers or mandu, these dumplings were filled with avocados with a soyu based sauce. It didn't take too long for this banchan appetizer to be devoured quickly.







Some of the members were already starving and couldn't help themselves to taking a quick bite.





Prior to our big feast, it's our tradition to have a quick discussion of the dish we prepared with the main ingredients and the cooking process. The crowd was pretty hungry at this point so the explanations went rather fast so we could chow down right away. All right, it's finally time to dig in, everyone get in line and lets get started.  Let's see what are the main offerings for our luncheon





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First up, marinated chicken wings and drumsticks in a sticky sweet and sour marinade.





Next we have some fried green onions in a light batter and a soyu sesame glaze sauce - who wants to try?





How about some succulent pork belly with pickled onions and wrapped in lettuce like a Korean burrito.




This savory Korean noodle dish called chapchae are delicious and made with sweet potato noodles which surprisingly is not that sweet, but the noodle is quite flavorful and spicy with all the sauce that it absorbs.






You can't have a Korean meal without some marinated barbecue and this beef barbecue was melt-in-our mouth perfect and oh so good!





Another barbeque with sesame chicken to be wrapped with fresh lettuce below.




What did I bring you may ask? I'm presenting a fried tofu dish with spicy bell pepper and eggplant in a mild sweet and sour sauce. Would you like to sample some, there's enough to go around.

Koreans usually don't partake in dessert but our group absolutely insists! The dessert offerings were amazing and to die for - very different from typical Asian sweets or desserts. Our first delicious dessert that were these wrapped persimmons with walnuts called gotgamssam, have just one bite and you just might want to eat the whole plate.

Oh so flaky and flavorful manju or baked sweet pastry, this one was filled with a sweet bean and lilikoi (passionfruit) paste.




This is a fun and social group, we even had a slippah fashion show after the luncheon and a few made it out to the gorgeous lagoon for a quick and refreshing dip, it's all for fun and enjoying the day out by the ocean.

 

 

View out to the bay with many little inlets from the dining pavilion at Keaukaha park.  

 

 

  Delicious Korean food, good wine and the company of friends that love to cook, what a fantastic end to our cooking event by the ocean in East Hawaii.

 

©Noel Morata, All rights reserved


Come and visit my photography travel website at http://travelphotodiscovery.com/
 

December International Food Group Dinner

Its our last monthly get together for the Big Island international food group and tonight's cooking event is being held at a local carport in Hawaiian Beaches - the typical gatherings at most Hawaiian parties are usually held in carports.



Although this event, is quite festive and the pupus (Hawaiian for appetizers) are very well put together little bites in beautiful desplays to our discerning foodies.

What's a party without a little Xmas cheer and mistle toe greeting?

How would you like to try baby pears wrapped and baked in thick bacon and maple syrup, anyone takers?

 

 

 

 

 

The requisite party game involves teams competiting with each other and the losing team donning the typical L branding - meaning 'Loser'.

 

 

 

 

 

Another delicious bite of this zucchini and tuna pupu with fancy sprigs of mint and green onions.

 

 

A moment of surprise captured prior to opening the beautiful red wrapper!

I think our dining participant might be comtemplating the dreaded secret Santa exchange, not sure if she wants to open this for the moment.

Christmas parties are always fun and entertaining, even better when they involve amazing food created by food enthusiast from the Big Island.

The Farmers Market at Maku'u in East Hawaii

It’s farmers market day at our local market at Maku'u in East Hawaii….


   Aaaah, I smell something good cooking at the food stalls just around the corner.


                        What do you think, anyone for some fresh huli huli chicken?




No, that’s not the good stuff

                    - here’s the real deal below!

In Hawaii, we say ‘ Its Da Best ' !

A Roman Feast

Our international food group gathered again on sunday to celebrate a roman feast, it was a real challenge for most of the members to come up with an amazing dish and considering that there was a prize for the most spectacular presentation.

 

 Considering there were no peacocks or flamingoes or other exotic meats to be found on our island. It was challenging not to have use of the typical ingredients we associate with Italian meals like tomatoes, rice, potatoes and various grains. There were still many creative and flavorful dishes presented that stole the show.

Everyone was dressed in their best Roman finery for this gala and it was a very festive party.



 

Our hostess greeting the guests and introducing the dishes that will be served in succession.

 Even the weather was perfect, beautiful blue skies and a slight breezy wind. Off shore, a mother whale and baby were playfully making a guest appearance to our exotic event and giving us flipper slaps and breaches, like a high five to add to the fesitivies.

A gorgeous full moon completes this amazing dinner celebration, it was a party not to be missed.

Hope you enjoyed viewing a piece of my weekend...to view more worlds today go visit http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/

A Second Anniversary Party at the Beach.

This event marks our second anniverary as the Big Island international food group gathered for another spectacular feast. What has started as a low key group of foodies getting together with themed cooking events has blossumed to a full fledged non-profit group, adding on educational programs to our gatherings, monthly contributions to our local food basket and even volunteering there with group sorting and packing work. We hope to influence and help others in need with the community and will be doing more outreach and supporting scholarship funds or other educational programs through our efforts.

This just shows that a collective gathering of like minds can make an impact outside of simple potlucks, but collectively can make a contribution to our community.

We made special placemats filled with photos of previous cooking gatherings from the past including our french, filipino, tapas to our first wine tasting and pupu party.

Tonight we recreated a chinese banquet to celebrate the first event gathering which was a chinese theme and  the selections ranged from lemon chicken, to hot and sour soup to pot stickers completely made from scratch.

This event also marks a special aloha to our friend Kathleen who has just recovered from a major car trauma and was here to celebrate her recovery and enjoy the festivities.

.....As you can see the food line started up early and the plates were easily filled up.

Whats an anniversary party without having it at the beach in Hawaii, these are the sous chefs that make each and every event special. It was a special night and the photo shows how wonderful each sous chef is to this group.

 

I thank the sous chefs who have made a tireless effort to make each and every event special, aloha to you. 

Too see other worlds today go and visit http://scenicsunday.blogspot.com/

Our Local Food Bank

The Hawaii Island Food Basket, serves all the main charity and food organizations throughout Hawaii Island and is always in need of donations and hands on volunteer help. Thats why our international cooking group decided to spend the day in two shifts to help out with sorting, packaging and cleaning the warehouse to prepare for the deluge of food needs from the various charities.

One of the main group projects was to put together ten pound bags of proteins to be used by the various charities for meals. These bags included appetizing canned foods including beans, spam, vienna sausages, tuna fish and imitation meat spreads as the typical contributions and needed items. Unfortunately, we found out that there were alot of shortages included the beans, spam and other canned meats to include in the protein bags. Sad to think that this qualifies for protein meals, but for these charities in need it is sufficient.

 

Our group was very happy to see that the regular food contributions have made some impact and seeing the need for additional protein, made each of us realize what is necessary and lacking from these contributions.

Aaah its break time and enjoying some time with friends.

We do hope as a group to participate in more of these group eventsand help out our food bank. Its such a small thing but makes a big difference. If you are on the island and would like more information on helping our local food bank, please visit or make a contribution to this wonderful organization. Here is the webside for more information http://www.foodbaskethi.org/



Happy Thanksgiving holidays to all my family friends and viewers and thank you for following my blog.

noel

Photo Hunt = Juicy

I always enjoy some of the photo hunt weekly challenges because it stretches one's imagination and I enjoy seeing other interpretations of these themes, they can be quite inspiring, funny or totally off the wall. This week's challenge calls for something Juicy.


Well that to me is very simple and quite easy, breakfast tends to be my juiciest meal starting off with a fresh and ripe papaya, some delicious and yes juicy rambutans (red fruit in photo, tastes like a lychee fruit), yogart and toast with sweet jam . The papayas I harvest from my trees, and if I don't have any ripe ones, they are readily available at any farmers market - six or seven for a dollar, how can you beat that?

This always starts off my day right and I'm so addicted to this meal, I never seem to want to change this from my morning routines along with a nice browse on the internet :)

To view other photohunt Juicy themes go to http://tnchick.com/

Day of the Dead

Our international cooking group through our host Atma really educated our cooking group a few nights ago with a Day of the Dead celebration showing everyone how important family and tradition is. Remembering beloved deceased members by visiting their graves and creating special dishes that they loved is what many cultures do to celebrate this occasion and enjoy this joyous event.

We usually do not celebrate this festive event in Hawaii compared to Halloween. But this event was a wonderful experience to really celebrate the origins of Halloween and understand both the pagan and christian beliefs that have lead to the actual events we know today as the Day of the Dead, the end of summer solstice, All Saints Day and our well celebrated Halloween all wrapped up into these various celebrations.

Our version included dishes we made in honor of some special in our lives and each made a tribute to that person and what this dish signified. It was a very symbolic and wonderful evening, something really experienced to the best intent of what this holiday signified and that is our Ohana or family.

Toss in the odd ball but fun mummy wrapping contest and it really brought out the crazy...talk about a strange tribute to our ancestors.  You can tell this was not a very serious event most of the time.

 Whats a celebration with out loud drumming and a wonderful bonfire to do some wild dancing and burning out the rubbish.

Atma made a special alter so we can bring photos of our relatives or friends and do a nice tribute to them, typical of what latin based celebrants do in their respective cultures in honoring the dead.

A more A-typical celebration to end our evening is the fire spinning display from one of our hosts, its was truly exciting to see in the dark!

This is my contribution to My World Tuesdays, to visit other views of the world go to http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/