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.

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

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/

Cajun Night

We had another fun night Sunday with our Big Island International Cooking group and boy was the the Cajun theme going strong. Everyone was in a very festive mood with alot of hungry people ready to dive into all the delicious spicy cuisine.

But before everyone started on the buffet, we had an educational requirement for each gathering to do something in relation to the theme.  That night, we prepared and made spicy cajun sausages with pork, chicken along with various cajun spices and even some fruit added to the mix.

Feeding the sausage preparation into the casings and twisting the sausage to finish the ends.

You can't help but laugh at some of the funny moments when it comes to making sausages and shaping them into the various shapes and sizes - and that induces some large guffaws!

As you can see it takes a group collaborative to use the equipment and create the end product, lots of serious concentration going on here (no not really).

An of course more funny moments that make you want to laugh again...what is it about making sausages that put people in an endless, and humorous mindset?

Now thats some good looking sausages, don't you think?

Ah, finally enough with the joking and time for some serious eating, we have jambalaya, shrimp etoufee, dirty rice, lobster bisque, cajun eggplant and chicken casserole, shrimp creole, and too many other dishes to even try in one seating, let alone the different types of sausages made for the night.

Everyone find a spot - its time for some serious eating and no talking now!

Its always food made from scratch and what alot of fun it is to try to make something new and unexpected  with our cooking group.  Okay, its time for dessert, did I mention we have a whole table set up for desserts to....oh boy!

Hope you enjoyed your visit, to see other worlds this Tuesday, go visit http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/