Luana ~ My recipe for kalua pork says to cook meat in 250 degree oven for 12 hours will this be a safe way to cook it I don't want to make quest sick. Its rubbed with salt and liquid smoke and wrapped in banana and ti leaves in roaster with water in bottom and pig on rack.
Aunty ~ I would be way too impatient to wait 12 hours for my kalua pork to be cooked! The way I prepare kalua pork is to put it into a 400 degree (hot) oven and cook it for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, depending on the size of the roast. I don't even use ti leaves (hard to find sometimes): just the liquid smoke, kosher or Hawaiian salt and water (I don't even put the roast on a rack...I just lay it in the pan and pour the water all around, and tightly seal the pan with aluminum foil. Using the method in the recipe you have or the one I just gave you, the finished roast should be at least 155-160 degrees before you shred it in order to be safe to eat. P.S. Sometimes I make kalua turkey the same way by using turkey thighs instead of pork. The result is less greasy and more healthy (and it's hard to tell the difference between the turkey and pork).
Iwalani ~ Lost my mothers recipe for prune mui, she has passed more then 3 years ago. Would like to know if you have one.
Aunty ~ Here are a couple of recipes for prune mui. This one is from the Star Bulletin: Pucker up for prune mui And this one was contributed by one of my readers on the AlohaWorld.com Ono Recipes: Apricot or Prune Mui. This one, from Ono Recipes, doesn't have as many ingredients in it and if you don't live somewhere where you can get your hands on li hing mui, might be easier for you to make.
Kim ~ Need recipes I can take to the beach cold and still have them seem fresh. What can you suggest?
Aunty ~ One favorite pasttime of locals is going to the beach and having picnics! Here are a couple of suggestions for dishes that can be prepared in advance and served cold.
Mochiko Chicken - Mochiko flour is sweet rice flour which can be found in Asian markets. You can't substitute white flour for this or it will come out tasting different. This tastes good hot or cold.
Potato-macaroni salad (a local favorite):
Jennie ~ I miss kau yuk. Need to make and eat this so I quit trying to order this dish at Chinese restraurants here in California, as they don't have it.
Aunty ~ I know how you feel about kau yuk. I love the stuff too! Here's a recipe for it. The secret is getting the pork belly. You gotta have that pork fat in order to make this the real thing! You would probably have to go to a butcher and have it ordered specially because unless you have access to a supermarket that sells Asian food products, you won't normally find pork belly in the meat case.
In Hawai'i, they usually include cooked taro with the kau yuk, but taro is pretty hard to find outside of Hawai'i, so the recipe above substitutes potatoes for the taro. Hope you enjoy the recipe and that it reminds you of home!
Mahilani ~ I'm looking for an ono recipe for Egg Drop/Flower soup and I didn't see any listed. Do you have one? My husband loves that soup and wanted to try make but didn't want to buy grocery store kine. He wants to try make home made. Any recipes for it??
Aunty ~ The reason you don't find recipes for Egg Flower or Egg Drop Soup is because it's one of the simplest soup recipes ever. The basic ingredients are chicken stock and eggs. If you want to embellish it a little, try looking atthis recipe. For additional flavor, try adding slivers of fresh ginger (also will make the soup healthier) and sliced dried shiitake mushrooms that have been reconstituted in warm water and wrung out. This is probably the Chinese equivalent of Jewish chicken soup. Simple and tasty.
Nita ~ My husband was telling me about a dish he use to make but cannot remember the name of the recipe but it used thinly sliced beef, pineapple chunks, brown sugar, onions, green peppers, cornstarch, and he think it used vinegar but he is not sure. He lost the recipe and has been looking for it forever. I would love to find it for him, so please, please help me.
Aunty ~ What your husband has been looking for is a staple in Hawai'i. The sweet and sour sauce is not only used for beef and hamburger, but is also used in chicken, fish and pork dishes, too.
Here is the recipe for sweet sour meatballs. For the beef recipe your husband wants to duplicate, take thin slices of sirloin and sear quickly. Prepare the sauce separately and when you're ready to serve, pour the sauce on the beef and serve it all over rice.
Hope that helps your husband remember some good times from long ago.
Susan ~ Can you save the mochi rice if you made enuf manju with black beans?
Aunty ~ Rice left over from making mochi isn't good for anything unless you want to make patties of it to stick in the freezer and use in ozoni (Japanese broth that is usually served for New Year's Day celebrations). When it dries out, it will become like concrete and be inedible, so that's when you could make it soft again by pouring hot broth over it.
Patricia ~ I live in Yreka, California and was raised in Pearl City, Hawaii. Back at home we always had fresh poi when ever we wanted it. Here in Yreka you can not find fresh poi so, we drive up north about 50 miles to Medford Oregon where we found a little Asian market; where I found frozen poi.
I threw a graduation party for my daughter and had a few Hawaiian dishes. I tried in every way to mix the poi but it would only come up lumpy. I tried heating it up. Mixing with my hands, using an electric mixer even. No such luck. It came out watery, lumpy. I eventually tossed it out; no one liked it. $23.00 down the drain for a large bag too!
Tell me what can I do the next time I pick up a frozen bag of onolicious bag of poi. Craving for poi!
Aunty ~What a shame that all that poi got thrown out!
Here is one way to thaw out frozen poi: add 1/4 cup of water and microwave for 2 1/2 minutes or longer for desired temperature, mix to desired consistency. More water may be added if texture/thickness is not at the desired amount. Frozen poi has to be refrigerated once it is thawed out; it won't turn sour like fresh poi will due to the manufacturing process.
Hope that helps next time. You could also make fresh poi if you have access to the taro corms. Just boil the corms until tender, peel and mash, mixing it with water to get the proper consistency. Takes some time, but the results are ono! Homemade Poi
Leftover poi can be used to make muffins and bread, too. There are recipes in the Alohaworld Ono Recipes website for those.
Kathleen ~ You know for the li hing mui lollipops, in school they selling it for fundraising? I like help too but I don't know how to make it. I like try one different flavor like sour green apple.
Aunty ~ Making the lollipops is quite easy, but you do need to work fast. It's also helpful if you have a candy thermometer so that you can get the sugar to the right temperature. If you don't have a candy thermometer (which is different from a meat thermometer), you can figure out what the "hard crack" stage of the melted sugar mixture is by boiling the sugar/water mixture and then taking a drop of so and let it sink into a glass of tap water.
If the "ball" that develops is kinda soft at the bottom of the glass of water, you need to continue to cook the mixture. When the drop in the water hardens into a hard little ball, that is the "hard crack" stage. Take the pan off the heat at that point, add the flavoring and food color and start forming your lollipops. You can make them free form if you like, but make sure you stick the sticks in the hot mixture quickly before the candy hardens.
Take this basic recipe from the Ono Recipes. And if you want to try different flavorings like sour apple, you need to get flavor concentrates, ike from this online store. You can try using regular flavor extracts, but those often contain alcohol and are not heat-stable. You might be able to find the fruit flavor concentrates in your local health food store.
Aunty Mary ~ Looking for a recipe for L&L's mac salad. Can you help? .
Aunty ~ L&L's mac salad isn't complicated at all. Just really simple ingredients: small elbow macaroni, Hellman's (or Best Food mayonnaise, depending on which side of the Mississippi River you live), shredded carrots for color and salt and pepper. L&L may also add some MSG to enhance the flavor (I don't because I don't use MSG in any of my cooking), but for a mac salad, it is bland, which is why it goes so well with the food at L&L (the salty stuff especially).
Here's the simplest recipe I could find (I make it without a recipe, so I thought I'd better find you a recipe with measurements...after awhile, you can adjust the amount of mayo to suit your taste):
You can leave out the peas and the yogurt. If you want a creamier mac salad, you can stir the mayo into about ½ C milk and then dump it on the macaroni. I'd let the macaroni cool completely before you add the mayo, though, because if you add it while the macaroni is still warm, it will absorb all the mayo and after you refrigerate it. The pasta will become dried out and you will have to add more mayo.
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