Maui-raised Alana Kysar shares over 80 recipes in Aloha Kitchen: Recipes from Hawaiʻi. The table of contents reads like an especially good plate lunch menu, and Alana has included menu suggestions alongside each recipe. Most of the recipes can be made outside of Hawaiʻi without too much hassle (although it will help to have access to an Asian grocery and online stores), making this a great gift idea for people craving a taste of home. Even the pohole/hōʻiʻo fern salad recipe includes helpful information on other names for the fern that will help with tracking it down through a specialty foods purveyor.
These are easily recognizable classics, stemming from Alana’s family recipes. The recipes have a lot in common with community cookbooks and recipes published in the newspapers and by Hawaiian Electric; most of the updating here is in the thick paper and gorgeous photography. Getting an eye-catching and appetizing photo of dishes like mac salad, beef stew, or beef chili can be very challenging - a lot of these foods are what chef David Chang calls “ugly delicious” - and Alana was the food photographer and stylist. Blogger skills!
The malasadas recipe is also on Alana’s blog, Fix Feast Flair: Malasadas (Portuguese Donuts).
The book lays flat easily, and most of recipes fit on one page, with a big beautiful color photo of the finished dish on the facing page.
Same as if you are getting plate lunch, vegetarian recipes are mostly salads, sides, drinks and desserts. Since I’m always looking for plant-based options, I tried making strawberry ice cake and lilikoʻi ice cake with non-dairy evaporated coconut milk (I used Nature’s Charm Evaporated Coconut Milk). The recipes for the fruit syrups made genuinely small-kid time tasting ice cakes, and while there was a little bit of coconut flavor from the evaporated coconut milk, it worked well with the fruit.
Borrow Aloha Kitchen from the Hawaiʻi State Public Library System (print or digital!)
Purchase Aloha Kitchen from da shop bookstore in Honolulu (they do mail order!)
Find an independent bookstore near you to purchase Aloha Kitchen on IndieBound!
Visit Alana Kysar’s blog, Fix Feast Flair. Check out the Aloha Kitchen Build Your Pantry guide for how to find ingredients online (including pancit noodles, Aloha shoyu, and rice vinegar), and the Hawaiʻi Food recipes.