Claire McGee, a photographer from Newport, Ore., tells us the “best thing she ever ate” was a classic example of a classic Italian dish — consumed in Hawaii, the multi-cultural crossroads of Asian and American (but not exactly Italian) cuisines. Here’s her entry in our recent sweepstakes:
“Vegetarian Lasagne – at a restaurant in Honolulu. It was very light / and cheesy - shredded cheese – Went back years later and they no longer had it on the menu – I asked/ they said – Changed chefs! ACK”
She can’t remember the name of the restaurant, but says it was at the corner of S. Beretania and Pensacola. She discovered it “sometime during the 80′s when I lived there, and later, on a return visit to the islands, the cook had gone!”
If that cook is reading this, we’d love to find out where he/she is slinging the linquine these days.
Our chef, Mark Whitehead, is an Oregon boy. But he worked in Hawaii for several years. His wife’s family still lives there. He went over earlier this year to cook at a camp organized to help cancer survivors explore ocean water sports.
None of which explains why (he says) he likes SPAM.
As they say in Hormel country, you’re just seconds away from crazy tasty town. Actually, several of us discovered recently that we share a love of SPAM. It was one of those early morning chat fests, fueled by not-enough-coffee.
Heck, Mark remembers his mother evicting the meat brick from its can, stuffing cloves in it, putting it in the oven and, voila, “three hours later,” it was … dinner?
“Back in the day, everything was low and slow,” Mark recalls.
Explains why he became a chef — not so he could do a better job making SPAM, but probably so he could get as far away from it as possible.
So, why did he move to Hawaii? Hawaii, after all, loves SPAM. Its residents consume more than 7 million cans a year, more per capita by far than any other state. And Mark, an avid golfer, recalls gleefully encountering a plate lunch shack on the back nine, serving up plastic-wrapped musubi.
The company awhile back sponsored a Hawaiian SPAM can design contest. Here’s the unveiling ceremony …
The winner got $1,000 — and year’s supply of SPAM. Weird? Not really. It’s just canned meat. Pork shoulder chopped up with a bit of ham, and stuffed with some sodium nitrite into a can.
Yes, it’s pretty frightening when you first lift the brick out of the can. But if you slice or cube it, and brown it in a frying pan — browning is key here — it actually works. The SPAM people offer a bunch of recipes on their web site. . Spamaroni and cheese? Yuck.
Take a tour down the Tasty Island Honolulu Food Blog, however, and you can get some ideas of how SPAM is so much more than junk mail. Does that mean it will soon appear on the menu at Cornerstone Cuisine? Well, you could always get lucky.
