Recently in Food and Photography

These vibrant orchids flourished out on the lanai despite my complete and utter neglect. It's January and "wild" orchids are blooming...

I love Hawaii.

Junko captured this beach shot somewhere just south of Lahaina, Maui. The image has a timeless quality that appeals to me... was it just this year, or from another decade? (Answer: this year.)

Look at the exotic beauty of that blossom. It's a flower that promises fruit you can never forget.

Our last landlady was known for her legendary lilikoʻi pie. Her husband would come to the yard almost daily to carefully tend each delicate fruit to maturity. The one time we made the presumption of plucking one of the fruit--from our own yard mind you--there was a knock on the door soon after inquiring where it went.

The vines only produced enough fruit for one pie each year. In my mind, that pie was destined for royalty, sweet and tart, lighter than air atop a rich, buttery crust.

Sadly, I was never able to persuade our landlady to share her pie with us, mere commoners.

I'm not a huge fan of the manufactured "too perfect" beaches at Ko Olina, especially when the entire leeward coast is only a few miles further along the highway, but this sunset was... spectacular.

We stumbled across these beauties in a pond at Hilton Hawaiian Village on our way to dinner this weekend.

Fireworks viewed from the Eva end of Waikiki

May your 2007 be even better than your 2006. Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou!

Junko whipped up this Frozen Grand Marnier Torte with Dark Chocolate Crust and Spcied Cranberries as the perfect end to our Christmas meal. She stayed faithful to the recipe and the result was truly beautiful.

When we make this torte again, we'll cook all the cranberries together. The instructions called for boiling half the cranberries then adding the other half fresh. That resulted in a few too many tart explosions in the middle of an otherwise impressive and festive dessert.

Mele Kalikimaka, everyone!

Last year it was a three-dimensional truck; this year, a simpler homage to Bob the Builder. Being the father of a preschooler has now reduced us to baking cakes in the shapes of cartoon characters. Take two stacked chocolate rounds with cupcake halves for ears and decorate with a tinted sour cream frosting. Easy as pie.

Happy Birthday, Toshi!

Strawberry Tart

This tart is every bit as good as it looks, and surprisingly straightforward to make. The key to success is to have a proper tart pan. I've tried making tarts in pie plates before and the results were disastrous. The high, sloped walls make it impossible to create a dainty crust, and don't even dream of extracting the tart from a pie plate in one piece.

As long as you avoid the gourmet kitchen shops, a sturdy tart pan will cost you less than the ingredients for a single tart but last a lifetime. Then from that tart forward, everything you make looks fresh from the bakery.

The recipe pictured above can be found in Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. The only changes I made from the base recipe was to brush the crust with dark chocolate before adding in the pastry cream. It adds a welcome surprise to that first bite of tart. Oh, and when it says to thin the glaze with liquer, tequila was the closest substitute I had on hand.

The story as to why there's a partial bottle of tequila on my shelf will have to wait for another day...

Water drop on luau leaf.

Today marks the 38th consecutive day of rain in Hawaii. Part of me just wants to see sun again, but another part recognizes this water is vital, filling the thirst of the land. There's a Hawaiian saying, aia i ka `ōpua ke ola. "There is life in the clouds." The taro plants out front yard are thriving, and we'll soon be able to harvest luau .

Recipes using luau leaves:
→ Chicken Luau
→ Laulau

Taro fields in Hanalei, Kaua`i.

Even with production in decline, Hawaiian farms produce an average of 5.6 million pounds of taro a year, the majority of which is milled for poi. That's an official USDA statistic, but I only tracked it down so I'd have a food-related excuse to share a photo of one of the most beautiful valleys in Hawai`i.

Man built most nobly when limitations were at their greatest.
    -- Frank Lloyd Wright

Maybe that's just me, but I'm at my most creative when options are limited, because I have to be imaginative to work within the constraints. Sam and Andrew have created a new event, Foodography, to bring out the best of our imagination and creativity by challenging food photographers each month to take photos on a shared theme. LIke a magnifying glass before the sun, the theme limits and focuses energies. We then offer the results for critique and appreciation. What a great way to improve the quality of our food photography!

The theme for this first time around: Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit. I decided to stick to a literal interpretation and photograph a non-citrus, orange-colored fruit. A stroll through Chinatown gave two options: persimmons and red papayas. The latter called out, appealing to both my stomach and my eye.

If you click through, please feel free to offer your own critique.

The shoot itself was terribly frustrating, with nothing working as easily as it should. I knew I wanted to use a blue background (the complementary color to orange), to help the foreground "pop." Unfortunately, the only blue on hand came in the form of a too-small, damp bath towel. No matter how I positioned it, the towel never stretched clear across the entire field of view. That forced me to zoom quite close; closer than I'd intended.

Add to the mix a pesky fly trying to eat the papayas and a two year old who wanted to use the towel as a cape, and natural light that waned with each passing cloud. I truly thought I would be hurling fruit at the walls before I got my shot.

In the end, I'm reasonably satisfied with the image, although I'm stopping far short of saying it was, "buit most nobly." The composition is conventional, there's no "story" in the photo and the focus is soft, but the colors are very close to what I'd hoped and I like that the shape of the papaya is almost iconic.

Amazing mushrooms from Far West Fungi. More on our excursion to the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market coming after the holidays settle back down...

Thanks to Dylan at Eat, Drink & Be Merry for patiently sharing his mean Photoshop skillz to improve this image.

Used this recipe, letting them do the slow rise overnight in a refrigerator. In the morning, just popped them in the oven and then topped with icing. (The rolls are quite good without the added sugar on top, but I knew the tastes in this house run sweet.)

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, as good as a fresh, homemade cinnamon roll in the morning.

Update 11/16: This is the icing I used.

• 1/4 stick butter, melted
• 2 T milk
• 2 c. powdered sugar, approx.
• 1/4 t. vanilla

Beat ingredients together. Adjust consistency with milk or sugar as needed. Drizzle over still-warm rolls.

Update 11/21: Dylan from Eat, Drink & Be Merry helped finesse the photo to make a better image.

The simplest things make me happy.

Walking through downtown Hilo during a recent visit to the Big Island, we turned the corner and saw the several large white tents stretching before us. A festival? Art fair? Better! I had completely forgotten the Hilo Farmer's Market. It has been described as one of the larger and better markets in the islands with more than 100 vendors selling tropical and organic produce, flowers and other local crafts.

Hilo Farmers' Market

Tropical produce

Flower vendor

Where the KCC market on O'ahu has an upscale feel with its individual booths, walking through Hilo felt more communal and old school. I was reminded of smaller rural markets in Vietnam; farmers in tight rows with produce you want to eat on the spot. Farmers' markets fill an important role, providing a rare chance to know the people who produce your food and how they produced. Despite having walked several miles, I felt lighter as we walked and talked the aisles.

The Dole Plantation is a gaping maw of tourist kitsch, a commercial blackhole designed to suck tour buses in and draw from them every last cent. But the Pineapple Demonstration Garden portion of the plantation, though small, is worth a look. Heading north from Honolulu to the North Shore through central Oahu, you'll drive right by the plantation. It's worth a fifteen minute stop to check out the demo garden.

Smooth Cayenne pineapple

Criolis pineapple

Pho Lang Tuang pineapple

Saigon Red pineapple

Pho Lang Tuang Pineapples

A star

unknown variety

Pineapple bloom

They're beautiful, aren't they? Here are a few fun pineapple facts:

• There were 31,000 acres of pineapples grown in Hawaii in 2004.
• One third of the world's pineapple comes from Hawaii.
• You can grow your own pineapple plant by twisting the crown off a store bought pineapple, letting it dry for 2-3 days, then planting it.
• The pineapple is not a single fruit as generally assumed, but a cluster of 100-200 tiny fruitlets.
• It takes two years for a pineapple plant to produce, and each plant typically produces at most two pineapples in its life.
• The pineapple is originally native to Brazil and Paraguay. Sailors brought them to the West Indies long before the arrival of Europeans, although it was White merchants who first introduced it to Hawaii.
• Pineapples are the only edible members of the bromeliad family of plants.
• Of the hundreds of varieties of pineapples, Smooth Cayenne is by far the most prevalent. Three other varieties are gaining in popularity: Red Spanish pineapples have a tougher skin that make shipping easier; Sugar Loaf pineapples are very large and heavy; Golden Supreme pineapples have lower acid and more sweetness.

I've also written in the past about how to pick and cut a pineapple.

I'd like to be able to say I got these on an amazing post-Valentine's Day sale. But the truth is that everything but these truffles was on sale and I paid too much.

I'd like to claim that I bought them for my sweetheart. But the truth is that she has given up chocolate for Lent.

I'd like to claim any sort of motivation for buying these beyond pure, selfish indulgence, but I can't.

In this little box of Vosges Exotic Truffles (left to right, top to bottom):

• Absinthe - Infused with fennel, a splash of Pastis and a sprinkle of Chinese anise.
• Ambrosia - White chocolate with Cointreau and topped with Autstralian macadamia nuts.
• Woolloomooloo - A melange of milk chocolate and macadamia nut praline topped with fresh coconut.
• Chef Pascal - Dark chocolate in a melange of fresh cream, Kirsch and crowned with a cherry
• Wink of the Rabbit - Belgian milk chocolate surrounds a soft caramel center, topped with Georgian pecans.
• Black Pearl - Ginger and wasabi infused fresh cream and dark chocolate, topped with black sesame seeds.
• Gianduia - Milk chocolate and crunchy praline sprinkled with roasted praline pieces.
• Budapest - Belgian dark chocolate and fresh cream topped with Hungarian paprika.
• Naga - Coconut, milk chocolate and Indian curry powder.

These chocolates are all mine, and I'm looking forward to trying varieties I've never even dreamed of before, especially the ones with spicy additions.

Three of Toshi's first words have been "laptop," "hungry" and "cooking." What does that say about his parents? Today he wanted to try his hand at helping make a simple breakfast.

I think I first fell in love with open markets and farmers' markets during several brief trips to Vietnam. In Saigon, they were the only places to buy food. Since then, we've always tracked down the best markets, no matter where we've lived. When it comes to freshness, quality and price, farmers' markets generally beat the socks off supermarkets. In fact, if there were a Grocery Deathmatch Smackdown, your $supermarket_chain wouldn't last Round One against a decent farmers' market.

This morning, Toshi and I hit the Chinatown markets for tomorrow's dinner, and captured a few images at the same time. If this were within walking distance, we'd be here every day.

Meat and poultry stall

Obligatory pig head

Bluestriped snapper

Mandarin oranges

Daikon (Japanese radish)

Parrotfish

Pineapple

Ahi tails

Picking produce