Brave New (Food) World...

From Jen Richmond — Blog by Jen Richmond

March 13, 2009

OK, I’ve been living on the Big Island of Hawaii for a while now, and I’m still getting used to the different styles of cooking; there’s an amazing amount of diversity here. I would love to take a little bit from each one and fuse it into a whole new cuisine (with big mahalos to the Kanaka Maoli, who had the right ideas about food, the land, and the sea). I need to get together with other local chefs and play a little. Taro, fern fronds, local fish, a zillion tropical fruits and veggies- wow! On the down side, nasty little diseases like rat lung and leptospirosis: WASH those organic fruits and veggies!!! Lots of trading/bartering goes on here, we are already dialing into that whole network. The Big Island is the top producer of organic honey in the U.S., and there are beekeepers and bees everywhere. Although there is local goat cheese, most of it is fresh “cream cheese” type cheese- no aged cheese (refrigerated spaces are COSTLY). I have a theory that somebody is going to find their lava tube cave just right for aging cheese.....