Steelgrass Farms

I would be a great big asshole if I didn't at some point give proper props to the man that made Kauai fun, the inimitable Will Lydgate. This man took me all around the island, taught me songs on the ukulele, attacked me with an apple pie and in general rocked my world with his awesomeness. So here I want to give a shout-out to the man, the myth, the legend (and the chocolate farmer) William Hibbs Lydgate.

Will, in addition to being a kick-ass bass player, makes his living by Steelgrass Farms on Kauai, a farm that give the best ag tour of all time: three hours dedicated to tasting and talking about chocolate. You start the tour by sampling a little of the good stuff (a luxury at 9 in the morning), take a leisurely stroll around the farm getting educated about the unusual plants grown there (papyrus for one, vanilla orchids for another and a really strong variety of bamboo from which the farm gets it's name), tasting the tropical fruits and generally being entertained by the dry humor of your tour guides.

pretty little "poor man's orchid"

cute sister-in-law with the papyrus stalk


rambutan hair tie

vanilla orchid pods

cacao tree

Then you get to the part everyone's been waiting for, the star of the show: the chocolate. The unassuming little trees have these weird looking pods growing on the bark and these weird looking pod contain the real magic...the chocolate seeds. In case you didn't know, chocolate is made from the huge seeds of the chocolate fruit. How you might wonder? Let me tell you the long and intricate process of making that delictible dark treat that drives so many of us to ecstasty. First, you harvest the cacao seeds (that's right, the plant is actually called cacao, not chocolate), then you ferment them in banana leaves for a couple of days, dry them in the sun, and then send them to plants to process the beans. The next step is one of my personal favorites: they crack open the shell of the bean and extract the cacao nib. I think I just love any excuse to use the word nib. I'm sure I'll throw it in a couple more times in this post for good measure and my own personal amusement. So after you've extracted the nib, it gets all ground up and usually coco butter is added to make it extra creamy. Some fools add other stuff too, but we won't talk about that here...it would be blasphemy. It's mixed and ground up a lot to make is smooth (this is called conching) and then heated and cooled at precise temperatures to ensure that the molecules are all lined up in the right way.

So we saw the cacao trees, got the 411 on how to make chocolate and arrived at the last and most anticipated part of the tour: the tasting. We all sat down and got to try 11 different artisinal chocolates. Like wine, there are mass producers and then there are artists. All the chocolates we tried were single estate and all contained the same four ingredients: cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar and an emulsifier. But they all tasted amazingly different. I cannot believe what a foodie I am to be able to say this with a straight face, but you could taste the terroir of the chocolate. Feel free to guffaw at that statement, but it's true. Some of the chocolates were really sour, others bitter, some spicy or fruity or grassy. It was an amazing variety of flavors and they were all really good.

Here are my parting words for you chocolate fanatics: go to Kauai to pay homage to the cacao tree, give Will a high-five for me, geek out on chocolate at Steelgrass and always buy dark. It will change your life.

Kauai Retrospective

It's been far too long, my peeps, since the last entry, but the boss is back with some travel stories, recommendations and lots of pictures to make it up to you. I've got some catching up to do, so I'll start with the highlights of Kauai. If ever you find yourself of the Garden Island, here is my list of "must dos" to light the path for your good time adventure.

First and foremost, you must go to at least one waterfall while here. This island is just erupting with streams and with the winter rains there are new waterfalls cropping up every day. I personally loved Kipu Falls on the southeast end of the island (directions here). It's really close to Lihue and a short walk from the road through some seriously tall cane grass, whch makes it feel like an adventure when you arrive even though its really only about a 5 minute walk. The falls are beautiful and come complete with a rope swing from a gigantic banyan tree and a deep pool at the bottom perfect for making the 30 foot jump of death from the top. (Note: I did jump, but it took me a while to screw up my courage...too long in fact to continue calling myself a bad-ass.)

I also recommend going to a really cool cave on the north shore of the island. If you take the highway up the coast, past Princeville and Hanalei, you'll dead-end into Ke'e State Park and right after the first parking lot is a little trail up a hill that takes you to a magnificent cave with a huge pool of bright blue water. Locals call it the Blue Room. The first time I went there was at night...with no headlamp and no moon. It's a miracle that I'm alive to tell the tale. We headed up the rocky trail (of course with no shoes), somehow descended down into the cave in the pitch black and then proceded to swim around in the darkness, singing and yelling in a feeble attempt at sonar to keep ourselves from head-butting the cave wall. And, man, does that cave have some good acoustics. An impromptu Queen revival commenced, with all of us feeling more comfortable belting at the top of our lungs since darkness of course means anonimity. After that harrowing adventure, we ambled down the road to the beach, ate an apple pie on the sand, played the ukulele for a bit and stared at the perfect stars. Oh, what a night.

And you must go camping while here. There are both state and county sites for your camping pleasures, all of which are right on the beach, have very clean facilities, grills and electricity and are $3 per night. Yes you read that correctly: waterfront, clean camping on a tropical island for the low-low price of three measly dollars. It's amazing. I stayed at Salt Ponds Park, Anini Beach and Anahole Beach Park. Anini was by far the most beautiful and quiet. There really is no reason to stay at a hostel or cheap hotel when there are such beautiful parks. Plus you get to wake up just steps from the water each day.

Of course there must be a food recommendation and here's the one shining gem of cuisine that I found on the island: a roach coach in Hanapepe called Mele's Kusina. Kate, Jess and I were wandering around the south shore near our camp grounds at Salt Ponds Park, playing on the swinging bridge and enjoying the totally darling little strip of downtown, when we walked past a sign that made all of us stop in our tracks: "Fried Ice Cream Fridays." Oh, the mouths started to salivate and, despite the fact that we had just eaten mere hours before, we all became ravenously hungry. Of course we couldn't just order dessert, and so decided to try two of the mix plates and a cheeseburger for good measure...that's how my posse rolls. Now, I want to insert a word here about cheeseburgers: I've had me some good ones, some great ones and some unforgettable ones and the $3 cheeseburger at this mobile food stand will go down in the annals of my life as one of the best. It was so good that we drove around the entire town of Hanapepe the next day inquiring after the whereabouts of this food cart. I still think about it and a single tear rolls down my cheek...sigh. But back to the main attaction--the fried ice cream. It was cooked to perfection with a light and fluffy coating and perfect, creamy vanilla in the middle. It reminded me of one of my favorite child-hood memories: sopapillas. When I was just a young lass, my mother waited tables at one of the only Mexican restaurants in Ohio, Three Gringos. As the name implies, there was not a whole lot of authenticity to this cuisine. Most of it was downright inedible. But the shining star of their menu was the sopapillas: fried dough with ice cream, chocolate syrup and whipped cream. To this day I fondly remember playing Miss Packman on the tabletop video game machine and eating sopapillas while my mom was finishing up her shift at work. This dish of fried ice cream brought back all those wonderful smells and tastes. It was dream ice cream. If you go to Kauai, look up Mele's Kusina. It moves around, but this is the information age after all and you can follow its path on Twitter or get a general idea of its whereabouts from reviews on Urban Spoon.

And while we're on the subject of culinary delights, let me tell you about the Locavore Food Festival in Lihue. It exclusively featured produce, pastured animals and culinary creations from the island and it was fantastic! There must have been at least 20 different booths, all full of little tasty bites of this and that, prepared by local restuarants. There was Hawaiian coffee, delicious Kauai beef tacos, banana ice cream, well-appointed mini sliders and tons of other creations that I've already forgotten. I got there late, but made up for lost time by collecting a sample from every booth that still had food and then chowing down to the most impressive spread of tasty treats I'd had in a long time. I binged like a champ, and it was totally worth every uncomfortable step on the way back home.

Oh, Kauai, how I miss you!

Menehune Magic

I love collecting local stories as I travel and my favorites so far are the Hawaiian legends about magical creatures and happenings. Since I've gotten to Kauai it seems like there's a whole lot of talk about the menehune, magical little people who live in the forest and perform great acts of construction under the cover of night. They're kind of like Hawaiian leprechauns, but instead of chasing after pots of gold, they build shit. The standard description is that they are short (between six inches and two feet), hairy, pot-bellied and dark skinned. Personally, I imagine them as a cross between an Australian pygmy and a Fraggle.

The part I love the best is that the legend of the menehune is thought to be based on an actual group of real people who once lived on the islands. Before those crazy Tahitians showed up in their out-rigger canoes about 1000 years ago, there was an earlier migration of people who hailed from the Marquesas Islands. (For those of you who have no idea where that is, it is also in French Polynesian in the South Pacific Ocean, about 1000 miles northeast of Tahiti). So those Marquesans came over a few hundred years before the Tahitians, spread out all over the Hawaiian Islands and were a magical, peaceful group of folks. Then the bigger, pugilistic Tahitians took over, driving the Marquesans to the furthest island north, Kauai, where they survived by living in the forests and practicing magic to keep the Tahitians away. The word menehune has its roots in a Tahitian word meaning "commoner." Makes sense for an oppressed people. Further proof for the origins of the legend is the fact that in a 1820 census of the island of Kauai 65 people reported themselves as menehune, which totally explains the fact that I thought I saw one at the 7-11 last week buying a case of Budweiser.

So everywhere on the island you see menehune stuff: Menehune Convenience Mart, the Menehune Water Company...but there is an actual place on the island that still has some non-commercial magic to offer. On the south end of the island in Puhi is the Menehune Pond, lying all quiet and peaceful in a valley right next to a river. Supposedly the menehune built it in one night by forming a long chain from the rock quarry to the river and passing stones all night long to build up the sides of the giant fish pond. Then they diverted the river a bit into the new pond and had their own permanent fish section of the grocery store where they could incubate and catch all the seafood goodness they could ever want. According to one version of the tale, the menehune built the pond for the king at the time. (They had some kind of deal where they were the king's own personal building crew and in exchange they were allowed to live their peaceful menehune forest lives). Their only condition is that no one watch while they were building since they wanted to keep their magical ways a secret. But of course a mischievous young prince and princess snuck out to watch them at work. Unfortunately, it was far past their bedtime and the lil' tikes got all tuckered out and fell asleep. The menehune discovered them and turned them into two giant rock pillars that you can see in the mountains surrounding the pond. That's what you get for messing with magical little building elves.

I Love Lilikoi

One of the many things I love about Honua Lani Gardens is that they are preparing to participate in a new farmer's market at the community college. This market specializes in value added products, and I've been working a lot in the kitchen to perfect some new recipes to preserve and sell all the lovely fruits and vegetables that are pouring out of the garden. Lots of time in the kitchen cooking delicious new treats...that's my idea of heaven on earth!

Here's my favorite so far, adapted from the French Laundry lemon tart recipe which I've been using for years and found on my favorite recipe site, Epicurious. Lilikoi is the Hawaiian word for passion fruit and it is nature's version of a sour skittle...sweet and sour and super fruity delicious. The skin is either yellow or purple, and inside it has bright orange pulp with big crunchy black seeds. You just cut it in half and scoop out all the wonderful goodness...kind of like nature's own perfect fruit cup. It has become one of my favorite fruits and, lucky me, you can find the vines growing on the side of the road all over the islands. The beautiful flowers are also a bonus. On the mainland, you will probably only be able to find passion fruit juice concentrate, which unfortunately won't really work for this recipe since it almost always comes pre-sweetened. Lemon or lime juice will work just fine instead, OR you could grown your own lilikoi vine...definitely easy to grow in moderate climates!


LILIKOI TARTLETS

Macnut Crust

• 1 cup macadamia nuts
• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 egg, beaten

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Fill a cupcake pan with disposable cupcake liners. Grind the macnuts in a food processor, adding some of the flour as necessary, until finely ground. The macnuts are pretty oily and will stick to the blades without the flour. Mix the rest of the ingredients and the crushed macnuts in a large bowl. Press the mixture into the cupcake liners, making sure to generously fill each one; if the sides and bottom are too thin, the tarts will break easily. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until set and golden brown. Remove from oven to cool.

Lilikoi Sabayon

• 2 large eggs, cold
• 2 large egg yolks, cold
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup fresh lilikoi juice
• 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces

To prepare the lilikoi juice, halve about 5 or six fresh lilikoi and scoop the contents (pulp and seeds) into a blender or food processor. Blend for just a few seconds to release the juice from the pulp and seeds. If you blend for too long, the seeds will crush and bits of seed will be mixed in with the juice. Strain juice to remove the seeds and pulp and discard everything besides the juice.

Bring about 1 1/2 inches of water to a boil in a pot that is slightly smaller than the diameter of the bowl (or smaller pot) you will be using for the sabayon. Meanwhile, in a metal bowl (or smaller pot), whisk the eggs, yolks, and sugar for about 1 minute, or until the mixture is smooth.

Set the bowl over the pot and, using a large whisk, whip the mixture while you turn the bowl (for even heating). After about 2 minutes, when the eggs are foamy and have thickened, add one-third of the lilikoi juice. Continue to whisk vigorously and, when the mixture thickens again, add another one-third of the lilikoi juice. Whisk until the mixture thickens again, then add the remaining lilikoi juice. Continue whisking vigorously, still turning the bowl, until the mixture is thickened and light in color and the whisk leaves a trail in the bottom of the bowl. The total cooking time should be 8 to 10 minutes.

Turn off the heat and leave the bowl over the water. Whisk in the butter a piece at a time. The sabayon may loosen slightly, but it will thicken and set as it cools. Pour the warm sabayon into the macnut cups and allow to cool in the refrigerator. If you like, garnish with fresh or candied hibiscus flowers.

Notes:

• Normally this type of tart is quickly broiled to brown the top and set the custard. Since the cups are so small, I find that there is no need to set the custard any further. It reminds me of the inside of a rum ball and I like the contrasting textures of the crumbly crust and drippy custard.
  

• You will have a bit of sabayon custard left over after assembling the tartlets. It's very similar to lemon curd and makes a great spread for toast or crackers.
  

Beautiful Kauai

I really do love the WWOOF program. Maybe I've just had extremely good luck, but the places that I've found to stay on my trip to Hawaii have been both perfectly suited to what I need and completely magical. I landed on Kauai Friday afternoon, greeted by a green gem of an island. After all the lava of the Big Island, it felt like I was truly arriving in paradise for the first time. The tall mountains were green and angular, the dirt was bright red and the sky had fluffy white clouds hanging perfectly in the sky. The air smelled sweet as orange blossoms.

My new host drove us to her home in Kapaa and showed me around the lovely hilltop estate, a little bed and breakfast with beautiful ponds, flowers and fruit trees everywhere. She calls it Honualani Gardens, the gardens of heaven on earth. She introduced me to my new home, a cozy house in the valley, completely alone. Perfect. Her property is a five acre permaculture estate, brimming with mature tropical fruit trees. Around every corner there are breadfruit, cacao, lilikoi, avocado, lemon, starfruit, banana, noni and coconut. Breakfast always includes a huge smoothie with whatever is falling off the trees. Her raised bed garden was already full of asparagus, tomato and beautiful herbs. The ponds are filled with big water lily; red and black ducks run across the lily pads like something out of a cartoon. At night I can hear the frogs and night bugs singing me to sleep in the rain and can almost feel all the garden fairies.

My first weekend on the island we went to Princeville on the north shore to check out a farmer's market and visit the most amazing beach. Tunnels is a surf spot past Hanalei and it is quite possibly the most perfect beach that I've ever clapped eyes on. The white sand stretched for miles in either direction, perfectly soft and lovely. The water was the clearest, deepest teal. I swam down the coastline, looking up at the tall green mountains at the edge of the water. As I was paddling around, some huge sea turtles were playing the surf just feet away, their big flippers flapping as they tumbled around in the waves. I feel so calm and contented here. I think I'm finally starting to relax and realize that this is an extended vacation. It only took me five months to get here, but anxiety is finally a memory, not a constantly hovering threat.

My new host is also worth noting. Jai has owned the property for 27 years and is as magical as her land. Her bright blue eyes sparkled when she picked me up at the airport and cooed, "Aren't you cute? We're going to get along great!" Word. She is quirky to say the least. My first day here she ran my birth chart and told me all about the inner workings of my personality. My first morning she relayed her vision of us in the clouds at sunrise, how our cloud selves were regarding one another over a cloud heart...a good omen for my stay. Then she told me all about her invisible pet rainbow dragon and the fairies in the garden. I freaking love this woman! I wish I could describe how spunky and delightful she is. A good dose of fantasy and frolicking is exactly what I need and Jai is just the person to deliver it.