Evil Princess Jungle Delight - local ingredients recipe

 

 Evil Princess Jungle Delight

We entered this all local ingredients recipe in the La'akea cooking contest and won the savory category. This appetizer is perfect party finger food and is very easy! The rich goat cheese and mac nut flavors are augmented by the sweet and crisp mammee apple and the fresh spice flavors of basil, thyme, and edible hibiscus are a wonderful counterpoint.

Ingredients:

8 oz locally made goat cheese - we used Lava Rock "Natural"-flavor Puna Goat Cheese
1 cup crushed local macadamia nuts
3/4 cup diced, fresh, local mammee apple - could substitute many other fruits, like apricot or persimmon
fresh thyme leaves to taste - from our garden
fresh minced edible hibiscus leaves to taste (and for color!) - from our garden
washed & dried fresh basil leaves - from our garden
optional basil flower garnish - from our garden

crushed mac nuts, goat cheese, diced mammee apple

Ingredient notes:

The measurements above are approximate and can easily be altered depending on your taste and what you have available. The thyme and hibiscus are not critical. Next time I will probably add some nasturtium flower for a peppery flavor.

Instructions:

Wash and dry basil leaves. We used about 30 leaves for about 1/3 of the cheese/nut mix.

basil and hibiscus washed and drying

Prepare indredients - dice mammee apple, crush mac nuts, and mince hibiscus.

mammee apple, my new favorite fruit

Mix the goat cheese and mac nuts with the thyme, hybiscus, or other spices.

Fold in the mammee apple.

Place about a teaspoon of cheese mix on each leaf and top with a flower or other garnish.

And you are ready to feed any evil princesses wandering through your jungle!

Evil Princess Jungle Delight

Mahalo nui loa to La'akea for the inspiring contest and seed exchange event! Mahalo nui loa to Island Naturals for donating our prize!

Recipe Remake: thumbprint cookies with Hawaiian ingredients

I'm currently collecting recipes that can be made with only island-grown ingredients. Grains pose a particular challenge, since they are the staple of so many people's diets but aren't grown here. Breadfruit (called 'ulu in Hawai'ian) is a potential grain-substitute in many recipes. In addition to being a plentiful, local food, it is healthier than grains, too!

In the following recipe, I've adapted one of my favorite cookies to use 'ulu instead of flour, macadamia nuts instead of pecans, and coconut instead of oatmeal. It uses no additional sugar or oil. I used cardamom instead of more traditional spices, because I love the way the delicate complexity of the spice interacts with the sweet 'ulu flavor. Cinnamon, nutmeg, and other cookie spices could be used instead or in addition.

The resulting recipe is easy, healthy (for a dessert), and can be sourced completely locally! Plus, these cookies are gluten free and vegan, and still: delicious! The proof? They won Best of Show in the Puna 'Ulu Festival recipe contest a few weekends ago. It was my first cooking contest entry - I was so delighted!

*award winning* Pūnana Cookies

for about 2 dozen cookies:

1&1/2 cups ripe 'ulu, steamed - use breadfruit that is sweet and mushy

1 cup finely chopped raw, unsalted macadamia nuts

1/2 cup shredded, dried, unsweetened coconut

Pinch sea salt

1 teaspoon cardamom

tart jelly/jam - liliko'i ginger jelly is especially ono

Macadamia nut oil for pan, optional

Preheat oven to 350°F. 
Mash steamed breadfruit using a crank processor, a potato masher or a brief pulse in a blender.  The resulting paste should be sticky and clumpy, like buttermilk frosting.
Put the macadamia nuts, coconut, salt and cardamom in a mixing bowl and fold in the breadfruit paste, much like mixing butter into a batter until all the ingredients are well incorporated.
Either wipe a cookie sheet with macadamia oil or use a non-stick cookie sheet.  Take about one tablespoons of breadfruit batter and roll into a ball.  Form the dough into a nest with an impression on top for the jelly.  Wet hands can help form the well-structured nest.  Fill the sheet with the nests about 1 to 2 inches from each other.  Then add about 1/2 a teaspoon of jelly to each nest.  Liliko’i jelly is ono because of its bright, tart flavor, but any firm jam or jelly will work.
Put the cookie sheet into the oven and bake at 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly browned on the bottom and/or top.  Remove and cool on a rack.  Enjoy!

Now the pictorial tutorial:

Choose breadfruit that is soft (from ripeness not from bruising!) - it will usually be a golden color, but sometimes still green. A 2 lb breadfruit should be enough for a single batch. Steam for about an hour, then cut off skins and cut into chunks.

We use a simple hand-crank food processor.

Not much processing is needed for ripe breadfruit. It's consistency should be somewhere between mash potatoes and frosting. If the breadfruit does not stick together, try adding a little splash of water.

Processed ingredients (breadfruit, coconut, nuts, cardamom, salt) before mixing.

I've found that folding the breadfruit into the dry ingredients, much like you would fold butter into flour, works well. Mix with a spoon or spatula until ingredients are evenly distributed.

Use a nonstick cookie sheet or grease a regular sheet. I put a light coat of macadamia nut oil on my non-stick sheets. The oil isn't necessary, but increases browning. Take about a tablespoon of batter an shape a nest. Make sure the sides and bottom are solid, so the jelly can't leak during baking.

Add about 1/2 teaspoon of jelly to each nest. I use my homemade liliko'i-ginger jelly. I think any tart, bright flavored jelly or jam would be delicious.

In my oven set to 350 deg F, these cook for 25-30 minutes. I take them out when they start to brown. Then, they cool on a cookie rack.

Using the same batter and adding dark chocolate chips instead of jelly makes pretty darn good chocolate chip cookies. These are made with Scharffenberger chocolate chunks my mom sent. Thanks, Mom!

Breadfruit Tamales

My plans for future food sustainability definitely include at least one breadfruit tree. Breadfruit is the carbohydrate meal staple that grows on a tree! It just makes more - year after year - without much effort from me! Plus, a tree can provide fruit nine months out of the year.

When mature but not completely ripe, breadfruit can be used like potato, like wheat products, like kalo (as poi), and like corn masa flour (as you will see below). I've heard that prepared some ways it is like freshly baked bread, but I'm still looking for that recipe. Ripe breadfruit is sweet and can be used for dessert recipes. Like many high starch foods, breadfruit can be a blank canvas taking on other flavors depending on how it is prepared. In my - very limited - experience, I've noticed that it can have an artichoke-like smell and flavor.

a 2.5 lb breadfruit steamed for 1.5 hours

Not only does breadfruit hold these mad culinary chameleon powers and not only is it easy to grow and prepare, it is as or more nutritious than other starchy foods. Check out the info at the Breadfruit Institute, located on Kauai. (I truly am convinced that growing and using breadfruit is a big part of the secret to food sustainability in Hawai'i. I will confess here to a secret fantasy of placing a breadfruit tree keiki on the doorsteps of homes in Hilo which have big, open lawn-yards. Just to fill in some details, I picture the little gift trees with impressive red bows around them.)

All this coming from a girl who had barely heard of breadfruit a year ago. Recently, I've been inspired to try my hand at preparing breadfruit. The Breadfruit Festival  gave me courage me to tackle some breadfruit recipes. Since our beautiful, keiki Ma'afala tree won't be giving fruit for 2-3 years, we have some time to develop some favorite preparations.

Sonia Martinez has posted recipes from the Breadfruit Festival's cooking contest on her blog. Of the recipes she posted, the breadfruit tamales caught my attention. In this recipe, which won culinary students of Kua O Ka La New Century Public Charter School and their kumu Mariposa Blanco first prize, breadfruit completely replaces corn. The outside of the tamale contains only breadfruit and oil. Since the options for the filling are limitless, this could be a fantastic meal that needs to be in every sustainability-seeking tropical gardener's recipe box! If it actually is yummy, that is. We attempted to find out.

We loosely followed the recipe, putting a small amount of steamed breadfruit (about 1/3 of 1 2.5 lb fruit) in the mostly-green-with-dark-lines-between-the-plates state of ripeness into the blender. Blending it really did not work. We moved the mixture of crumbles and chunks to a hand-crank food processor, which did much better. After it became ground and crumbly, we added some olive oil until it seemed that it could be formed into and hold together as a tamale shape.

We cut some banana leaves and used them to mold the breadfruit shell. We filled the tamales with cheese, red bell pepper, and tomatillo, and molded more breadfruit crumbs to finish the shape. It took a bit of experimentation to get the wrapping to work, but soon we had pretty packages.

breadfruit-shelled tamales wrapped in banana leaves and ready to be steamed

 We steamed these for about 20 minutes in a steam canner. A little nervously, we looked inside.

unrapping breadfruit tamales

Looked great! Added homemade guacamole from our avocados and veg chili from a can (Amy's) to get this feast:

breadfruit shelled tamale dinner

 The result? Ono! It really was amazing! I could not at all tell that this was breadfruit and not corn flour. Truly a success! And so filling.

This is our third success (out of three tries) with breadfruit dinners. Breadfruit already rocked us in soup, where it was like a cross between a potato and a dumpling, and a stir fry, where - fried in oil and soy sauce - it was like delicious nuggets of fatty, salty baked tofu.

More breadfruit experiments are scheduled for next week.

This post was dded to Attainable Sustainable's Blogging Bee. Click to see more blog posts about living simply and sustainably.