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Extreme Grilling: Go whole hog
Filed under: Asia, Pork, Caribbean, Did you know?, Islands, America, Italy, Slow cooking, Head to Tail 
As I wrote several weeks ago, a pig pickin' is a North Carolina tradition involving a pig, a converted petroleum drum cooker, a bunch of charcoal and a whole lot of time. But a pig pickin' is not the only way to cook a whole hog - cultures across the world have been spit roasting, grilling and burying pigs in hot ash for thousands of years. In many places, pork is the cheapest meal available, making pig roasts an affordable way...
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Late-winter food porn: Hawaiian food blog
Filed under: Dessert, On the Blogs, Islands, America  The last of the March snow is still on the ground and I was wearing my down coat all day, so The Tasty Island, a Hawaiian food blog, struck me as drool-worthy in two ways - the reviews of yummy Hawaiian food and the amazing palm tree and beach backgrounds in the pictures.
Check it out - coconut shrimp, fried mahimahi, lychee yogurt, takeout Japanese chicken katsu and way more, all rated on blogger Pomai's own Spam musubi rating system (Spam musubi, or spam on rice with seaweed, is an iconic Hawaiian snack) - five Spam...
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Hawaiian Airlines introduces tasting menu
Filed under: Business, Trends, Islands, New Products, America  Hawaiian Airlines is apparently stepping up their meal service for first-class customers by offering a new tasting menu during their flights.
The menu will be comprised of twenty different entrees set on a rotation, with five available to choose from on any given flight. For lunch or dinner, customers will choose three of the five, and for breakfast they will select two of three plus will receive a fresh fruit plate.
According to the press release, entrees could include "Hawaiian Crab Cake Tantalizing "Taste of the Island" with a Zesty Pineapple Salsa, Rock Shrimp...
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Imported foods are rarely inspected
Filed under: Snacks, South America, Business, Asia, Islands, America, Europe, Health & Medical  Think your imported fish from China or those fancy baked goods from Canada are oh la la luxe? Think again.
ABC news reports that while 13% of the US annual diet is made up of imported foods that include things like frozen catfish from China, beans from Belgium, jalapenos from Peru, blackberries from Guatemala, and packaged foods from Canada, India and the Philippines, a mere 1.3% of all imported foods are actually inspected. That means the other 98.7% of imported foods are released...
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Whole Foods, Iceland and whaling
Filed under: Business, Chocolate, Stores & Shopping, Did you know?, Islands, America  Skyr isn't carried in too many American stores, but the Icelandic yogurt definitely has its fans. It is thicker than conventional yogurt, largely because it is strained, much like Greek yogurt. You are most likely to be familiar with the yogurt if it is carried at your local Whole Foods, where it is packaged into small containers and flavored like conventional yogurts, with berries, vanilla, etc. Despite the generally positive reaction from consumers, Whole Foods no longer promotes the fact that they carry Skyr, or any other Icelandic products, because of...
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Cupcakes with the tempting fragrance of...durian?
Filed under: Dessert, Food Porn , Asia, South Asia, Fruit, Food Oddities, On the Blogs, Islands, Sugar 
If you're familiar at all with the typical fruits of tropical Asia, you've probably heard of durian. It's a fruit, alright, but it certainly doesn't give off the heavenly fruity scent of regular tropical fruits. According to the reports (I have, myself, never been around the stuff), durian smells really, really, really bad. I have heard phrases like "sewage pipes" and "rotting onions." However, like many foods that are often fairly foul upon first experience, durian is considered a sort...
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Milk plus beer equals... bilk?
Filed under: Beer, Dairy, Asia, Food Oddities, Islands, New Products  Milk consumption in Japan is steadily declining and there seems to be no drop in production, which means that there is a lot of extra milk that needs to be disposed of every year. A liquor shop owner in Hokkaido, Chitoshi Nakahara, began to wonder what could be done about the oversupply of milk when he was struck the idea of combining milk and beer. He dubbed his new product "bilk."
Bilk is 30% milk and took six months to develop with the help of a local brewer. The production process is much like...
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Valentine's Day in Japan is for the guys, not the ladies
Filed under: Chocolate, Asia, Did you know?, Islands  In the US, Valentine's Day celebrations are generally geared towards couples, with a slight bias towards women when it comes to the marketing of chocolates, flowers and other gifts - a bias that is meant to have women encourage men to buy gifts for them. In Japan, things are a little different. The chocolates and other Valentine's Day items are marketed towards women, but they're marketed for them to buy and give to men, rather than the other way around. Barentain Dei calls for gifts to be given to boyfriends and husbands, as well as for giri-choco, or
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Alan Wong's New Wave Luau: Recipes from Honolulu's Award-Winning Chef, Cookbook of the Day
Filed under: Books, Islands, Cookbook of the Day  Chef Alan Wong was the guest judge on last week's episode of Top Chef and during the show, he prepared food from a traditional Hawaiian luau for the contestants to try. It was the first time that some of them had had Hawaiian food and they certainly got to taste the creations of a master chef. Chef Wong has one of the best restaurants in Hawaii and was the recipient of a James Beard Award a few years back. He specialiazes not only in Hawaiian cooking and flavors, but on fusing those traditions with the techniques and ingredients from Asia,...
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Top Chef 2, finale part 1 recap
Filed under: Television/Film, Islands  The end of the season for a show like Bravo's Top Chef is always bittersweet. Like a good chocolate, you want to finish it off, but you also sort of wish that it could go on. Come to think of it, this season might be more like the "finishing off" chocolate, since there has been so much drama that it will almost be a relief to see it end. Almost.
Last night was the first part of the show's season finale and it started off by giving viewers a sneak peek into what the chefs have been doing for the past few months during the break between the main taping and the...
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