Getting fancy with local ingredients

Throughout the Eat Local Challenge, market finds dictated meals, not recipes. Meals were often made up of less than five ingredients and were simple to throw together. But I do have a collection of glossy, picture-saturated cookbook/coffee table books that I occasionally like to cook from. Yesterday, it was Boulevard's cookbook, and I wanted to make the duck breast stuffed with apples and chestnuts, roasted in bacon, with an apple brandy sauce. Only problem was, not a single thing on the ingredient list was was locally produced. Of course, the challenge is over and I can eat anything I want, right? Yes and no...I'm not going to forgo the bacon and duck just because they're not local (who could ever resist bacon?), but I want to use the great variety of fruits we do have in Hawaii instead of relying on imports. So...what did I end up with? Duck stuffed with Hashimoto Farms persimmons and chestnuts, roasted in bacon, with a local tangerine sauce on top of mashed breadfruit. I was going to skip the chestnuts since they're not local, but every vendor in Chinatown had a basket of the mahogany colored nuts so evocative of the holiday season that I couldn't resist.


So how was it? Well, I learned that fuyu persimmons don't seem to soften, no matter how long you roast them. So the crisp texture of the persimmon distracted from the duck. Maybe next time I'll try papaya, or something that cooks down into a soft compote.


More successful was the pineapple vanilla bean crostata. I love crostatas...really just a lazy cook's pie...a flaky crust baked around fresh fruit with a touch of sugar and spices if desired, nothing else. They're usually filled with apples or peaches or other mainland fruits; I'm on a mission to bake as many locally-grown fruits into a crostata as I can.

I love experimenting with our local ingredients because to me, this is the new direction of Hawaii Regional Cuisine. There are beautiful cookbooks from the mainland and Europe where they do lovely things with apples, peaches, potatoes, and duck. But how many glossy cookbook pictures do you see of guava, dragonfruit, breadfruit, and monchong? Not enough! But the more we start cooking with our ingredients, the more we may see them given the glossy treatment they deserve.