From snow to lava, zebras to whales, malasadas to lobsters

We crammed a lot into our three day trip to Big Island last week. Speaking of cramming, that's what we did with the above malasadas, from Tex's Drive Inn, into our mouths. They're our absolute favorite, even if it's because living on Oahu, their rarity makes them taste so much better. They're less doughy and eggy than Leonards...it's like eating fried portuguese sweet bread. 

We ate these while driving up to Mauna Kea, to see the snow and night sky at the observatory. The sky was beautiful and clear and the stars as bright as we could hope for. We wished we could have stayed longer, to catch shooting stars, but the hot chocolate at the visitor's center couldn't ward off the chill creeping into our bones.

At Honaunau Bay, we snorkeled and grilled spiny lobsters someone was selling on the side of the street. Not usually squeamish around live animals (I believe in being able to face our live food, if we're going to be eating it), I could hardly stand grilling them, watching them writhe over the coals. Usually, I kill lobsters by splitting their head, or throwing them in a pot and clamping the lid on. But we had no utensils, for this was an impromptu snack...just the lobster and a lemon. So they might have been good, but my judgment was clouded by their agony, and our savagery. 

To try to catch a glimpse of flowing lava, we headed to Volcano, stopping more than we had intended. We stopped at a fruit stand, where we loaded up on butter avocados (our favorite variety so far...not having tried all the forty some varieties grown on Big Island), ice cream bananas and cuban red bananas (varying levels of sweetness, with still a little bit of tang, like an apple banana). We could have spent hours poring over the Hawaiian fruit posters by Ken Love, but continued on...only to be stopped by the sight of a zebra on the side of the road. 

We got a mini tour of the zebra coffee farm...from the cherries on the tree to parchment (drying the beans in the sun) to the roasting equipment. We were introduced to their resident longhorn cattle, spotted pony, peacocks, and some of the hens from their flock. Since the chickens are allowed to roam freely, every day is an Easter egg hunt...crawling into corners, digging in the banana tree, weaving between the coffee trees to find the eggs. Inevitably, they miss some, and that's how their original two chickens turned into a hundred.

Our last food stop before Volcano and the warm pools of Puna was Hana Hou restaurant, whose lilikoi apple crisp topped with ice cream had us considering a life in the Ka'u district of Big Island.

More Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year festivities last for 15 days. At home it was usually a one day affair on the first day of the Lunar New Year, but here, a little homesick for eating Chinese food with my parents and grandparents, I take every chance I can get to eat more of the food my grandma used to make. For this dinner, our friend's mother from Beijing prepared the food, and we provided dessert. Dessert first: I love desserts with red bean, sometimes even ordering it on the side, like one might ask for a side of chocolate sauce or ice cream. Ba bao fan, or eight treasure rice, stuffed with red bean paste, is one my favorites, maybe because it's usually reserved for special occasions. Above is the ba bao fan, miraculously unmolded from the bowl. Below is the first step of assembling the ba bao fan: lining the bowl with the eight treasures. Though in this case, I only had four dried fruits (only realizing now that that's probably a huge taboo because four is an unlucky number): raisins, Chinese red dates, kumquats, and lotus seeds.

A layer of sticky rice goes on top of this, then a layer of red bean paste, topped with more sticky rice to reach the top of the bowl. The whole bowl is steamed for about thirty minutes, and then flipped upside down on a plate to reveal the domed rice. Never having done this before, I had my doubts...but when the rice unmolded, dried fruits still in their concentric rings, my friend and I literally screamed with delight. I melted some rock candy (after burning the first pot of sugar) and poured it over the rice before serving.

But before dessert, we were tasked with filling and pleating a hundred or so dumplings (we had to earn our dinner), with our friend's mother guiding (laughing at?) us. I used to do this with my grandma, but didn't realize there were regional differences in rolling the wrappers. We used to roll circles like one rolls out cookie dough, with even pressure all around, resulting in slightly thick wrappers and doughy pleats. My friend's mother rolls out the wrappers using the edge of rolling pin on the edge of the dough circles, while rotating the dough, which produces a wrapper that's slightly thicker in the middle. Once the circle is folded in half over the filling and pleated, the different thicknesses are unnoticeable, and the resulting dumpling is more delicate.