Cook Real Hawai'i

Sheldon Simeon, known to many from his success on Top Chef, understands that Hawai’ian home cooking is remarkably complex and layered with elements from many cultures, some of them proudly ancestral, some of them borrowed from neighbors whose good cooking is impossible to ignore.

Here in Cook Real Hawai’i, Simeon, even though he is famous as a restaurant chef, is most interested in the home foods of the native Hawai’ians, the Koreans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Portuguese, and of the Filipinos who were his forebears. And with nearly every recipe he’s eagerly sharing the stories of communities and cooks.

In chapters with titles such as Heavy Pupus, Hibachi Styling, and Fry Action, he offers recipes for everything from poke and pork belly adobo to cold ginger chicken and coconut milk pudding with passion fruit curd. A vast proportion of the necessary ingredients can be easily found on the mainland, and nearly every recipe comes with a story that establishes its place in the home cooking pantheon.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.