ho'i'o: foraging for fiddleheads

 

on the continent they're called fiddleheads. here in hawai'i they're known as ho'i'o. unless you're from maui - then they are pohole. or if you're japanese, in which case: warabi. these are my current vegetable obsession. closely followed by watercress - but more on that later.

i have had the incredible good fortune of spending a lot of time lately in waiahole, where my friend maile lives with a waterfall, taro patches, gardens, and a very sweet dog. maile invited us out a few weeks ago for a "true food sovereignty experience" - foraging in near her stream for young fern shoots. i love foraging. it's so satisfying. i think i could spend all day rummaging around in ferns taller than myself, hunting for those tightly curled little fronds, bursting with life. the first time we picked we were advised not to be careful with the rest of the fern leaves - the mature ones. the more you knock those down the more the plant send out new shoots, and i have been reaping the bounty on that advice as new shoots come up weekly.

you can eat them right there while you're picking; raw they have a kind of what my aunty wanda calls "gneah-gneah" quality to them. meaning, i think, that they leave a bit of a texture on the roof of your mouth. i would describe ho'i'o as the cross between asparagus and okra. but much prettier. it's got that firm, watery, tasty quality of asparagus with a bit of the slimy this-must-be-good-for-me quality of okra.

 the most popular way to eat ho'i'o is in a salad, where you blanch the ferns and combine them with opae (shrimps), tomato and onion.  i tried a number of different dishes using ho'i'o, like stir fried with leftover ahi poke and chili peppers. or sauteed with carmelized onions. i also made my own version of ho'i'o salad, adapting grandma ho's recipe for watercress salad. this went over pretty well at a couple of potlucks, so i'll share that recipe with you here.

ho'i'o salmon salad

1 block tofu, drained and cubed
2 tomatoes, diced
3 green onions, finely chopped
1 package bean sprouts (1/2 lb?), blanched
1 can salmon
1 can bamboo shoots, sliced thin
1 can baby corn
as much ho'i'o as you like, blanched

sauce
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 Tbs sesame oil
3/4 cup soy sauce
juice of 1/2 lemon

just layer the ingredients in an order that's visually appealing - with the ho'i'o on top to showcase it, and then pour the sauce on top. obviously all of those ingredients are optional - i added the bamboo shoots and baby corn, that does not feature in grandma's watercress salad - which she was sure to let me know.
there aren't any photos of this salad because, well, when i'm cooking for a potluck i'm usually running late. so here's a photo of  one of what they look like in a pan. i'd love to hear about any other dishes you've tried with fern shoots - leave a comment!

thanks to maile for the photos and for the experience!

new year's traditions

the past three weeks marty and i spent in hawai'i with my family for the holidays. and while we were enjoying ourselves and even doing radical domestic stuff, i couldn't bring myself to sit in front of the computer to blog about it. but now we're home and so it's time to catch up on the vacay postings.

we'll start with mochi pounding.


mochitsuki, the pounding and making of mochi, is a japanese new year's tradition, and my family joins our closest friends on kaua'i each year before the new year to pound it out and roll it up.


the process starts the day before, soaking the mochi rice overnight. after soaking, the mochi rice is put into the seiro, a series wooden steaming frames, and steamed.

the hot cooked rice is then put into the usu, a big carved stone bowl, where it is pounded with a kine or wooden mallet. typically three mochi pounders go to work first smashing and then pounding the mochi in rhythm.


the job is then finished up by one pounder while one adept person with quick hands scrapes the sticky mochi from the sides of the bowl between pounds with the mallet.


when the mochi has reached optimum consistency it's delivered to a wax paper and katakuriko , potato starch - covered table where the mochi gets made. one person pinches off little balls of mochi and the others form, pinching and patting them in their hands into the proper mochi shape.

some mochi are made with an, adzuki bean paste, in the center. we've also branched out to non-traditional but oh-so-tasty varieties like chocolate-peanut buter filled mochi.

most of the mochi are made into standard palm-sized confections, with a few batches made into special sizes for new year's traditions, such the tiny mochi balls used for ozoni, a soup made with mochi. also, special mochi are made for the kagami mochi, a traditional new year's decoration and offering made with one smaller mochi atop a larger mochi, which is then topped with a mandarin orange with the leaf attached.


the kagami takes its place near the entrance to the home at new year's time along with the kadomatsu, an arrangement of bamboo, pine and flowers that sybolize good luck for the coming year.
my family spends new year's eve with our friends, eating traditional good luck foods, such as toshikoshi soba (yeah, buckwheat!) and lighting off fireworks. our established tradition in the past few years is to build what we call a "morning glory circle" around our fire pit in the front yard. this tradition started one year when we had a few boxes of those fireworks called morning glories, which resemble sparklers but have the added effect of popping off sparks and being a little more firey. bored with the typical use of holding and drawing shapes in the air with these sticks, we planted them in a circle and lit the whole thing on fire. this was great fun, and each year the amount of boxes of morning glories showing up at our house multiplied exponentially, such that the circle of planted morning glories is now feet deep and the fire produced at midnight when we light the circle resembles something nuclear. here are some images of this year's circle, which we built in the back since the front yard was too saturated from weeks of rain.

happy new year.