By Betty Shimabukuro Marc Vogel is a travelin' man with a travelin' pan — a 45-inch paella pan that has seen the world. Vogel is a San Francisco-based chef with a varied resume.
By Betty Shimabukuro Went to Kauai last week. Saw new things. Made a new friend. Picked up a new recipe. That's what vacations are for.
By Betty Shimabukuro Lisa Tam's request is for a treat that takes me back years, to my early days of operating a stove: "It was a fake malasada that was made with bread and tasted pretty much like the real thing without all the deep-fat frying," Tam wrote.
By Betty Shimabukuro Last week, due to a little miscalculation while grocery shopping, I ended up with an excess of cucumbers in the vegetable bin. Miscalculation as in, “I wonder if I have any cucumbers, oh well, I guess I’ll buy three,” and it turns out there were already three at home.
By Betty Shimabukuro We make cakes out of carrots, zucchini and a host of fruits, so why not tomatoes? No reason not to, and in fact bakers have been using tomato sauce, condensed tomato soup and even ketchup to make cakes for generations.
By Betty Shimabukuro Couscous is a teeny, tiny type of pasta — so tiny that it looks like a grain and has a texture something like a grain, which makes for very interesting salads.
By Betty Shimabukuro This story begins during the childhood of Rachel Kaminaka, specifically in the kitchen of her aunt, Natsue Iwamoto, "Aunty Na-chan." Aunty made a favorite family dessert that she just called dango.
By Betty Shimabukuro Despite the advice of my doctor regarding sodium, and despite last week's news regarding processed meat (it's not kinda bad for you, it's REALLY bad for you), I love corned beef.
By Betty Shimabukuro She calls him "Querido" (Spanish for "darling"). He calls her Mrs. Soto. Together they are a finely tuned pasteles pair.
By Betty Shimabukuro A cup equals 8 fluid ounces, equals 16 tablespoons, right? It's a standardized thing, so a cup of sugar and a cup of rice take up the same amount of space in the universe. Right?
By Betty Shimabukuro First of all, sorry, sorry, sorry. A recipe printed here Jan. 9 for Chocolate Shortbread Cookies from Aikahi Elementary School proved popular with those who fondly recall their school cafeteria cookies or who just liked the idea of chocolate in their shortbread. That was the good news.
By Betty Shimabukuro We should all eat a snake in the next few days, given that Sunday marks the dawning of the Year of the Snake.
By Betty Shimabukuro Frances Kitabayashi would like to make use of the lilikoi growing in her yard by making lilikoi butter, a treat handy as a spread for toast, a topping on pancakes, a filling for parfaits.
By Betty Shimabukuro If you're planning to make today's cake, a banana chiffon, get organized. This is not the kind of easy recipe that you can pull off on the fly, measuring as you go.
By Betty Shimabukuro The recipe posse opens the year with a score of plus 5, minus 10. A list of elusive recipes printed last week in this space drew responses from readers that I expect will yield five solid recipes.
By Betty Shimabukuro Here it is, 2013. How did that happen so fast? As is my custom, I am looking back on recipe requests that have come in through the year. I am sadly behind. How did that happen?
By Betty Shimabukuro One holiday down, one to go. More cooking on the horizon before we make those typical January promises to be good, eat less, yada yada.
By Betty Shimabukuro I can't really afford the cash going out or the calories coming in, yet I continue to order the peppermint mocha at such coffee emporiums as Starbucks or Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.
By Betty Shimabukuro What are you doing Friday night? I will be at the movies with Balin and Bilbo, Bifur and Bombur, Gandalf and Gollum. And 100 million other people. And my seed cake.
By Betty Shimabukuro Jell-O is the go-to dessert for many during the holidays. Easy, refreshing and — with all those choices of red flavors — so full of ho-ho-ho. We all have an auntie or cousin who brings the red-green-cream-cheese layered dessert to the potluck, right? It just says Christmas.
By Betty Shimabukuro It is the day before the great turkey holiday, time for me to say thanks to everyone who has shared a recipe with me this year.
By Betty Shimabukuro Baking mistakes can yield happy results. The problem is re-creating the mistake, especially if you weren’t there.
By Betty Shimabukuro Of everyone in my household, the one who spends the most time with me in the kitchen is my dog. Not that he's much help. Mostly he stares at me and waits for food to drop.
By Betty Shimabukuro June Tong's friends and fans have been after her for years to publish a second cookbook. Tong's first, "Popo's Kitchen" from 1989, is a staple of many island kitchens, a straightforward guide to Chinese home cooking.
By Betty Shimabukuro It's almost Halloween. If this ramps up your fear of vampires, consider pickling some garlic. Put up a pound of cloves now in a briny solution and by Oct. 31 they'll be ready to offer you full vampiric protection with less pungency and bite than your usual pound of garlic.
By Betty Shimabukuro Something to chew on: In an average month this year, recipe hunters launched 9.2 million online searches for pork chop dishes. This places pork chops in the No. 1 position on the list of most-searched-for recipes in 2012.
By Betty Shimabukuro Percolating right now in my Crock-Pot is a cookbook. It's cooking very slowly; should be ready for the public eye at this time next year.
By Betty Shimabukuro A warm, soft biscuit is a lovely thing. A warm, soft biscuit, sliced in half with a slice of cheese melting slightly in the center — mmmm. Next step on the evolutionary scale: Bake the biscuit and the cheese together.
By Betty Shimabukuro Life has been good since my friend Jim brought a bowl of fresh lilikoi into the office. He refills the bowl occasionally, and I take home more than my share.
By Betty Shimabukuro The reason lilikoi is called passion fruit in English is that it is passionately awesome. OK, I made that up. But it is true that pure, fresh lilikoi is magical.
By Betty Shimabukuro My adventures in Crock-Pot cooking have been lacking in dessert ideas. So thank you, Deborah Schneider, for your new cookbook, "The Mexican Slow Cooker," and the recipe on Page 123 for a chocolate bread pudding.
By Betty Shimabukuro The concept of banana pudding exposed a gap in my knowledge of yummy things, one that I am happy to close.
By Betty Shimabukuro Just got back from a vacation in Las Vegas. Hours spent in casinos: zero. Hours spent in the kitchen: lots.
By Betty Shimabukuro Bill Lennan’s request for a mango jam made with agave makes sense. Agave is a super sweetener distilled from a cactus and considered better than refined white sugar for those on reduced-sugar diets.
By Betty Shimabukuro Today's topic is almonds, specifically almonds in cookies, and comes courtesy of Geraldine Davis, who wants a good recipe for a Chinese almond cookie.
By Betty Shimabukuro If you say a dish is “like Grandma used to make,” people will know what you mean, even if their grandma is 93 and yours is 47.
By Betty Shimabukuro Today I've got Part 2 of two recent columns, dealing with follow-up questions from readers. First, the issue of cutting a kabocha.
By Betty Shimabukuro The world of Crock-Pot cooking is not particularly kind to vegetables. Hours of slow simmering leave most in a state of taste and texture that is less than ideal. Or in a state of plain yuckiness.
By Betty Shimabukuro Richard Deveas is a man of few words: "Request beef curry stew (local style). Mahalo." It's clear what he means, even in a world of countless curry options.
By Betty Shimabukuro Two things came into my life in 2011: a papaya tree and a food processor. Combined, they made a recipe.
By Betty Shimabukuro If you have a tofu aversion — for example, if I were to tell you the pie you just ate was made with tofu and you said “ack!” — grow up already.
By Betty Shimabukuro Reney Ching credits her Chinese grandmother for inspiring the beef stew she makes as head cook at Punahou School, a fitting thought as Mother's Day approaches on Sunday.
By Betty Shimabukuro The hardest thing about making your own pickled rakkyo is finding the key ingredient.
By Betty Shimabukuro More than a year ago, Les M. wrote in search of an oxtail stew recipe he could make in his Crock-Pot. It's taken a long time, but think of this recipe as slow-cooking in my brain.
By Betty Shimabukuro When it comes to Crock-Pot cooking, the holy grail is a dish that is at its prime after 10 hours of cooking, one that can be scooped directly onto dinner plates at the end of an eight-hour workday, plus commute.
By Betty Shimabukuro Last week I had a burst of slow-cooker energy, if that is not a contradiction in terms. Came up with three recipes that I'll be presenting over the rest of April as a continuation of last year's "Slow Ono" Crock-Pot crusade.
By Betty Shimabukuro When is the last time you heard an endorsement this unequivocal: "My whole family loved it sooo much. Not too garlicky, not too sweet, not too salty, but perfect and extremely delicious."
By Betty Shimabukuro If you, like me, have been trying hard to make friends with your Crock-Pot, you've probably noticed that all the easy recipes are for big hunks of meat. Warm, wholesome and satisfying they may be, but few are good partners in the quest to eat light.
By Betty Shimabukuro I love Jeremy Lin. I would like to shake his hand, cook him dinner, introduce him to my daughter. None of these things being likely, I'll just think about them, specifically what I might make him for dinner.
By Betty Shimabukuro If you like the comforting fulfilment of a bowl of stew but are trying to cut back on red meat, a chicken stew could be the answer.
By Betty Shimabukuro On an unfortunate day in the 1970s, a couple of young lads were led into temptation by their love of shortbread. They stole a 5-gallon can of cookies from the Kailua High School cafeteria, which may have seemed a harmless prank, but not to Edith Ichi­masa, the cafeteria manager.
By Betty Shimabukuro New snack sensation: toasted pasta. Try it. Heat some olive oil in a skillet, add broken pieces of pasta and toss until nicely toasted. Taste. OK, maybe it's not on par with hot buttered popcorn, but you'll be surprised.
By Betty Shimabukuro This week's mission was to make a baked version of those crispy, crunchy Okinawan fried spheres — andagi — on behalf of a correspondent, Cynthia. She'd made an attempt using a standard recipe in muffin pans but wanted to know if there was a real recipe out there.
By Betty Shimabukuro I probably shouldn't admit this, but my education in biscuits is grounded in Bisquick and Poppin' Fresh. A biscuit never seemed something to obsess about, and the old easy fix has always seemed plenty good enough.
By Betty Shimabukuro The Spanish rice that we know and love in Hawaii is really a take on Mexican rice — a side dish of rice simmered with tomatoes, onions and spices — except that our version is a main dish, an economical one-pot meal bulked up with ground beef.
By Betty Shimabukuro A good baker of my acquaintance once told me that everything tastes better with cream cheese. This is an easy hypothesis to test.
By Betty Shimabukuro After I die, I’d like to be remembered for a recipe. As I’m not likely to be known for a stunning act of heroism, or brilliant leadership, or making wads of money, I will settle for a legacy of yum — one special dish that will force my children to think of me whenever they make it, a recipe they can pass to their children, and so on.
By Betty Shimabukuro Every so often a recipe request arrives here that tugs at the heartstrings as well as the taste buds — Karen Chang's is the latest.
By Betty Shimabukuro The world is awash in Chex mix recipes. You realize this when you go looking for a specific one and nothing else will do.
By Betty Shimabukuro The season for pumpkin desserts runs all year 'round but peaks during the sugar rush between Halloween and Christmas, when we have fall-like thoughts and cinnamon on the mind.
By Betty Shimabukuro Pho, that deeply flavored Vietnamese comfort soup, was a dish I always thought best left to professionals.
By Betty Shimabukuro If you've read today's cover story, you're up to speed on baking cookies without gluten. Now that you're hyped up on all that sugar, how about some pasta to bring you back to earth? Gluten-free, too.
By Betty Shimabukuro It's Thanksgiving Eve, time to say thanks for something. In my case it's for everyone who has shared a recipe with me this year.
By Betty Shimabukuro Cookbooks that hit shelves at the holidays fulfill a double need: They provide ideas for the dining extravaganzas of the season, and they make handy gifts. So it is with two new books that arrived recently on my desk, both being sold to support good causes.
By Betty Shimabukuro The Crock-Pot can be your friend at Thanksgiving, cooking up a nice side dish while your oven is busy with the turkey, your stove top is occupied with four other things and you're cleaning the house.
By Betty Shimabukuro When the taste buds say “Yes!” but the blood pressure cuff says “No!” you probably should be listening to the cuff. Which means that enjoying a nice platter of sashimi requires some rethinking. The typical accompaniment of soy sauce and wasabi is not a good idea. Sodium: bad.
By Betty Shimabukuro Since the advent of checked-baggage fees, we’ve been downsizing our luggage for every mainland trip, which means downsizing the omiyage carried for friends and family. The optimal carry-on gift is something light that packs flat, so it was enlightening to discover Hawaiian Sun powdered juice packages.
By Betty Shimabukuro Yes, "From the Heart of Hawaii's Families" is a cookbook, but for the students at Kapolei High School who helped assemble the recipes, it was an interdisciplinary educational exercise and, for many of them, a catharsis.
By Betty Shimabukuro My mission to make sauerbraten began with a shopping trip for two nonstaples: gingersnaps and juniper berries. The first was easy to find in the cookie aisle; the second, not so much.
By Betty Shimabukuro For all those who’ve been cooking along since January, when this monthly “Slow Ono” Crock Pot feature began, it’s time to demonstrate what you’ve learned. There could be some money in it.
By Betty Shimabukuro This is the day when I try to sell you a cookbook. It is also the day (the first Wednesday of the month) when I present you with a new recipe for your slow cooker. Conveniently, these efforts converge.
By Betty Shimabukuro So many foods, so little time. Case in point: Kewpie mayonnaise. I met this condiment just a couple of weeks ago, although some of my friends say that is only because I've been deprived my whole life. I've also discovered an underground of fanatics who share their love of Kewpie on various online sites.
By Betty Shimabukuro Thanks to caller Caroline Blakeley for her suggestion that in honor of this weekend's Greek Festival we all learn to make moussaka.
By Betty Shimabukuro Meatloaf is great comfort food but not the prettiest. Tends to sit there on a plate looking all dull, brown and loafy. Not something you'd put out at a party when you're trying to impress.
By Betty Shimabukuro One of my favorite vacation souvenirs is a new food — something tried for the first time in a new place that I can bring home in the form of a recipe.
By Betty Shimabukuro When my quest for local-style slow-cooker recipes launched in January, one of the first responders was Keith Okazaki, who sent in a couple of his success stories.
By Betty Shimabukuro Some people cook by eyeball. They throw things together in quantities that look right, then cook until it looks right. Others require precision instructions and will not move forward without them.