Poke in prime time

These days more than ever, variety truly is the spice of life. What kind of coffee do you like? Espresso? Latte? With caramel? With foam? Hot or cold? You got it. How about your pizza? Traditional with pepperoni and sausage, or gourmet with kalua pig and smoked chicken breast? Or maybe vegetarian, with vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh basil? Goat cheese instead of mozzarella? It’s all possible.

Local-style food is not immune to this phenomenon. Poke is a prime example. A visit to a fish market or supermarket fish department illustrates the kinds of innovative approaches to poke that go on today. There are kim chee and wasabi versions of spicy poke, nontraditional fishes such as salmon, creamy sauces and even vegetarian poke.

And for poke lovers who like to exercise their culinary inclinations, there’s the occasional poke contest. The next one up is this weekend at the Hawaii Ocean Expo, where contestants can enter their best recipe in one of three categories: ahi, tako and vegetarian.

Chef Reno Henriques, owner of Fresh Catch, co-sponsors the expo’s annual poke contest, now in its fourth year, supplying all the fish and ingredients.

"These contestants try anything and everything. There are so many ethnicities in Hawaii, with different seasonings. It’s interesting to see all the ideas," he said.

Colin Saito won the contest twice in its first three years. Last year, his recipe for ahi with warabi took first, while another for alii mushrooms — "they’re like abalone when you cook them" — took second place in the vegetarian category.

Saito has no culinary training, but growing up on Hawaii island, he spent years fishing and diving — and that meant learning to make poke.

"My grandpa had a store on the Big Island, and I used to watch him cook. He used to mix different sauces that were good with salads, so I tried mixing them with fish," he said.

Saito said he pays attention to the flavors of the foods he enjoys, then thinks of how to replicate them in a poke sauce.

"My tako poke is based on a Chinese recipe for steamed fish in ginger, soy sauce and oil. I take the tako and mix it with Chinese parsley, green onion, onion, chung choy (preserved turnip), red pepper, shoyu, hot oil, ginger and garlic. You get the same flavor," he said. "It’s familiar, but since it’s tako and it’s poke, it’s also different."

Another favorite of his family and friends is a cooked sauce of garlic, shoyu and sugar, with tomatoes and onions added in. "Lots of people who don’t usually eat poke eat this one," he said.

Saito’s advice for making good poke: "The fish must be decent, not scraps. It doesn’t have to be sashimi quality, but it should be fresh rather than frozen. It should be good quality."

Yet poke is caught smack in the middle of that eternal conflict between quality and expense — we all know how costly good fish can be.

"I don’t make poke that often," Saito admits. "Fish is so expensive."

It seems, however, that many poke lovers have clearly decided — at least for their everyday lives — that poke made with frozen fish can still be downright delicious. At Foodland supermarkets, where they offer poke made with both fresh and frozen fish, the poke bowls sell like hotcakes (one-choice bowls are $6.99 to $8.29, 2 choices $11.99 to $12.99). Some Foodland poke cases, such as the one at Market City, house incredible variety.

The standards, such as limu and shoyu poke, are joined by a long lineup that includes creamy spicy ahi mixed with masago (fish roe), an ahi avocado concoction, and, based on the favorite flavors of baseball great Shane Victorino, the Flyin’ Hawaiian kim chee poke.

"When I was young, my grandfather used to lomi (mix) akule with tomato, onion and Hawaiian salt," recalled Keoni Chang, Foodland’s corporate executive chef. "It had a raw ocean flavor. Nowadays, it’s about a balance of flavors."

Chang said there are different approaches to flavoring poke: marinating with sauce and mixing with salt and seasonings. Sometimes, marinades are mixed in at the last minute so the flavors don’t overpower the fish. In contrast, fish mixed with salt and seasonings must sit in order for flavors to develop.

Either way, people’s palates have changed as the cuisine of Hawaii has evolved.

"People today like smoother flavors, like those of Pacific Rim cuisine," Chang said. "Besides celebrating local ingredients, Pacific Rim cuisine used classic European techniques to smooth out flavors."

That "smoothing-out effect" led to an appreciation for creaminess, hence our love of mayonnaise and its pairing with hot and spicy ingredients.

"Mayo is the butter of the poke world," Chang said.

The ever-expanding recipe palette for poke reflects on our exposure to global flavors. Not only are Foodland chefs experimenting with new types of fish, they’re exploring Mediterranean flavors that use citrus juice and olive oil, and expanding on flavors of Asia with such ingredients as yuzu, dashi and Indonesian soy sauce, a thicker, richer sauce with more intense flavor.

Whatever the flavor base, Henriques, Chang and Saito all agree that a good poke begins with its sauce.

"You gotta have good sauce to make good poke," said Henriques.

Then there’s texture.

"The crunch of rock salt lends itself specifically to poke, much like onion or ogo," Chang said. "Masago lends a freshness with the bursts of flavor and crunch. These add to what’s going on."