Many of today’s food trends reflect a stepping back to tried-and-true methods of accessing and preparing the food we eat. From growing our own fruits and veggies to pickling and fermenting them, what’s old is new again.
In what may be the beginnings of a trend, two Honolulu chefs are exploring the Old World practice of smoking food in innovative and sophisticated ways that produce dishes — and drinks — with refined, layered and balanced flavors.
A FEW SMOKING METHODS
There are countless ways to smoke food beyond using a pricey Weber grill. There are smoking guns and teapots. You can even smoke food in a pot on the stove or in a cardboard box. "There are so many ways to MacGyver it," says Jon Matsubara, chef de cuisine of Japengo, who’s had a love affair with smoking since he was a child.
» Hot: Food is cooked with indirect heat or over a heat source and exposed to a smoking material (i.e., fire and wood on a grill).
» Cold: Used as part of a process to preserve food or to infuse food with smoky flavor without cooking it. One method: In a large, tall box, ignited smoke chips are placed in a tray at the bottom of the box, an ice tray is placed on a rack above it to keep temperature regulated, and food is placed on a high rack, far from heated chips. Items cold-smoked include cheese, fruit, vegetables, yogurt and salmon. Recommended temperatures vary but in general are below 100 degrees.
» Stove top: To smoke food in a pot, line bottom of pot with foil, place wood shavings on it, then cover with another layer of foil. Place steamer on foil, and place food on steamer. Cover pot and heat on high until smoking. Lower heat to medium-low and smoke 10 to 15 minutes for chicken or fish, and 30 to 40 minutes for large cuts of meat such as pork shoulder (this will need finishing in oven). Turn off heat and let food rest in covered pot 10 minutes. If necessary, finish food in oven.
» Smoking gun: Hand-held smoker in which wood chips are placed in a chamber and lighted. A tube attached to the gun allows smoke to be pumped into any receptacle, such as a clear bowl for a fancy presentation. Guns can be purchased for $100 or less.
» Also: Think beyond wood and smoke with dried teas, dried rosemary and other herbs, or jasmine rice.
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Pastry chef Ed Morita is using honey he smokes himself to play with the boundaries of sweet and savory. This is the theme of Off the Wall Craft Desserts & Kitchen, or OTW Craft, a new King Street restaurant Morita opened with Kyle Matsumoto and Andrew Mitani.
To start, the honeys themselves embody the OTW Craft concept, with smokiness tempering intense sweetness and adding umami (rounded, rich, savory taste). They serve as a bridge from savory to sweet.
Morita turns the smoked honeys — he has created four — into syrups and incorporates them into menu items such as bacon sticky buns and fried chicken.
But his most intriguing use of the smoked honey syrups is in drinks — cocktails, mocktails and, soon, sodas. The point, he says, is to "move flavor on the palate."
For the uninitiated, Morita explains that taste buds on different areas of the tongue pick up different flavors: Sour flavors are experienced on the sides of the tongue, sweet at the tip and bitter at the back. Because alcohol is bitter, alcohol-based drinks are experienced at the back of the palate. Smokiness mellows alcohol’s astringency, moving it forward on the palate. The variations in the smoke add other dimensions as well.
"You can structure a food the way you want it to be experienced on the palate," he said.
For his version of a Manhattan cocktail, for instance, Morita uses honey smoked with cherry wood, referencing the drink’s traditional garnish of maraschino cherry. The sweeter quality of the cherry smoke helps move the flavor forward.
A Moscow Mule features kiawe-smoked honey, which lends a citrusy quality to the drink and moves flavor "to the cheeks," he said.
Morita’s other honeys include a tobacco-smoked version using a sweet tobacco, and falernum honey incorporating falernum that he makes himself. (Falernum is a sweet, spicy syrup that traditionally comprises flavors of lime, almond and a variety of spices such as ginger, cloves, allspice, star anise and cinnamon.)
As to the how-to’s of smoking honey, Morita is mum. But no matter. If things go as planned, customers won’t go wanting. Eventually, he says, OTW Craft plans to sell the spiked honeys.
Meanwhile, in Waikiki, Jon Matsubara continues to indulge a childhood preoccupation.
"I’m like a pyromaniac," said Matsubara, chef de cuisine of Japengo at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa. "Since I was a kid, I’ve loved to play with fire. Smoking is something I’ve always done in all my cooking."
At Japengo, Matsubara has employed various methods to smoke everything from pizza and poached eggs to ikura (roe), foie gras, tomato and even shoyu.
"Smoking adds layers of flavor without adding calories," he said.
His house-made bonito shoyu, for instance, starts out with a smoky quality because of the flavor profile of the bonito. Smoking it brings out even more layers of flavor.
Another example: A wagyu carpaccio salad, served with frisee greens, manchego cheese and apple slices, becomes a more nuanced dish when smoke is introduced right before it’s served. The salad is brought to the table in dramatic fashion, covered by a glass dome filled with wisps of smoke.
"This dish has light whispers of smokiness that enhance the sweet and tart apples," he said, much the way smoked cheese complements fruit.
A light smoking treatment is also in order for vegetables and fish, while fatty meat and foods such as foie gras that bear a stronger odor do well with more pronounced smoking.
For Christmas dinners this past holiday season, Matsubara and crew cold-smoked 400 lobster tails, which left them flavored but not cooked. Upon order the tails were "popped into the oven" and served with butter. Such rich, smoked dishes, he said, are balanced by fresh and sweet items, or something light like a vinaigrette.
With his penchant for smoking, Matsubara has employed the technique in varied gourmet dishes: ikura and crab, served on toast; poached egg with pipi kaula; caviar served with fern shoots; corn on the cob dressed in garlic butter; ama ebi (sweet shrimp) mixed with uni (sea urchin) and served chiraishi-style (over sushi rice); and smoked tomato turned into a ginger-tomato broth served with fish.
However sophisticated his preparations have become, Matsubara’s appreciation of smoking is rooted in the fundamental.
"I love smoking because it’s tied to the most basic form of cooking: fire and wood," he said. "It’s a personal hobby of mine."
OTW Craft is at 1272 S. King St.; call 486-9255. Japengo is at Hyatt Regency Waikiki; call 237-6180.
GARLIC-SMOKED PORK CHOPS WITH SAMBAL KETCHUP
Courtesy chef Jon Matsubara
» 6 1/2-inch-thick pork chops
» 2 tablespoons olive oil
» 2 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
» Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
Sambal ketchup:
» 1 cup ketchup
» 1 tablespoon sambal olek
» 1 teaspoon Worcestershire
To make ketchup, mix all ingredients and taste; add more heat if desired. Set aside.
Oil chops with your hands and rub garlic on every piece, then season liberally with salt and pepper. Set aside until chops reach room temperature.
Using covered grill, heat 3 pounds charcoal. When coals are gray, add 4- to 5-ounce kiawe chunk. Place coals on one side of grill and let kiawe catch fire.
Sear and mark chops over coals for
1 minute, then move to opposite end of grill. Cover grill and smoke chops 10 minutes. Keep smoking until chops are cooked but have a pink-white center.
Remove from heat and serve with sambal ketchup. Serves 6.
Approximate nutritional information, per pork chop and ketchup serving (not including salt to taste and using all of ketchup): 290 calories, 13 g fat, 3.5 g saturated fat, 75 mg cholesterol, 800 mg sodium, 11 g carbohydrate, no fiber, 9 g sugar, 30 g protein
KIAWE-SMOKED CORN ON THE COB WITH GARLIC SALT BUTTER
Courtesy chef Jon Matsubara
» 3 pieces local sweet corn
» 2 cups kiawe wood chips, soaked in water for 5 minutes and drained
» 1 block unsalted butter
» Lawry’s brand garlic salt
» 1 lemon, sliced in 6 wedges
Clean corn and cut in half. In a covered grill, light 3 pounds charcoal and wait until coals turn gray.
Move charcoal to one side of grill and place corn on opposite end. Put half of wood chips on coals. Cover grill and smoke 10 minutes, then add rest of chips and smoke 5 to 10 more minutes, until corn is cooked.
Insert skewers or half a chopstick, cut at an angle to fashion a tip, into cobs.
In shallow bowl, melt butter and roll corn in butter to coat thoroughly. Add garlic salt and more butter. Squeeze lemon juice over cob to finish. Serves 6.
Approximate nutritional information, per serving (including 1 teaspoon Lawry’s garlic salt): 190 calories, 16 g fat, 10 g saturated fat, 40 mg cholesterol, 200 mg sodium, 13 g carbohydrate, 2 g fiber, 5 g sugar, 2 g protein
Nutritional analysis by Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S., a nutritionist in the Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Science, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii-Manoa.
