Maui native’s winning recipe brings limu poke to San Diego

Sean “Maui” Canosa can be a little prickly about poke.

“Over here it’s crazy. They put sweet corn in their poke. It’s weird.”

And don’t even get him started on people who spell it poki or poké.

Canosa, a Maui boy born and bred, owns Island Life Foods in San Diego — aka ILNLYFFOODS (get it?) — doing catering, meal preparation and taking his food tent to several farmers markets weekly.

He struck a blow for not-weird poke at the eighth annual I Love Poke San Diego competition, winning first place for his take on limu poke. No soy sauce, no mayonnaise, “and certainly no corn,” he said.

“In San Diego they don’t even know limu poke, so I wanted to show what real, traditional poke is.”

He did include roasted garlic and he did serve his poke with a raw oyster and a strip of fresh uni (sea urchin). His entry was judged, though, purely on the poke.

Speaking of uni, at Island Life Foods, Canosa offers two striking two sea urchin dishes, the Maui Shooter (oyster, uni and raw quail egg, $6) and Poke-Stuffed Uni ($14.99), which is poke served in a sea urchin shell (spines and all) with uni on top. Uni straight up is $12.99, cleaned, with its four to five “tongues” or strips of meat in the shell.

The uni is among his top sellers, Canosa said. “Even if they’re not hungry, they still want the shooter.”

Divers harvest the sea urchin from along the coast from Point Loma to Oceanside, he said. He picks up his order at the dock, 60 on an average day, up to 200 on a Saturday.

The urchins are cracked open to order, using spoons. They’re drained, any algae is removed and the tongues go through two ice-water baths to cleanse them. The skin is also peeled off the backs of the tongues to make them easier to eat.

Gloves are worn to protect against the spines, but Canosa said if you do get poked, it’s not the ordeal it would be if you were speared by a Hawaiian urchin (wana) with its toxic spines.

California sea urchin is far sweeter than wana meat, which “tastes like an aggressive oyster,” he said. “I’ve only seen the old-time uncles eat the wana.”

His uni products were not a tough sell at farmers markets, where customers are on the troll for “weird things” and are open to the experience. “People come there for things they’ve never seen before.”

This is Canosa’s winning poke recipe. One of his key techniques is to let the mixture sit for 10 minutes, then stir, then sit again. This allows the sea salt to dissolve into the mix before you adjust any of the seasonings.

Maui-Style Limu Poke

• 1 pound diced fresh yellowfin tuna
• 1/4 cup sliced red onion
• 1 cup sliced chives
• 2 tablespoons chopped roasted garlic
• 1 tablespoon chili oil
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon toasted inamona (ground kukui nut)
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh ogo
• 1-2 pinches red Hawaiian sea salt

Combine all ingredients, adding salt last. Let sit 10 minutes. Mix again; let sit another 10 minutes. Taste and adjust salt. Serves 4.

Approximate nutritional information, per serving: 220 calories, 9 g total fat, 1 g saturated fat, 45 mg cholesterol, 900 mg sodium, 4 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 1 g sugar, 29 g protein.

Write By Request, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, Honolulu 96813; or email requests to bshimabukuro@staradvertiser.com.