By Request: Local cookbooks offer help during stay-at-home orders

Adam Gilbert closed a restaurant and started a book.

Plantation Tavern, the restaurant the chef and his wife, Sunny, opened in 2014, was a victim of the first coronavirus shutdown, serving its final takeout meal in April.

The next month, Gilbert dove into a book idea that his wife had suggested two years before: a cookbook for the community-supported agriculture universe.

CSA subscribers typically receive a box or bag every week or two, each filled with farm-fresh produce. There’s no picking and choosing; you get what’s in good supply. Maybe it’ll be lettuce and tomatoes, but also perhaps something less familiar, like carrot tops.

Plantation Tavern was a pickup site for CSA bags from Kahumana Organic Farms, and Gilbert had met his share of subscribers confounded by items in their bags. “I had free time, so I turned my wife’s concept into reality, based on see-a-need-fill-a-need.”

The 50-plus recipes in Gilbert’s book cover entrees, sides, snacks and sauces, with suggestions for what to do with the likes of lemon grass, turmeric, tamarind, kohlrabi and fennel, not to mention carrot tops (make pesto). You’ll also find some new ideas for more basic veggies, such as tomatoes, cucumbers and bananas.

Doing the design work himself and producing the book at a print shop in Kapolei made quick work of the project: It was ready for release in just three months.

The book is suited to the times, Gilbert says, with more people subscribing to CSA services, and the economy in growing need. “Using local products is so important for creating local jobs, which translates to local people spending their money locally, creating a stronger economy. … It is more important than ever to buy local and help strengthen our economy as quickly as possible.”

“HAWAII PRODUCE CSA COOKBOOK”

By Adam Gilbert (self-published, $14.99, $17.79 with shipping)

Order through plantationtavern.com, or call 230-0595

“YOU CAN pickle pretty much any hard vegetable in your CSA bag,” Gilbert notes, suggesting carrots and beets as alternatives for use with this simple sweet brine.

The liquid will take on the coloring of your radishes.

PICKLED RADISH

Adapted from “Hawaii Produce CSA Cookbook”

• 1/2 pound radishes, peeled and thinly sliced or cut into wedges
• >> Pickling liquid:
• 1 cup rice vinegar
• 1 strip kombu or 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar

Pack radish tightly into glass jar.

Combine pickling liquid ingredients, stirring to dissolve sugar. Pour over radish. Seal jar and refrigerate 2 days before eating. Serves 8.

Approximate nutritional information, per serving (using salt): 60 calories, no fat or cholesterol, 300 mg sodium, 16 g carbohydrate, 13 g sugar, no fiber or protein.

IT’S HOT out, a good time for cooking outside, which is great timing for Adrienne Robillard’s cookbook on isle-style grilling.

The book was launched last summer, when Robillard, a writer and English lecturer at Windward Community College, responded to a callout from Ulysses Press seeking a writer for a Hawaii-themed grilling cookbook. She found a photographer in Paiva, who heads up the communications and marketing firm Put It on My Plate and services a number of food-industry clients.

They set “a pretty aggressive grilling schedule for November and December,” Robillard said. “We met on Fridays and weekends to grill, dice, slice, flip and taste test, with Dawn documenting everything before we lost the sunlight.”

“It was a very intense two months of grilling,” Paiva added. “I think both of our husbands said some form of, ‘I don’t need to eat anything grilled for a really long time.’”

The book includes close to 60 recipes covering proteins (guava chicken, ginger-garlic pork chops, miso shrimp), veggie sides (sesame eggplant, crispy carrots, grilled romaine with mango) and sweet thoughts (grilled sweet bread). Paiva notes: “We’d say, ‘Can you grill that?’ ‘I dunno, should we see if it works?’”

She adds that the book meets today’s needs, when many people want to avoid repeated visits to stores. “Most of the recipes in here use local staples that most of us already have in our kitchen cabinets, but not necessarily the same way you always combine them,” she said. “So it’s a nice way to shake up the routine.”

“THE ‘OHANA GRILL COOKBOOK”

By Adrienne Robillard, photos by Dawn Sakamoto Paiva (Ulysses Press, $24.95)

Available at Barnes & Noble Ala Moana Center and Bookends in Kailua or online sources (Paiva suggests bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores)

USING MAPLE syrup instead of sugar gives this marinade a deeper type of sweetness. Robillard notes that the marinade provides a flavor boost without weighing down the salmon.

SOY GINGER SALMON

Adapted from “The ‘Ohana Grill Cookbook”

• 4 (1/2-pound) salmon fillets
• Sesame seeds and furikake, for garnish (optional)
• >> Marinade:
• 1/4 cup reduced-sodium shoyu
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon minced ginger

Whisk marinade ingredients together. Reserve 1/4 cup marinade in refrigerator.

Place fish in zip-top bag or a container; add marinade. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, or preferably overnight.

Heat a clean and oiled grill to medium-high.

Remove fillets from marinade and place skin side down on grate. Grill about 9 minutes, basting with reserved marinade. Garnish with sesame seeds and furikake, if desired. Serves 4.

Approximate nutritional information, per serving: 630 calories, 41 g fat, 8 g saturated fat, 125 mg cholesterol, 700 mg sodium, 15 g carbohydrate, no fiber, 12 g sugar, 47 g protein.

Nutritional analysis by Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S.