Wednesday, January 11, 2012

On Location: Eating In on Kauai Island

Cooking away from home is a real treat to me. Eating out is a great way to take in the culture and traditions but something about shopping at local markets and preparing a home cooked meal feels like the most truly authentic experience.
Between the ample fresh fish markets and daily farmer's markets, Kauai is an ideal springboard upon which to do some seriously delicious at-home cooking. As we were staying on the North Shore, the markets we frequented were in Hanalei but truly there is great, fresh fish and fruit to be had the island over. 
The avocados are the size of your face and run between $1-2. It truly is paradise!


Among some of our favorite meals...
Ahi Belly tacos. You've heard of pork belly but have you ever heard of ahi belly? We hadn't so of course we had to try it. Again lightly seared on a high heat grill draws the excess fat out of this cut and makes for an incredible fish taco fish. We also ate the seared ahi belly over brown rice which was equally great.
Sushi grade striped marlin, lightly seared. Raw kale salad with peanut chile pepper dressing and corn on the cob, both grown within miles of where we were staying. This meal made our Christmas Eve dinner deliciously non-traditional.
Macadamia nut pancakes with ginger syrup and poached eggs provided the perfect Christmas breakfast.
Rainbow chard frittata was delightful but the strange, unidentified root vegetable we paired it with was less than stellar. Physically, the tuber looked more like a yam but tasted more like a parsnip or turnip. Not our favorite.
I could not speak highly enough about the bananas in Kauai. If Butter Date were to have a sister site in Kauai, it would be named 'Apple Banana' because these bananas were out of this world. Completely unlike anything you'd find on the mainland they are half the size and twice as flavorful with a slight apple crispness to them. Yum!

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