Kelly worked on this at Menu Development on Monday. I told her that I am most happy and proud of the fact that she looked in the New Wave Luau Book for an inspiration. She got the idea for this dish from the book. Finding inspiration this way is no different than any culinarian looking into the past for an inspiration, or trying to understand the past, or me finding an old plantation dish to rework.
Kelly did well today, and it is on tonight's menu. A lot of times, the answers are right in front of us. All we have to do is to look in the right places instead of stressing out because we are trying to become Mr Contemporary.
I'm always looking for inspiration from the past, and I just bought and received two books. The first is called, "Kauai Cookbook", the copy and text prepared by the Kekaha Parent Teachers Association in 1954. The table of contents are divided into ethnicity, including Italians and the Spanish, also Cosmopolitan. The second book is called, "The Epicure in Hawaii", First Edition done in 1938 by William M. Roth, and Jane Swinerton from the Colt Press. This one begins with the luau, and I also discovered that fish was wrapped in corn husks, very much like the lawalu I know which is fish wrapped in ti leaves.
~AW