A Little Bit of Borrowed Inspiration

It's still too darn hot to cook. Just the idea of turning on my oven or stove makes me want to run a cold bath and stay in it. From my rapidly growing collection of daily food blogs, I remembered two very interesting posts. And thus comes forth dinner.

We asked our neighbor, who conveniently calls Hawaii her home, if she had any good poke recipes. Not only did she loan us her Hawaiian home cooking book, she also rustled up a curiosity she found in the local Asian market: a poke kit. It was made up of a small packet of red Hawaiian salt, ogo (a feathery pink branching kind of seaweed) sesame seed and chili pepper. According to the directions, I added the ogo to a bowl of water and let it soak for 3-4 minutes. I drained it, chopped it into bits and added it to a pound of ahi chopped into 3/4" pieces. I tossed it with a tablespoon each of tamari and sesame oil, 3 green onions sliced into very thin rounds, a chopped garlic clove and a bit of chopped manzano pepper. I let that sit in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, I preheated the oven to 350 (I know, I know, cold bath) and cut 12 wonton skins in half. Eschewing Heidi's other ingredients, I bake them plain on a Silpat for 10 minutes or so, until they were browned.

I carefully broke apart a Savoy cabbage into whole leaves, scooped a few spoonfuls of poke into them, garnished with some daikon sprouts and added the wonton chips. Of course we gave some to our neighbor, and she said that it tasted just like how it's made at home. Sometimes, I even impress myself.

Next time, and there will be a next time, I'll let the poke sit a bit longer in the fridge. Our second helpings tasted even better than the first.

P.S. I am well aware that I also need to take some very good instruction from these folk (Matt's permalinks still aren't working so well). My photos kind of stink.