You’ll wish this was a menu, not a cookbook…Smoked Marlin Salad with Creamy Horseradish-Fresh Herb Vinaigrette
I created this recipe for my New Year’s Eve 2004 menu. The marlin comes from the Fish Market Maui in Honokowai, where Jim, the owner, has some of the best smoked fish I have ever tasted. If you cannot locate any smoked marlin, try smoked salmon as an alternative.
Looking at the gorgeous photos in Executive Chef Michael Gallagher’s Maui Chef Seafood Cookbook, you may feel like you better sit up straight and know which fork to use.
But wait, you’re in your own kitchen! Can you really create these fancy works of art on your own not-so-fancy plates?
Look closer at the ingredients listed, and you’ll realize you can. The final presentations may not be as artfully stacked, drizzled and accented, but they’re going to taste just as good!
For example, take the ingredients for the Smoked Marlin Salad above. You’ve got horseradish, green onion, parsley, basil, tarragon, lemon juice, crème fraiche (or sour cream), white wine vinegar, canola oil, and salt and pepper—whip ’em up in a blender, and drizzle over salad greens adorned with sliced smoked marlin and grape tomatoes. Voilà!
The ingredients are all locally available—yummy things like Maui onion, Maui pineapple, Hawaiian chile pepper, Hawaiian sweet potato and Kamuela vine-ripened tomatoes—as well as the stuff you can find at Longs, like shoyu, wasabi and macadamia nuts.
Each recipe is accompanied by a snippet of background information that’s fun to read and makes each recipe seem a little less intimidating. Sometimes the snippets include suggestions for preparation, such as the colorful Maui Napoleon Poke Trio Salad—“I bought a special stainless steel ring mold just for this recipe, which you can find in various sizes in most restaurant supply stores. They are well worth the few dollars they will cost to create some beautiful presentations.”
With some of the recipes in the book, you’ll wish you could just order them off the menu and get right to it.
Seared Onaga with Guava-Ginger Vinaigrette and Candied Macadamia Nuts, anyone? Just to “candy” the mac nuts would use up all my cooking energy—“In a small bowl, whip water and sugar together until sugar has dissolved. Toss nuts in sugar water and spread on a Teflon cookie sheet. Roast in oven for 15 minutes…Remove from heat and let cool at room temperature; remove from pan. Break up brittle into smaller pieces”…Let’s eat, already!
But for that special dinner where you want to present the best of Maui seafood in an artistic way that will knock out your guests; or better yet, for a romantic evening to really make your date fall in love with you, you have to try the Banana-Crusted Ehu with Hawaiian Vanilla Bean-Coconut Butter Sauce. Although it sounds like a dreamy dessert, Gallagher tells us: “Ehu is a red snapper that… is found in waters up to 1,000 feet deep. This moist, flaky fish is prized among local fishermen and considered a Hawaiian delicacy.”
The one thing Maui Chef is missing is a nod to sustainable seafood. The book has a beautifully illustrated Glossary of Hawaiian Fish in the back, where Gallagher could easily have referred readers to the Seafood Watch: Seafood Guide for Hawai‘i, or at least mentioned the importance of trying to choose fish that are pole-caught from Hawaiian waters.
However, he does include a nice list of local resources like Eskimo Candy, Fresh Island Herbs and Surfing Goat Dairy.
4 out of 5 Shakas
The Maui Chef Seafood Cookbook
By Executive Chef Michael Gallagher
Island Heritage Publishing
Waipahu, Hawai‘i, 2006
hardback, spiralbound
ISBN: 1-59700-319-0