Aloha, our kid! T
Phone: 01484 843342 Website: www.jaxbar.co.uk Opening hours: Thursday to Sunday, bar opens at 4pm and food served from 5pm-9pm. Bar open until late. de blah de 2.30pm - 9pm. Blah de blah de 12.30pm - 5.30pm. Children: Before 7pm please. Disabled access: No as it is in an old cottage-style building. The bill: £87.10 including drinks for Would you go back? HIS week, we travel about as far as it’s possible to go round the globe without starting to head back towards ourselves. Technically, the exact global opposite to Huddersfield is an oceanic point about five hundred kilometres south east of New Zealand, but in this case I’m utilising the old newspaper credo that one shouldn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
So, let’s don our grass skirts and sashay provocatively across to the islands of Hawaii. As a child, watching Steve McGarrett and his 5-0 pals sorting out the baddies on the telly, it seemed like such an incredible, otherworldly place.
Even now, in an age when I could get to Honolulu in just under 20 hours from this very desk for a very reasonable amount of money (I just Googled it and was sorely tempted to click on ‘buy now’!), there’s still an exotic distance to the place, stuck as it is pretty much slap-bang in the middle of the vast Pacific.
Just the name Hawaii brings so much to mind; Those ‘lei’ flower garlands, towering palms, deep green forests, big volcanoes, impossibly gorgeous young people surfing huge waves, gaudy shirts, and plenty of ukulele music.
I have always wanted to go and tour the islands – apparently each one has a very individual style, and I have always had a particular longing to visit the Dole pineapple farm. I’ve never seen the fruit actually growing, and you get to ride a little train through the huge pineapple fields. It’s definitely one of those fruits that we rather take for granted.
It appears in so much, from cakes to sweet & sour pork, from pizza to puddings. I urge you to look online for a picture of a pineapple farm. It’s breathtaking, and you’ll think of our spiky-topped little friend in a new light.
Pineapples form a large part of Hawaiian cuisine, naturally, along with other ingredients that grow abundantly in the lush volcanic soil and tropical warmth. Coconuts, guava, bananas, hot peppers and taro root are much used, as are big game-fish such as tuna and marlin. Groupers and snappers from closer to the shore are also much used, along with shrimp and lobsters.
Since being introduced to the islands in the late 1770s, pork is very popular, especially for the feasts known as ‘luaus,’ where whole pigs are seasoned and wrapped in banana or palm leaves, then cooked slowly in speciallydug pits, until the meat is collapsingly tender and delicious. Being situated where it is, essentially equidistant from four continents, Hawaii has also taken in many other cuisines, most significantly Japanese, and the large military presence at Pearl Harbor has given the island one of its most peculiar food obsessions, Spam.
Yes, Hawaii almost universally adores Spam, that luminous pink processed pork that divides gastronomic opinion down the middle. For the record, I don’t mind it, especially a nice fresh fritter. All over the islands, it’s used in dozens of different recipes including, hilariously, sushi. Most odd.
This week’s Spam-free recipe is a Hawaiian classic, Huli-Huli Chicken. Using plenty of that local pineapple, it’s a nice easy recipe for stickily-glazed chicken, along with a tasty rice dish and some slowroasted butternut squash, all topped with toasted nuts and coconut.
It’s a lovely, sunny recipe, which, as I gaze out of the window into swirling rain and leaden skies, is pretty much just what the doctor ordered.
I should point out here, before we get going, that this dish takes two days to make, with the rice being cooked a day ahead, and the chicken requiring overnight marinating in the sauce. Your meal planning will need tweaking accordingly. Now let’s get tropical.