Pot O' Poi

Being that I am equal parts English, Polish, German, and Italian, I thought it would be best to allow the Irishman tell the tale of our Poi-filled St. Patty's day. We may be far from the Emerald Isle but we still managed to get our hands on a few bottles of Guinness and Dylan was more than happy to take on this post...

It was St. Patrick’s Day this weekend, and for once I was not awash in a sea of red-faced Caucasians. Sure there are some here, but they are mostly retirees with sunburns. Ireland is the only nation in the world to have a lower population than it did 200 years ago, we all left when the potatoes went bad so I am certain that there is a McHatley’s pub somewhere on the island. It’s harder to imagine the dark paneling and high windows, the old men at the bar’s corners drinking steadily and quietly. More likely it is open to the air, fresh and sunny, and there are two men at the bar with Bushmills talking about the breaks on the North shore. Even an Irish bar, a seemingly universal constant, must be turned Hawai’ian.

This is the taro root, only slightly improved by a washing

That’s OK. I’m all about diversity. I’m sure they don’t get it exactly right in China either. I don’t miss the crowds on cold evenings in March, or the marketers’ attempts to make us all look like leprechaun billboards. Green beer is a terrible idea and the reckless stupidity of amateur drinkers is enough to make me question us as a species. I don’t miss many of the trapping of this commercialized holiday, but there is one thing that I long for deeply this time of year—corned beef and cabbage.

The things that we do not have are often what we want the most. I’m sure I am stepping on some self-help guru’s toes by spouting this simple cliché, but it is obviously true. St. Patrick’s day was officially recognized as a Christian feast day in the early seventeenth century, to commemorate the death of Saint Patrick, the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, and more broadly as a celebration of Irish culture and heritage. I have never heard someone at a bar on St. Patrick’s Day toasting to the downfall of the druids or seen a drunk college student trying to explain the holy trinity to some pagans by waving a glow-in-the-dark shamrock. Rest assured these are both activities that I will try next year. So, like many American holidays, we have stripped St. Patrick’s Day of its historical connotations to make it palatable and appealing. It wasn’t always a day of booze and drunk sincerity… or maybe it was.

It’s March in Ireland in the early 1800’s. It is still cold and it seems as through you have been damp since September. Maybe you live in the country; the sun is struggling and failing to break through the clouds, you smell like 6 months of peat smoke and sheep shit and you are trapped inside with way too many people on those long nights. Maybe you live in the city; there is a dense haze of coal smoke, you work in a factory that is trying its best to maim you and after work you get to go home to big meal of tea and old bread. Whatever your locale there is one condition that makes it all seem like a cruel joke; it’s Lent. That’s right, you can’t drink alcohol or eat meat. All of a sudden March 17^th comes around and the whiskey is back and there is corned beef everywhere and maybe the sun comes out a bit and you feel like you are coming out of hibernation.

Kind of pretty like beets; the skin gets peeled off after boiling

Strict religious dictums don’t have much sway in mainstream America anymore, but a little revelry after a long winter is something we can all cozy up to. I know what you are saying, “Shut up, you’re in the tropics, you don’t get to talk about the brutality of a North Eastern winter.” Fair enough. There will not be any beach pictures in this post. In fact, I will tell you that you are the lucky ones this time, your reward for winter is whiskey, stout and corned beef and cabbage. I only eat it once a year, but it is one of my favorite dishes, and the rarity is what makes it so special. Since the real stuff isn’t an option, I decided I would try my best to recreate it with whatever we had at hand. Suffice it to say, the tropics is not the land of meat and potatoes.

I’ve developed a process for converting recipes to Hawai’ian. Break all the component parts down as far as you need to go until you get to a point where you can substitute something you have on hand for whatever is missing. It is not an exact science, and often leaves big gaps, but I like a challenge and living here I try not to require ingredients that are too far flung. Right away, corned beef is out. It is a sad thing, and really how can I in good conscience cut out the main attraction? Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Besides, there are some other things wrapped up in the dish that I can work with. I found a cabbage at the farmer’s market, real green boring cabbage. Perfect. Usually you have some other vegetables, often carrots. Easy, I have plenty of vegetables to work with. I make a culinary leap that would offend most purists and say that eggplant is kind of like corned beef. At the very least it is chewy.

Boiled taro blended into poi

So cabbage and eggplant and enough salt to compensate. Great. Next we need a starch. It is hard to compete with good mashed potatoes, but we dug up some taro last week and it was begging to be used. For those of you unfamiliar with taro, it is a tuber in the same family as peace lilies and skunk cabbage. Not the most appetizing of kin, and with good reason. Taro has an abundance calcium oxilate crystals, which look like glass daggers under the microscope. It is inedible raw and will rip up your throat and stomach if you try. If that wasn’t enough, calcium oxilate contributes to kidney stones. All this makes you wonder who the first brave souls were who tried this ugly root vegetable and liked it so much that, here in Hawai’i at least, it is a staple food. Traditionally, the Hawai’ians believe that the taro plant is the original ancestor of their people, and so eating it is a sacred act. Why anyone would consider an inedible tuber to be their spiritual forefather is an issue I will ignore out of cultural sensitivity.

 So I made poi. They used to make poi by boiling by boiling taro until it was soft and then pounding it out in a special dish with a special blunt instrument. I continued the boiling tradition, but traded the blender for brute force. Add a little water and you get a wonderful grey mush. Most cultures have their proteins gruels, grits, polenta, oatmeal, and some are certainly better than others. Poi is bland to the point of tasteless, apparently is custom to let people put their own spices in it so I didn’t add anything to it. Really it is just meant to be eaten with other dishes, so I can’t fault it too much. Anything tastes good with BBQ.

It was St. Patrick’s day in Hawai’i. We were sweating and eating sautéed cabbage and eggplant with generous spoonfuls of poi. You were wearing a wool sweater and eating corned beef and cabbage, braised in its own juices, with huge chunks of potatoes and carrots. You win this time mainland.