HISTORY OF HAWAIIAN FOOD

The Cuisines of Hawaii

 “History of food on the islands”

 When the fiery goddess of volcanoes, Pele, first journeyed from Kahiki (Tahiti) with her family to settle “Great Hawaii…the land of green-backed and mottled seas,” they brought with them all that was required to sustain life.

Historically, before the arrival of the first humans sometime around the 3rd century AD, Hawaii, one of the most isolated groups of islands in the world, contained nothing edible on land. Settled by Polynesians who themselves derived from the Indomalayan regions found no indigenous animals, except for the bat…which could not be used for food. Apart from a few birds and ferns, there was absolutely nothing for them to eat. Most importantly there were no edible carbohydrates. The original Hawaiians brought with them 27 or so edible plants, as well as pigs, poultry and dogs; which were bred for food. The most important plants were taro and sweet potato. The terrain and climate proved to be especially suitable for growing wetland taro. Also important were, breadfruit, various yams, sugar cane and coconut.

The staple diet was poi, usually made from taro, but sweet potato and other starches were used when necessary. The primary protein was fish which was eaten raw as well as cooked. Since pigs and dogs were generally reserved for the nobility, so for the bulk of the population it was wild fish and shellfish from the streams, the reef and the ocean. Fish, which is a mainstay of the Hawaiian diet, was plentiful in the island waters as were shrimp, turtles, sea urchins, limpets and shellfish. Every species was eaten, for no poisonous fish existed in the region. Hawaiian food always consisted of fresh ingredients that were prepared raw or cooked very simply using broiling, boiling and roasting techniques.
During the 13th and 14th centuries, waves of immigrants from Tahiti overwhelmed and absorbed the original people. Since the earliest Hawaiians were possibly somewhat smaller than the later immigrants, they may have formed the legends of the menehunes, who were depicted by the later Hawaiians as hard working elves.
Although the islands were first visited by Spanish explorers who apparently found no viable use for them, it was in 1778 that the English explorer Captain James Cook “discovered” Hawaii. He named them the “Sandwich Islands” for the English Earl of Sandwich. At that time the islands were under the rule of warring native kings. Hawaii’s long isolation ended at this moment. Soon King Kamehameha the Great embarked upon a successful campaign to unite the islands into one kingdom; the “Islands of the Kingdom of Hawaii.”
About this same time, Hawaii assumed importance in the east-west fur trade and later as the center for the Pacific whaling industry. Now united under King Kamehameha, a great peace followed. Agriculture and commerce were promoted. As a result of the King’s hospitality, American Traders were able to exploit the islands’ sandlewood, which was very much valued in china at the time. Trade with China reached its peak during this period.
Within a matter of years after Captain Cook first sighted the islands, new animals and plants were introduced; cows, horses, goats, and a bewildering variety of plants. Hawaiian food and haole food (the later being the foods of the white newcomers) continued side by side with occasional input from the Chinese who also ended up on the islands. On ceremonial occasions there would be lu’aus at which largely Hawaiian foods were served: poi of course, dried fish and shrimp, lu’au pig baked in the Imu (underground pit oven,) seaweed, taro leaves and finished with a dessert made of coconut milk thickened with Polynesian arrowroot.
The food landscape began changing dramatically once the sugar plantations began to flourish following the signing of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States in 1876. A substantial number of Chinese, Japanese (who had a tremendous effect on the food in the islands,) Okinawans, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, Portuguese and Filipinos arrived in the islands between the 1880’s and the 1930’s. Each of these groups demanded their own foods on the plantations and the plantation stores went out of their way to accommodate and please them.
It did not take Hawaii’s statehood to make mainland Americans practitioners of island cookery. Bananas and pineapples had become important in the kitchens of the New England women whose seafaring men had brought back the tropical fruits from various ports of call. The 50th State acquired a cuisine as international as any of its sisters. Hawaii was characteristically Polynesian until the 19th century and its diet of fish and fruit remained unmodified until the coming of the missionaries and clipper ships from New England. Dried meat and salted fish had fed American sailors, and these foods became part of the Hawaiian tradition---just as pipikuala, the jerked beef that is broiled in tiny pieces and served with a sweet and sour sauce, and as lomi lomi, the thin fillets of salted salmon that some New Yorkers have described as better in its indigenous way than lox (smoked salmon) from their favorite delicatessens back home in the Big Apple. Mixed with chopped onions and tomatoes, lomi lomi is habitually served as a salad. Salmon was common enough to the early Hawaiians to be known as “the pig in the sea.” Other fish were used after the coming of the missionaries to produce such things as fish chowder in the basic Yankee fashion.
Scots who came to the islands as technicians and plantation overseers added their native scones and shortbreads to the daily fare of thousands of Hawaiians who generations before had adopted the Portuguese wheat bread of the first European immigrants. Cornmeal and red bean soup, also brought by the Portuguese have been accepted as Hawaiian by islanders of all ethic roots. Rather than submitting to a single style, island cooks have incorporated many European dishes, along with those from the Chinese, Japanese and Korean sources; developing a culinary tradition that may be the most festive in the world! The traditional Hawaiian feast is the ultimate of American picnics, cookouts and barbeques. It has added much to the variety of outdoor feasting on the American mainland, especially in California.

Beginning in the 1920’s and 1930’s certain forces began to produce a Creole food…Local Food. One was the arrival of home economists at the university. Trained largely at the Columbia Teachers college in New York, these women recorded the diet of the Japanese, established food values of the Hawaiian foods and a range of tropical fruits. They trained large numbers of home economics teachers and school cafeteria managers. Sympathetic to the various ethnic foods on the islands, they urged brown rice, milk and ensured that the food served in the public school system was an all-American diet of hamburger, meat loaf, Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes. This exposure to American food was reinforced for the many who joined the service following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the second World War.
Now, at least in public, most of the Hawaiian population eats Local Food much of the time. The centerpiece of Local Food is the Plate Lunch available from lunch wagons and numerous small restaurants. It consists of ‘two scoop’…sticky rice…a large portion of meat usually cooked Asian style, a portion of macaroni salad or potato salad, and perhaps a lettuce leaf with a dab of kimch’i on the side. Hawaii’s food today is a confusing mixture, a tapestry of the foods of a dozen different ethnic groups.
In ancient Hawaii, men and women ate their meals apart. Commoners and women of all ranks were also forbidden by the ancient Hawaiian religion to eat certain delicacies. This changed in 1819, when King Kamehameha II abolished the traditional religious practices. A feast where the king ate with women was the symbolic act which ended the Hawaiian religious tabu, and the lu’au was born!
The favorite dish at these feasts is what gave the lu’au its name; young and tender leaves of the taro plant were combined with chicken, baked in coconut milk and called lu’au (meaning leaf of the taro.)
The traditional lu’au feast was eaten on the floor. Lauhala mats were rolled out and a beautiful centerpiece made of ti leaves, ferns and native flowers about three feet wide was laid the length of the mat. Bowls were filled with poi, and platters of meat were set out along with dry foods like sweet potatoes, salt, dried fish or meat covered in leaves were laid directly on the clean ti leaves.

lu'au food

Much to the consternation of the proper Victorian visitors, utensils were never used at a lu’au. Instead everything was eaten with the fingers with coconut shell cups to drink from. Poi of various consistencies got its name from the number of fingers needed to eat it…three finger, two finger, or the thickest…one finger poi.
A guest at King Kalakaua’s coronation lu’au in 1883 described the lavish decorations typical of the traditional lu’au; “Tables were draped with white, but the entire tops were covered with ferns and leaves massed together so as to almost form a tablecloth of themselves, Quantities of flowers were placed about, mingling with the ferns…the natives turned out in great numbers, and the scent of their leis of flowers and maile leaves was almost overpowering.”
These royal lu’au’s tended to be big. One of the largest ever was hosted by Kamehameha III in 1847. The list of foods prepared included 271 hogs, 482 large calabashes of poi, 3,125 salt fish, 1,820 fresh fish, 2,245 coconuts, 4,000 taro plants and numerous other delicacies.
King Kalakaua, who was known as the ‘Merrie Monarch’
For his love of parties and dance, invited over 1500 guests to his 50th birthday lu’au. They were fed in shifts of 500!
Lu’au’s today are not quite as big as those hosted by Hawaiian royalty in the 1800’s, but they are a lot of fun and feature the same traditional foods…and utensils are allowed.

Available in http://www.kauaimenu.com/MenuPages/featurestory/history_of_food.htm. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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