KAPA‘A — A Food Network television crew filmed and interviewed top Kaua‘i pastry chefs and savvy island cooks about unique pupu and desert creations using coconuts. As many as 90 vendors offered handicraft, food, and multi-colored, Polynesian-style clothes for sale.
KAPA‘A — A Food Network television crew filmed and interviewed top Kaua‘i pastry chefs and savvy island cooks about unique pupu and desert creations using coconuts.
As many as 90 vendors offered handicraft, food, and multi-colored, Polynesian-style clothes for sale.
And Vili Fehoko, University of Hawai‘i “warrior- mascot,” mesmerized the crowd with his chants, drum-banging, and playful teasing of visitors.
They were among the highlights of the Seventh Annual Kaua‘i Coconut Festival, day one of which was yesterday at Kapa‘a Beach Park.
Day two is today. The festival glorifies everything related to coconuts, the mainstay fruit for Hawaiians and Polynesians in ancient times. The fruit juice is drunk, coconut meat is eaten, and fronds were used to make roofs.
The coconut festival, sponsored by the Kapa‘a Business Association, was anticipated to draw up to 7,000 people, limited only by the lack of parking immediately around the park, according to Laurie Yoshida, Gov. Linda Lingle’s Kaua‘i liaison, who attended the festival.
“We had that many last year. It (the number of people attending the festival) is the same due to the lack of parking,” she said.
This year’s event boasted for the first time pupu and dessert contests using parts of the coconut, Yoshida said. The dishes attracted throngs who wanted to sample the dishes, and some people couldn’t wait, it seemed at times, for the judging to be completed.
But Mayor Bryan J. Baptiste, former Mayor Maryanne Kusaka and Ron Miller, the executive chef of the Hukilau Lanai Restaurant, were not to be rushed, as they sampled each dish deliberately.
A Food Network television crew filmed the contest, and talked with cooks and professional chefs about their concoctions and the efforts involved in making them.
The half-hour show on the festival is part of the “All American Festivals” series, and the Kaua‘i segment will be shown in the future, according to Graham Clarke, a series producer with High Noon Productions, based in Centennial, Colo.
Professional pastry chefs, aspiring pasty chefs and experienced home cooks with many years of cooking under their belts took their shot at stardom, all proud of their creations.
Nancy Kurokawa, a Kaua‘i Marriott Resort & Beach Club pastry chef, welcomed everyone to take in her coconut-tinged cheesecakes.
They were featured prominently on China dishes placed on black table cloth that covered a display table.
Though not part of the contest, Blaise Aki, executive chef at the Aloha Beach Resort, was equally proud of his dishes — coconut ceviche, cascaron and taro coconut bars.
Among the contestants, Suzanne Pearson of Wailua Houselots beamed with pride over her Nanaimo bars, which have East Indian origins.
The scrumptious bars consist of a layer of icing sugar sandwiched between a bottom layer of coconut and a top layer of chocolate sprinkled with shredded coconut.
Lucy Shannon of Wailua Homesteads was equally proud of her creation, dubbed “macadamia coconutty bananas.”
For her dish, she used plantains bananas from her backyard. The bananas are “rock hard,” and can only be eaten after they have been cooked, Shannon said.
To make the dish, she melted butter with liqueur, dipped a banana in honey, and rolled it with grated coconuts. She then cooked the banana slowly until it got brown, adding some orange juice as well.
Macadamia nuts are then sprinkled on top of the banana dessert, which was put on a ti leaf for the tropical look. She said her special dessert is served during Thanksgiving gatherings.
To win judges over, Shannon topped some dishes with mai tai umbrellas and strawberries. The creations were then placed in small koa bowls.
At the same display table, Wini Cummings of Anahola proudly display her creation, deep-fried haupia chunks. Her dish involves putting haupia chunks in an egg dip, rolling them in a panko, and deep-frying the soft chunks.
Next to her was Marisa Uyehara’s “coconut bananas clouds” dish, which involved making pudding with coconut milk, using vanilla flavoring and almonds, thickening the pudding with corn starch, and frying the bananas and using butter.
The bananas are then put on plates, and are covered with pudding and topped with toasted coconut flakes. “It is the first time I have done something like this,” Uyehara, a Waimea resident, said. “I think it’s good.”
Crowds also were drawn to a table where Kaua‘i Community College pastry chef Gemma Delos Santos offered a shave-ice creation that used corn, strips of raw coconut, chunks of sweet potato, and pink beads of tapioca.
People also were drawn to a high-energy, drum-beating and chanting performance by Fehoko, who playfully teased two visitors trying to copy his antics.
