PUHI — When queried about how many students have seen an imu, a lot of hands went up, said Chef Mark Oyama. But when asked about how many students know and had worked on an imu, only three hands went
PUHI — When queried about how many students have seen an imu, a lot of hands went up, said Chef Mark Oyama.
But when asked about how many students know and had worked on an imu, only three hands went up, said Oyama, a Kaua‘i Community College culinary arts instructor and owner of Mark’s Place and Contemporary Flavors Catering.
Students from the KCC Hawaiian Studies class took advantage of Thanksgiving to get immersion instruction in the traditional imu, or Hawaiian earthen oven, as they spent Thanksgiving eve working to prepare about 40 pieces of turkey and other Thanksgiving meals using the imu on the college’s Puhi campus.
“It’s going to be fun,” one excited student said. “We’ll be sleeping in the classrooms so we can open the imu early Thanksgiving.”
Kumu Dennis Chun of the KCC Hawaiian Studies program said when they originally started the imu service several years ago, they only needed one pit. But as orders increased, that situation resulted in two pits being dug out to prepare all the orders that lay neatly stacked along a wall of the Hawaiian Studies building.
Each package was clearly marked with its owner’s name and the contents of the package was effectively concealed by its covering of tin foil, some neatly tucked in while others were sealed using wire twisted to hold everything together.
“Last year, we had a small second imu,” Chun said. “But it was mostly because we needed one to cook the rice pudding.”
Oyama’s recipe provided the base for the rice pudding which was being prepared by students using the traditional square tin cans as containers.
But because it is done only once, or twice a year, there were issues such as the lack of adequate containers to cook the delicacy. That brought Oyama onto the scene as he opened up the kitchen so the class could use some of the bigger pots.
“That feels like about a tenth of the package,” Oyama said, juggling a bag of sugar in one hand, as one student asked for his professional judgment in sizing out a pound for the pudding.
That old-time flavor overflowed to include kani kapila as an ‘ukulele and a portable keyboard lay camouflaged amidst the banana and ti leaves, an integral part of the imu covering.
All the while, a video camera silently recorded the process.
Other students had managed to find ‘ulu, or breadfruit, from one of the trees on campus much to the delight of KCC Natural Science instructor Bryan Yamamoto who was pressed into service transporting the tins containing the rice pudding to the imu.
Work on the imu began while the sun was still making its final descent behind the Puhi mountains, and punctuated by periods of kanikapila, wala‘au and preparation of the rice pudding, darkness already shrouded the group as it began the process of placing the Thanksgiving parcels atop the steaming banana leaves.
Once accomplished the entire imu was covered with wet burlap, ti leaves and enveloped by a large plastic sheet before being buried by dirt.
With Thanksgiving meals taken care of, Oyama said the final Fine Dining program will have the culinary arts students having an opportunity to work the imu as well.
On Tuesday, the entire process repeats with culinary arts students experiencing the imu.
“We’ll be using only one imu,” Oyama said. “It’s only a hundred-pound pig. But we’ll have the rice pudding, some sweet potatoes, maybe some ‘ulu, and maybe even some laulau.”
That preparation will be on the menu for Wednesday’s Fine Dining program.
