I love coming back from vacation with a new food discovery. During our recent trip to Maui, that discovery was poke. Pronounced pok-eh, it's a traditional Hawaiian dish usually made from cubed raw fish and other ingredients. While we were in Maui, most of the poke we saw was made with ahi tuna (although some also contained octopus). The "other ingredients" could mean anything from onions to kukui nut, usually mixed with soy sauce. Just about every restaurant we ate at served it in one form or another, and all of the grocery stores we visited had multiple versions available in their prepared foods sections.
We've made poke twice now since getting back from our trip, using various recipes we found around the Internet as a basis. The first time we made poke, it was good, but we used way too much ahi for the two of us, and the dish was overly salty (it called for both sea salt and soy sauce). Our second attempt, however, was much more successful. We used a recipe we found on several different web sites as a starting point. What we ended up with looked something like this:
Combine all ingredients in a shallow bowl and allow to marinate in the refrigerator for a minimum of one hour. Garnish with sesame seeds before serving.
Trisha
Sambal Olek is a chili paste that's nice and spicey ;-)
Thanks for dropping by. I hope you give the poke a shot - and enjoy it!
Maybe tonight. ;-) Cant wait to try it~ mmm Plus, I'm always looking for an excuse to go to my Asian market.. and I dont have any sambal olek ;-)
Hopefully you get a chance to make it soon. We have an awesome Asian market here in the Phoenix area (actually two). One's pretty close to my office, so it makes for a good lunch time excursion.
I made the poke last night.. it was a big hit! And soooo delish! Thank you SO much for sharing this recipe!
Posted my results on my blog with a pic =)
http://copperpots.blogspot.com/