Teshima Restaurant- Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Teshima Restaurant (located at 79-7251 Mamalahoa Hwy, Kealakekua, HI 96750) is a family restaurant, with 3 generations currently working in the Japanese-style joint. Shizu-Obaachan, who recently turned 107, is still running the place as cheerfully as ever. It's a little in the middle of nowhere on the Kailua-Kona-side of the Big Island, but if you're in the area and want a nice lunch or dinner, stop here!

Price: $$

Overall Experience: 4 stars/5 stars

Teshima is best known for their tenpura/tempura, or Japanese battered and deep fried foods dipped in a brothy-sauce, so naturally I had to sample this on my first trip to the restaurant. ("What the Big Island Likes to Eat" highly recommends the kettle-cooked tofu dish and I can say that was also fantastic--my huge family ordered basically half the menu, so I had a good go at everything.) I ordered the Thursday lunch special, which comes with a cup of miso soup, a tray of pickled veg, a bowl of rice, barley tea, a side of really tasty and well-marinated spare ribs and gorgeous platter of golden tenpura. The tenpura was traditionally done and perfect--not over or undercooked, not too oily, great colour, etc... Teshima served up these things in my tenpura: ahi, yam, zucchini, eggplant, green bean and a lovely surprise of purple potato! Look at that colour!:

The dipping sauce was also great, not overly salty, with a nice sweetness. The spareribs were magnificent (I'd just gotten my wisdom teeth done, so a bit tough to eat for me still) and soo well-marinated! Just the smell of them would do a number on you! It sat on a bed of lettuce, which I was really yearning for (local Hawaiian food does not generally serve up much veg, just a lot of meat, starch and gravy). The tenpura was definitely the star of my plate and I would order this again when revisiting Teshima Restaurant.

Don't worry, eat happy!

-Raechel

Food Feature: Eggplant Eggstravaganza!

Ah, the eggplant... or aubergine, as it's known in many places around the world. Apart from being a nice winter colour, it's also a meaty vegetable; when cooked right, I find it's density is a bit like a cooked mushroom. The aubergine comes in many shapes and sizes, but for the most part, eggplants are similar in taste and texture from my experience. It's a funny vegetable that looks nothing like it's cousins, the tomato and the potato, and it's a good source of potassium; some studies have shown that the vitamins in eggplants can help in countering high cholesterol, but it's by no means a treatment on its own.

Another fun factoid off Wikipedia: the eggplant has more nicotine in it than any other edible plant in the world! Somehow I doubt that it's enough to get you hooked, as you'd need to ingest about 20 lbs of eggplant in order to get the same amount of nicotine in a cigarette.

They are mighty-tough buggers to cook! If not done right, eggplants could come out hard or bitter or overly-mushy. They also absorb oil like paper towels without so much as being cooked, so I don't recommend pan-frying them like other veg. Eggplants also don't keep too long, so if you buy some, put it in the fridge to keep them, but I don't recommend letting them stay there for over a day, two at most. They're also emotionally-sensitive vegetables, probably because they're pear-shaped (no shame in this!) and can be easily bruised.

I'm here to share some awesome recipes I've discovered over the past year or so, since I fell in love with the aubergine when my friend Lena treated me to some of her mother's fantastic eggplant lasagna (wish I had THIS recipe!). A cool fact is that most of these recipes, if not all are vegetarian or vegan!

Eggplant Fries
One of my favourite treats are eggplant fries! I may possibly like them more than sweet potato fries; if they don't precede sweet potato fries, then they are a close runner up.

Recipe inspired by a website called userealbutter.com

Ingredients: 

1-2 medium eggplants/aubergines

1 c flour

1/2 tbsp oregano

1/4 tsp pepper

1 tsp kosher/Hawaiian rock salt

1 tsp dry parsley flakes

frying oil

honey

salt to taste

Make a dry mix of 1 cup flour, 1/2 tbsp oregano, 1/4 tsp pepper, 1 tsp kosher salt and 1 tsp dry parsley flakes. Peel and cut the 1-2 medium eggplant(s) into 3/4 inch thick strips, as long or short as you like and lightly coat them in the flour mix (if it’s too heavily coated, the excess flour will come off in the frying process and ruin your oil). In a saucepan or fryer, add frying oil and heat up. To test the temperature, I like to sprinkle a little bit of flour into the oil; if it starts to bubble, it’s hot enough to start frying your eggplant fries. Fry only a few at a time so the temperature of the oil doesn’t drop too much; I recommend turning them during the process. Take them out when they’re golden (after a minute or so) and set them on paper towels to remove unwanted oil. When they’re done, drizzle with honey and sprinkle salt before serving! (For an herbal twist, substitute lavender seasoning for the honey!)

When I made this for my family, I served this as an appetizer with a Mediterranean-style dinner: Quinoa salad (quinoa, cubed avocado, cubed cucumber, kalamata olives, chopped cherry tomato, olive oil & salt) and a Greek-style chicken dish (chicken cooked in a skillet with a tomato sauce with onions, green peppers and zucchini). The fries absolutely disappeared within minutes! I could almost swear that the lazy susan on the table never stopped spinning because people were constantly turning it to get at these fries. 

Briam
The best way to describe briam, a Greek dish, would be ratatouille. The vegetables in briam can be swapped out depending on the season, so my version has got our star of the show, eggplant, in it!

My favourite recipe for this dish is actually from About.com!

Ingredients: 

1 large eggplant/aubergine

4 large potatoes

Olive Oil

1 medium onion, diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced finely

1/2 c chopped parsley

1 tsp dried basil

a pinch of dried mint

a pinch of oregano

2c tomato sauce

salt & pepper to taste

Boil 4 large potatoes in salted water till tender. When they're done, drop the suckers in a bath of ice water. Take a potato and cut the skin around the center of the potato; the ice water will shrink the peel and let you slip it right off! Repeat on the rest of the potatoes. Next, slice the potatoes into 1/4 inch rounds and set it aside.

In a saucepan, heat up 1/2 c olive oil and saute the 1 diced medium onion until they are translucent. Add minced garlic (4 cloves should do it). Saute for another minute. The smell will be fantastic! Optional: add 1/2 c wine and cook it off for a few minutes.

Next, add your herbs: 1/2 c chopped parsley, a tsp of dried basil, a pinch of dried mint, a pinch of oregano (this isn't in the original recipe, but I like a bit of it in my briam). Once that's stirred in, add 2 c tomato sauce and 1/2 c water. Bring all this to a boil, cover with lid and simmer for 15 min or so.

Slice up 4 large tomatoes to whatever thickness you prefer and set aside. I like them at about 1/3-1/4 inch thickness.

If your oven needs preheating, go ahead and switch it to 425ºF. While your sauce is cooking, grab a baking pan! Drizzle some olive oil at the bottom and start lining about half of the potato slices in the pan. Grab your salt and season the potatoes lightly. For the next layer, cover the potatoes with your tomato slices. Season with salt and pepper. Time for another layer of potatoes! By now, you should be using up the rest of your potato slices. Season again and when your sauce is done, go ahead and spoon about half of it over your potatoes and tomatoes.

For the next layer I like to switch off the zucchini for eggplant. Just a personal preference. :) Slice up 1 large aubergine/eggplant to about 1/4 inch thickness and to ahead and layer it on top of the sauce. Top it off with the rest of your sauce. and pop your baking pan into the oven; let it roast till the vegetables are tender. It generally takes about an hour, but watch it so the top doesn't burn. Since your potatoes are cooked, your eggplant will determine the readiness of the dish. Take a fork and poke at the eggplant layer; it should be soft and tender, but not mushy.

Baigan Bharta

Since the eggplant is native to India, we should probably see how it's done in that region, no? Baigan bharta is basically an eggplant curry and I'll just link the recipe since I didn't change anything in it. Here it is!

One thing I do recommend though, is adding a bit more salt; I found myself needing to add it as I was eating. I also have to say, it's funny baking the eggplant. If you fork it to test it's tenderness, it'll emit steam like an angry cartoon character; super entertaining! It's also really strange peeling the eggplant; I've never done anything quite like that to be honest.

Chinese-Style Eggplant Dishes

Chinese eggplants are different from the plumper eggplants you generally see in western supermarkets; they are longer and slimmer, making for easier slicing. Though I'm yet to cook this dish myself, I have to recommend a common dim-sum dish that features Chinese eggplant. It's eggplant that's stuffed with mince fish, battered and deep fried. Generally a sauce is added to it; at today's dim sum, I had stuffed eggplant accompanied by a black bean sauce. Yum! 

In my travels, I've also come across braised eggplant. In Beijing, China, one of the restaurants right outside the Forbidden City had braised eggplant on the menu; when trying to figure out what to order for my friends my eyes stopped at 紅燒 (hong shao), the Chinese word for braised. To say the least, 紅燒茄子 (hong shao qie zi) turned out to be a hit! Braised in a red sauce, it was sweet and really tasty; the dish disappeared quickly among my non-Chinese friends. To be honest, I'm not even sure they knew what it was, but they loved it anyway. :) 

Well, that's about all for today! Huzzah for aubergines! There are tons of other possibilities in the eggplant world yet to be explored! Please feel free to share any in the comments section! Happy eggplanting--well, don't go out planting eggs... I doubt you'll get a tree that blossoms chickens or a bush that sprouts eggs. 

Gastronomy in Germany!

Visited Berlin last April on a one month backpacking trip across Europe! Studying and living in England introduced me to the kebap and the döner, of which I was told were Turkish... later I was told that the döner is originally German! Regardless of whether that's true or not, you can guess what my first meal in Berlin was then...

Yes, that is the Brandenburg gate in the background! Anyways, this döner, from a cart in the road (go street food!) was the best one I'd ever had. Probably one of the cheapest too. The döner-kebap is closely related to Greek gyros. The meat in the döner, whether chicken, lamb or beef, is roasted on a rotating spit and sliced off into flatbread and then accompanied by sliced raw onions, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes and a yoghurt sauce similar to tzatziki. The veggies were so refreshing after coming out of a carb-saturated tour of Italy!

Amidst a free walking tour, my eyes landed on this famous chocolatier:

Going as far back as 1863, Fassbender and Rausch were chosen as the official chocolate suppliers to the royal German family. That spells quality, no?

After the tour, my travel buddy and I made a beeline back to the chocolate shop (shop is a bit of an understatement as the place consists of multiple floors lined in marble, gold gilding and glass).

After drooling over the truffles, buying samples for ourselves and friends back home, we took the elevator up to the 2nd floor cafe. In the late afternoon there were plenty of people having their between-meals coffees. We popped open the menu and perused a bit after we were shown to a table with a pretty fabulous view.

The menu's prices were around what we expected for a pretty fancy place, but we figured, hey, we're staying in a hostel, not a hotel; we've been eating cheap (but amazing) street food, and we've been walking everywhere, thus saving lots of money. Why not?

What's an afternoon coffee-break without coffee? And they gave a complimentary chocolate!

Traditional apple strudel. Excellent, light, flaky, buttery and perfectly sweet! Great presentation as well!

The eisschokolade (ice-chocolate drink) was definitely my favourite, being a chocoholic. They didn't skimp on the cocoa neither. Plus, who doesn't love fresh whipped cream? Heavenly!

Another venture with sweets that I partook in was a trip to KaDeWe, a fancy superstore of an establishment with a famous gourmet food court.

The inside was absolutely glorious! Fancy glass shelves and cases filled with beautifully plated pastries--everything you can imagine! Cakes, cupcakes, streudels, macarons, truffles, meringues, tarts, brownies...

It was such a difficult time choosing what to sample! So four of us settled to split these two beauties:

Our friend on the right is an apple pastry with streusel on top, a bit resembling a bear claw. The pastry on the right is a strawberries and cream tart (the whipped strawberry cream was spiked with some liquor and pretty strong). I must say, I gave the award to the apple pastry, which was buttery and rather donut-like.

In addition to sweets and street food, we also tried to sample more formal traditional cuisine. Our tour guide recommended a place to us called zum Paddenwirt that was slightly touristy, but served up reasonably priced German food. I decided to order herring with potatoes and sauerkraut.

Being the seafood-lover that I am, I enjoyed the herring quite a lot; it definitely needed the potatoes and yoghurt sauce to balance out the saltiness. The sprig of dill on top was a pretty touch as well.

My friends, feeling quite adventurous ordered pork knuckle/ankle with sauerkraut and potatoes. They enjoyed their fare a little less, so I probably ate most of it, to be honest. A little background: at home I eat pork ankle quite a bit, being of asian heritage and all, so it didn't freak me out. In fact, it was really good trying it pickled instead of braised in soy-sauce, which is also delicious.

Am I making your stomach turn? Maybe I can convince you: if you're willing to eat hot dogs or sausages (assuming you know what these are made of), what's to stop you from trying ankle? Really, it's just another piece of the animal (although, disclaimer: there are parts that I would not try).

Next up, wursts! (I spared you so many terrible puns just now...) Of course one has to sample the various wursts/sausages of Berlin when trying to get a good grasp of the country's culture. It's what Germany is known for, right?

Over our month's worth of trips, we made a habit out of looking up famous eateries; one of them was Currypoint (above). That was actually the last place we went and since we'd already had bratwurst and currywurst, we went for bockwurst!:

Bockwurst is different from bratwurst in that it is usually made with veal; it is also often simmered instead of grilled. It came with a side of potato salad.

Bratwurst is generally made of beef or pork, but it can be found made of veal; eaten with a sweet or hot German mustard, it can be then called currywurst!

Aside from the flavour, something else you should look for in a wurst is that snap you get when taking a bite; when cooked/grilled, the ground meat inside the casing expands, making the casing taut and giving you that satisfying snap on first bite!

Also bought a popular German drink called Mezzo Mix; the best way to describe it is orange Fanta mixed with Coke--in fact, when I spent New Years with my friend Lena in Germany, she and her friends made their own with Coca Cola and Fanta. Alas, we don't have it in the U.S...

Want to hear a secret?

My favourite sausage EVER is actually the käsewurst... which I ate in Leeds at the German Christmas Market.

The real kicker is that packed in the ground meat, there are squares of CHEESE and when the wurst is grilled, the cheese melts! This goes onto the list of one of the best things I've ever eaten.