Posted on: Wednesday, January 5, 2005

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Foods on hand drove old recipes

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

In my last column, I mentioned the community cookbook, "Oldies but Goodies" (1983), lovingly compiled by Na Pua Mae'ole O Kamehameha, a chapter of the Kamehameha Schools alumni association.

If you love old-time recipes, as I do, look for this one in the library, (I promise to return the one I borrowed as soon as I've copied every good thing in it!) One section brought a smile to my face: It's a series of recipes for poki wai and palaoa.

These "recipes" speak ringingly of a make-do time when a little meant a lot, when grocery shopping was an occasion and when canned goods were a treat.

It's common now to bemoan the fact that, in Hawai'i, high-fat, high-salt canned goods (i.e. corned beef and Spam) took the place of healthier staple foods (taro and sweet potatoes, fish and sea vegetables) in the early 20th century. However true it is that people today have no need of these foods, judging our kupuna by these standards shows little appreciation of the historical context. If you did hard physical labor every day, walked everywhere you went and got to the grocery store maybe once a month, and if your diet was relatively bland and repetitive, don't you think you'd consider a can of Eagle Brand condensed milk a godsend? My grandma did, and I'm sure not going to judge her for it. (Should I be eating Eagle Brand regularly just because I can afford it? Not unless I start walking everywhere I go and take a hoe hana job!)

But back to those recipes:

Poki wai was a sort of "nothing" pudding, made of water, canned cream or milk mixed with crumbled hardtack crackers and sweetened with sugar. Palaoa are dumplings, made by dropping flour or soft dough into boiling water; the soft, transparent dumplings were then eaten with sugar and canned cream or sweetened condensed milk and butter — or even, for the grownups, a generous lacing of brandy.

Scott Poire wrote that his mom, Harriet Daisy Kawaialakaoionopuaopiilani Stevens Poire, reported that the dumplings grew richer or leaner depending on how close they were to the monthly trip to town for groceries.

In my great-grandparents' and grandparents' Portuguese homes, poki wai took the form of sopas (literally, soup), made with hot milk and crumbled Saloon Pilot crackers or thick chunks of dry bread. If you had sugar, butter or cinnamon, so much the better. The dish would serve as a bedtime snack in good times or the only thing available for breakfast when the cupboard was bare.

My grandpa, John Gomes Duarte, loved sopas de café — Saloon Pilots broken up into extremely milky and sweet coffee. He'd sooner eat sopas de café for breakfast than bacon and eggs.

Grandma Adelaide Sylva Duarte used to recall with smacking lips how much she enjoyed the special treat of sweetened condensed milk spread on Saloon Pilot crackers. I have to admit that, as a member of the candy-bar-and-sticky-cereal generation, I didn't see the attraction in this humble treat until I was much older.