I managed to score some apple bananas from a farm in the big island that would ship them to the mainland. They were expensive,  but so worth it. Plus, the farm through in some free dried bananas my way. I decided to eat a couple and use the rest for this

Apple Banana Cream Pie:

Homemade Short Crust–Layer of Apple Banana-Layer of Apple Banana Custard-Topped with Homemade Coconut Whipped Cream.

That pie was insanely delicious. The secret to the custard? Corn flour and the new-ish shelf stable creamer from So Delicious. Seriously amaze.

After I made this pie I started dreaming about mango. This next Strawberry-Mango Pie needs a little work. I plan to make it again when I am back on Maui. I’m realizing the mangos I get here in LA are kinda gross compared to the amazing heirloom varieties grown all over Hawaii. The pie tasted great, but my mangos lacked a little in flavor and texture.

Strawberry-Mango Pie

Still in the mood for a tropical pie with mango, I bought some better tasting champagne mangos and had a second round with mango pie. This time I was excited because I finally got some fresh lilikoi (aka passionfruit) and the Mango-Lilikoi Sunshine Pie was born. I’m going to include the recipe for this one. Use only high quality mango for this one or frozen mango that you trust. Use fresh passionfruit and omit the seeds if you don’t like them. They are edible and I opted to keep them in the pie, but you can just as easily use the juice.

Mango Lilikoi Sunshine Pie

Ingredients:

two pie crusts, use your favorite recipe

5-6 c mango, peeled and sliced

Inside/Juice of 3 lilikoi/passionfruit

3/4 c unbleached cane sugar

zest of half a lemon

1/3 c unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tbsp arrowroot

3-4 tbsp Earth Balance

Pinch vanilla powder

Method:

Once you’ve got prepared crusts, preheat oven to 425°F. Roll your bottom crust out and fit into a pie plate. Combine all ingredients for the filling together except the Earth Balance and mix to combine. Pour the filling into your prepared crust and dot with Earthy B. Place your top crust on the pie or cover with lattice. Remember to cut slits for steam if you choose to put the whole crust on top. Bake the pie for about 20 min, then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake an additional 30-45 min. Enjoy a little slice of paradise.

Grilled Heirloom Tomato Pizza: Basil Pesto, Tofu Ricotta, Wild Arugula on Blue Corn Crust.

Grilled Pear Pizza: Bail Pesto, Tofu Ricotta, Red Onion on Herbed Crust.

BBQ “Chicken” Pizza w/ Beyond Meat, Pineapple, Red Onion, Cilantro & Guava BBQ Sauce.

The first two pizzas were recipes from the new Plum Bistro cookbook. I saw them and knew I had to make them at once. I cannot express how delicious they were. The grilled pear one was one of the best flavor combos I’ve ever had. I’ve never been to the actual restaurant, but the cookbook definitely doesn’t disappoint for me. The tomato pizza was equally good and perfect for summer.

I decided to go ahead and make the pineapple pizza because I saw it as a recipe suggestion on the awesome Beyond Meat package I was sampling. I wanted to spice it up so instead of using a regular bbq sauce, I found this recipe for guava bbq sauce and made it. It’s VERY tangy. In a good way. Everything on this pizza pairs great together too. Make them all. Make them all and eat them!

One of the recipes I brought along was for this Caramelized Banana Rum Bread w/ Macadamia Topping. It seemed easy enough to veganize and I turned out to be correct…although not totally without error. We have two places on Maui; I had never baked at one of them before and it turns out the oven is super old and just, you know, a lil funky. So, I didn’t think my first bread was going to turn out, but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s great when a recipe for a baked good is a little forgiving and I think this one is.

Never mind that slightly overdone topping…it was the oven…I swear.

To make this delicious recipe vegan simply:

Replace butter with: Earth Balance, Coconut Oil or Earth Balance Coconut Spread

Replace yogurt with: So Delicious Coconut Milk Yogurt in Vanilla or Plain

I also made this bread with my favorite bananas; Hawaiian apple bananas! I’m sure any bananas will do just fine however. I also used Koloa Rum which I also happen to think is pretty dang good.

I used a larger loaf pan than I should have because it’s all I had, but feel free to use one slightly smaller for a taller loaf.

Moist banana goodness.

I loved chicken salad once upon a time and I have had a few delicious vegan versions, but it’s not something I make very often. I had some leftover Maui pineapple, macadamias and honey mustard, so I decided on Hawaiian Chicken Salad on Toast…because sometimes an open-face sandwich is better.

Hawaiian “Chicken” Salad

Ingredients:

1 package grilled Beyond Meat strips, or lightly seasoned would be perfect as well

1/2 c pineapple, cubed

2 ribs celery, chopped into small dice

1/4 c raw unsalted macadamia nuts, finely chopped

1 tbsp fresh chives, minced

Dressing:

scant 1/2 c Vegenaise (I like the reduced fat version)

1 tbsp macadamia honey mustard (available by mail order from Purdy’s)

1 tsp white wine vinegar

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/4-1/2 tsp freshly cracked black pepper (I like a lot of pepper, the more the better!)

Method:

Whisk all ingredients for the dressing together in a serving or mixing bowl. Set aside. Cut the strips with kitchen shears into desired size pieces. You can also use a knife, but the shears work great for this. Add the strips, pineapple pieces, celery, nuts, and chives to dressing and toss to coat.

Papaya-Pineapple Crisp

Ingredients:

2 c sliced papaya

2 c chopped pineapple

1/3 c unbleached cane sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla powder or vanilla paste

pinch salt

Topping:

1/4 c chopped macadamia nuts

1/4 c dried, unsweetened coconut (I like the big pieces for this)

1/2 c brown sugar

2/3 c unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 c Earth Balance

pinch salt

pinch vanilla powder

Preheat oven to 375°F and grab a baking dish (I used a 9×9 square). Toss together the fruit, sugar, and vanilla powder or paste. Add the fruit to the baking dish. In separate bowl, combine nuts, sugar, flour, salt and vanilla. Add the Earth Balance in chunks, working the Earthy B into the sugar/flour mixture with a fork or your hands. Sprinkle the topping over the fruit. Bake for about 40-45 minutes until center bubbling and topping is toasted. If the topping is toasting too fast, add a sheet of aluminum foil to protect it.

When we headed inland, we found Purdy’s Macadamia Nut Farm. Family run for over 30 years, the macadamia nut trees all around Purdy’s farm have been growing wild there for over 90 years. The farmers wait for the nuts to fall to the ground and then rake them up for harvest. We met a wonderful woman named Mikyla, who gave my dad, myself and a sweet couple from Alaska the low down on macadamias.

We learned that macadamia nuts have 2 shells; an outer hull and then another brown shell inside that hull. From there, you can try to crack open the nut to taste a truly “raw” macadamia. I never realized that macadamias are typically sun-dried before they are sold as raw or then roasted and sold that way. In their truly raw state, they are moist and have the texture of fresh coconut.

Outer hull and inner shell in my dad’s hand.

My dad!

Cracking the nuts is usually done one of two ways:

1. You use this old fashioned device with a crank

2. You use a foam donut, large, flat rock or concrete and a hammer

We also got a chance to walk around a bit and meet the sweetest kitties, see unripe mangos on their way to being delicious someday, macadamia trees with blossoms and nuts, the harvested nuts laid out to dry in he sun, and saw bunches of coconuts.

Sweetest bitty kitty ever, Nala.

Mango

What I forgot to snap pictures of were the tasting! We sampled all of the raw and sun-dried, roasted and un-roasted that we could eat, raw coconut with a choice of dipping it in farm-fresh macadamia blossom honey (holistic, humane, unheated, all natural) as well as an amazing honey mustard made with the honey just mentioned. It was amazing. This was probably my favorite experience on Molokai and it is a must-visit if you ever travel there.

In my next post, I’ve got a  recipe for Hawaiian Papaya-Pineapple Crisp with papayas from Kumu Farms and macadamia nuts in the topping from Purdy’s!

When I was in Maui last month, I thought it might be nice for my dad and I to take a day trip over there. I bought us plane tickets, did a little research and over to Molokai we went. The view from our tiny plane was breathtaking.

Molokai is a pretty undeveloped place which is part of what makes it so special. It has a population of around 7,400 people and is about 10 mi by 38 mi. It’s occupied by a couple of tiny towns and some very beautiful and special farms.

Once my dad and I hopped off the plane, we grabbed a rental car and headed over to Kumu Farms. Oddly enough, a tiny, family owned natural foods store located a few miles from my house in Los Angeles sells organic strawberry papayas from Kumu Farms. I thought it was so cool that I had eaten their papayas and then got to go meet the trees that they came from. Kumu also offers up their papayas for mail order on their website. They’d be great to go in on with a friend, as so many papayas are GMO non-sense and Kumu’s are organic and spectacularly delicious!

The farm is not really too open for exploring, but the farmers are (as always) the nicest and friendliest lot you’ll ever meet. The farm is easy to find and pretty close to Molokai airport (which is more of just a landing strip) so it’s a sensible first stop. They also have apple bananas and tons of other organic goodies as well as preserved and snacks.

I explored the areas that I could taking a slow, peaceful stroll through the papaya grove. The weather was beautiful. Ever so slightly warm, but not too hot. The island has a slowed down, very relaxing feel to it…that I can only describe as contagious. In retrospect, my dad and I should have packed a gourmet picnic and found a nice spot in the Molokai wild to eat. We didn’t do that however, so even with our yummy snacks from Kumu Farms we had to leave to go fill our bellies.

After leaving Kumu in search of sturdier eats, we happened upon Molokai Pizza Cafe. Let me be clear about something–Molokai is not a place you travel to for gourmet cuisine like the other, more inhabited, islands. You will be hard pressed to find anything gourmet or fancy with the exception of the coffee, yummy produce, preserves and trail mixes made from fresh fruits, macadamias and such. I knew that the options for a vegan may be very limited as well, but I think we really lucked out with Molokai Pizza Cafe. Don’t be scared away by the Yelp reviews, which are less than savory. This place gets most of what they use from the Maui Costco in Kahului. That actually turned out great for my dad and I, as they had vegan veggie burgers from Costco and my dad, well, he just LOVES Costco and does the majority of his food shopping there. We both chowed down (no pictures) and were both totally happy and satisfied with our meals. Again, nothing fancy, but still yummy and very filling. Just what we needed to get back in our car and head to our next stop, Purdy’s Macadamia Nut Farm…which you’ll to read about in my next post. Also coming soon: a papaya-pineapple crisp that I made with Kumu papayas and Maui Gold pineapple.

Malasadas are bite-sized, fried Portuguese sweet bread, basically a fluffly little donut dusted in sugar. These little guys made their way to Hawaii when the Portuguese came to work on sugar plantations in the 1870’s.

I’m told that Leonard’s Bakery makes the best malasadas in Hawaii. Supposedly they are famous, so naturally they need a famous vegan counterpart. With the help of Mo Betta Vegan, I veganized Leonard’s recipe and am happy to report they are delicious in that fried bread kind of way.

Leonard’s original recipe is posted on Food Network’s website here.

To make them vegan, just replace the eggs with:

flax eggs, chia eggs, coconut milk yogurt or a combination of those–

Swap out the butter for Earth Balance and omit the salt.

Make the malasadas according to the recipe with the appropriate vegan substitutions and you should have bite sized fried bread treats in no time.

My plane ride home from Maui was “interesting”. There was a large woman (ps. I don’t mean heavy, I mean like she was a giant person) a few seats ahead of me that was eating and loving Spam musubi. Suddenly, I knew what to do with the weird vegan ham log in my freezer. Yeah, I had a VegeUSA ham log. It confused me, so I froze it. Anyhow, the log and Spam have certain things in common, they’re both fake meat except Spam has parts in it. If I’m going to fake meat it up, it’s always going to be parts free.

I’ve really made this sound gross, but it’s actually super good. I was afraid of it a little, but ended up really liking it. They have vegan ham rolls at Whole Foods and other natural foods stores. I wouldn’t really recommend buying one necessarily, but if you come into possession of one, make this recipe and you won’t be sorry.

PS. This is much easier to do with a musubi press. I didn’t have one, but I did my best. I have now since ordered one.

Vegan Spam Musubi

Ingredients:

1/2 vegan ham roll, cut into rectangles, you know, Spam shape.

1/4 c tamari

1/4 c vegetarian oyster sauce (stocked at most Asian grocers–made from mushrooms)

1/2 c raw sugar

1-2 tbsp coconut oil

about 5 sheets nori

2 c sushi rice (short grain rice + brown rice vinegar)

Method:

Prepare sushi rice. Lots of recipes online if you need exact measurements. In a small mixing bowl, combine tamari, vegetarian oyster sauce and sugar. Use this mixture to marinate the vegan ham slices. I left mine in the fridge for a little over a day. Likely they do not need that long, a few hours up to overnight.

Heat the coconut oil in a skillet or saute pan. Let’s say over medium or medium-high heat. Take your marinated slices and saute them good. Real good, until they start to brown. Cook the slices in batches if necessary and allow them to cool before musubi assembly.

When you’re ready to make musubi, grab your nori, musubi press, rice and vegan ham. Cut your nori in half lengthwise. Using one half of the nori, put your musubi press in the middle and push in some rice. Top that with a slice of vegan ham, then top with more rice. Remove the press. Wrap the seaweed up around the rectangle, seal with a little water if needed.

This time around I was so excited to visit Ono Oragnic Farms. If you could pick the spot furthest away from where our condo is, it’d be Ono Farms. Situated on a gorgeous volcanic hillside, just past Hana in Kipahulu. Truth be told, I don’t enjoy driving to Hana. The drive is beautiful for sight-seeing, but it takes SO long to get to Hana because of all of the slowwwww tourists. I’m not exaggerating when I say they drive about 13 mph. You can’t zoom around on Hana Hwy, but you can do a lil better than 13 mph. Anyhow, despite the long slow drive, it’s worth it for numerous reasons. The Hana side of Maui is the wet side, so beautiful, luscious green jungles and waterfalls abound. I could go on about why you should visit, but the best reason would definitely be Ono Organic Farms.

I booked a fruit tour for me and my dad and we made the drive over. We were greeted by a warm, super friendly Ono intern/volunteer who began our tour with a tropical fruit tasting. I tasted the most wonderful, crazy fruits I’ve ever seen. Some were familiar, like papaya, lilikoi, guava, star fruit, and apple bananas. Other more exotic fruits I was able to sample were:

Ice Cream Bananas

Also known as the Blue Java Banana. Yummy, deliciously creamy smooth fruit. Sweet with ever so slight hint of vanilla. These were amazing, but I don’t think any banana can top my beloved apple banana.

That’s a freshly cut jackfruit in the background. My dad HATED the jackfruit! I told him he needed to try the young green jackfruit prepared as veggie carnitas or BBQ pulled pork. He’s pretty open to veganism and I think he’d love it as a meat sub!

Longan

A relative to the lychee and the rambutan, longan is pretty good. It’s a member of the soapberry family–the closest thing I can describe it to in texture (besides a lychee or rambutan) would be a juicy grape.

Chico Sapote 

Also known as chicozapote or Manilkara zapota. We have sapote in California, but not this variety. These taste like brown sugar custard on the inside. They oxidize super fast!

I also got to sample the amazing Star Apple, which looks like a perfect purple orb. When you slice them in half, they have a star shape in the center. Flavor wise, they are so-so, but they look awesome! We also got to sample a famous variety of mango on Maui, the Golden Glow. These mangoes are actually grown by Yee’s Orchard, not Ono. But they are deliciously sweet and have absolutely no fibrous strings. They melt in your mouth. They were a favorite of my dad and I, so I took some back with us and made some mango pancakes.

Man, that’s not even close to end of the fruits I sampled! I also really enjoyed the:

Mountain Apple

The Mountain Apple is native to Malaysia and bears no resemblance to what we think of as apples. It’s gorgeous bell shaped fruit, shiny and smooth on the outside. It ranges in color from white to pinkish red and it tastes just like a rose.

So many fruits! Along with mountain apples, star fruit and papaya, that sorta spikey green guy is a Sour Sop–which is just like a cherimoya!

One of my other absolute crazy favorites was the:

Surinam Cherry

Also known as the Cayenne Cherry, aptly because it has a spice and super tiny subtle kick to it. Rich in vitamin C and antioxidants, I wish I could get these little guys here in California.

I didn’t snap any pictures of the Egg Fruit or Abiu I tried. I was just so overwhelmed by all these new, pretty looking fruits. This was like my dream farm experience.

After the tasting, (mixed photos above of farm and tasting), we went on a leisurely stroll around the farm, looking at the various fruits we tried growing on trees every where. Actually, the Surinam cherries weren’t even an official part of the tasting, we happened upon a tree ripe with them and Ono let us sample as many as we wanted.

The walk was absolutely breath-taking and so educational.

Pineapple.

That pine cone looking thing way up high in the tree is a Durian.

Tamarind.

My old friend Breadfruit! AKA Ulu!

Guava. A pink strawberry guava fell off the tree and rolled to me. I took it home.

Apple Bananas.

Tecate Limes. Yellow when really ripe, delicious squirted over fresh papaya with wild lilikoi.

And a quick, but poor shot of what became of those mangoes

I highly recommend visiting Ono Farms if and when you happen to be on Maui. It is every fruit lover and food adventurer’s dream, especially if you have never been somewhere that is located on the same latitude as Hawaii. Depending on what time of the year you are there, they will have all kinds of special stuff for you to try. We lucked out and were there during mountain apple season which is super short. But we missed white pineapple, the coffee harvest, and the chocolate–although they did have a sampling of cacao nibs from a previous harvest. It’s all you can eat, plus free Hawaiian coffee. There are also really cool fruit posters and delicious jams/preserves (all of which you get to try) for sale.

Ono Organic Farms

149 Hana Hwy

Kipahulu/Hana

Maui, HI 96713

(808) 248-7779