Family-Style Meals at the Hali'imaile General Store: [A Cookbook]

Family suppers were a part of every day life when I was growing up in Dallas, Texas. My parents, my brother, sister, and I would gather around the table in the evening and recount the day's events and activities while filling our tummies with basic, simple foods.

My mother wasn't a particularly great cook, but she did manage to put meals on the table every day. I'm not sure how she did it, but I do remember what she did: each day of the week, every week, year after year, was a specific type of food with some occasional surprises thrown in.

Sundays were about brunch and food from the deli, like lox and bagels and corned beef. I remember Dad filleting smoked whitefish as we anxiously anticipated that first delicious bite. On Sunday nights, the grill was king: chicken, steaks, burgers, ribs, jumbo prawns. During the summer months, we always hung out around the swimming pool and we'd invite all our friends over. Being the Jewish mother, my mom would always make sure everyone was fed with something she cooked or ordered in, like burgers from the newly opened Burger King, pizza, or great fried chicken from Youngblood's, which, to this day, is my favorite double-battered fried chicken. We never lacked for an abundance of food.

Mondays were chop-suey days that utilized leftovers from the weekend. Mom might take some grilled beef or chicken from Sunday night's barbecue and stir-fry it with some leftover vegetables. Or we might just have a bunch of leftovers, a mix of this and that and a little more of this-a mix of whatever happened to be in the refrigerator.

Fish was usually served on Tuesdays, not usually fresh fish but frozen fish, being rather landlocked in Dallas. My mother, like most home cooks of the day, cooked fish well done. Fillet of sole was cooked at 350 degrees F for an hour, or until crispy around the edges. I usually left the house when lobsters were boiled to death because I couldn't stand the smell. It was way-overcooked-fish day at my house, a day when I tried my best to go to a friend's house for dinner.

One of my favorite dishes was my mother's tuna-noodle casserole. She made it with the usual mushrooms, mushroom soup, peas, and tuna fish, all from cans, with potato chips on the top. My mother grew up on a farm, so canned and frozen foods were a treat for her to use. Other casseroles that appeared on Wednesdays would combine leftover brisket with canned corn and chiles, Velveeta cheese, and Rotel tomatoes-or beef with broccoli and canned cheddar-cheese soup. I still love casseroles-the marrying of ingredients held together by a sauce-but I use ingredients that are fresh and homemade, like just-caught tuna, free-range chicken, corn, tomatoes, artichokes, fennel, fresh herbs, and homemade stocks and sauces.

Our favorite day of the week was Thursday-where's-the-beef day. Thick sirloin steaks were a favorite; at our house, it was one giant piece of sirloin for each member of the family (!) served up with stuffed baked or mashed potatoes. Lamb and pork were served on this day too. My mother would shop for weeks to find the perfect meaty lamb shanks. My father could eat three or four with no problem. Vegetables came from the convenience of the "can"-Jolly Green Giant asparagus and Le Sueur peas.

Rotisserie chicken was one of my mother's best meals, plump roasters slowly turned on a tabletop rotisserie, basted with its own juices. The meat was so succulent and tasty. Even when the kids were gone, she cooked several chickens every Friday night, just in case anyone would stop by and need to eat. Of course the leftovers were terrific too, and were turned into pot pies, quesadillas, casseroles, and other homey dishes.

Just about anything could pop up on the dinner table on Saturday night-my mom never knew who would be home, especially as we teenagers attended to our social lives. Sometimes she'd make a soup or a main course salad; a pasta dish might emerge with leftover chicken from the night before. Dinner was always a surprise, but we knew it was always there and that there was enough to have six or eight friends show up hungry. My house was well known for its full-of-food-at-all-times fridge. Friends would walk in the backdoor and head straight to the fridge; they knew my mother loved that they felt comfortable enough to raid the fridge anytime.

Now, years later, I can appreciate my mother's efforts, having cooked for a family of five every night. While I cook on a larger scale, overseeing preparations for a few hundred for dinner every night, I can see the wisdom of her schedule of menus and relish the memories of the many simple meals she prepared for our family.

When I moved to Maui almost thirty years ago, family became an even more precious aspect of my life. Not only did I inherit a family when I married my husband, Joe, I was also introduced to the concept of 'ohana, or family, in the Hawaiian sense. Culturally the people of Hawai'i, who come from all corners of the earth, hold family and family values in high esteem. So family gatherings-daily, weekly, or when there is an occasion to celebrate-are a part of everyday life. And of course each family gathering is centered around food, another important aspect of Hawai'i's culture.

Family and food are a natural combination and it's the essence of what happens at Hali'imaile General Store, day in and day out. With the help of my hardworking and dedicated staff, I am able to provide the food and the tables around which families come together to dine. It's here where birthdays, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, special holidays, and just simple family get-togethers are celebrated with the sharing of a meal. Many times food is ordered and passed around to share, each person taking a bite from another's plate. The focal point is the food, but the bond it creates is about the family.

In the past two decades, there has been a tremendous renaissance in the food of Hawai'i: farmers are producing incredible fruits and vegetables, fish has become the star of the plate, and there's a lot of focus on freshness and quality. My peers in the restaurant world are creating wonderful food, and together we've garnered attention for Hawai'i's regional cuisine, a cuisine that mirrors the many ethnic groups that live here and that makes Hawai'i a food lover's paradise.

In this cookbook, I hope that some of my food will become the bonding agent for your family gatherings. There's nothing more fun and satisfying to me than to sit down with my family over food I have cooked or that I've cooked together with my family. In this fast-paced and overcrowded-schedules world, family time-where the whole family sits down to a home-cooked meal-has become a lost art. It's so sad, because the satisfaction one gets from presenting a home-cooked meal is priceless. Take some time to renew your cooking skills and cook, cook, cook.

I know that as a restaurant chef, dishes sometimes get complicated and have many parts. The recipes in this book are meant to be prepared by the home cook. If you always follow my basic rule of prepping all your ingredients before you start to cook, the making of the dish becomes fairly simple. Some recipes may have more ingredients than you are used to using, but don't let that scare you. Think of the preparation of each of the many recipes as an adventure. If you like to cook, you will love my recipes, and once you get used to the process, you will make them over and over. I believe in giving you recipes that you can execute yourself.

While I don't follow my mother's rule of fish Tuesdays, casserole Wednesdays, beef Thursdays, and so on in my restaurant, the protein is the key element of a dish. So I've organized this cookbook around the prime protein ingredients and days of the week. I hope that you'll find this a useful way to begin your family-cooking...