The search for Hawaii’s greatest recipes continues
A recipe is a terrible thing to waste. Or lose. This is the simple truth behind “By Request,” a weekly column that originated decades ago in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and continues today in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Wednesday Crave food section.
Newspaper readers send in their requests for recipes for old-school comfort foods, for restaurant favorites, for new things they just want to try. The mission of the column has been to hunt down those recipes.
Writer Betty Shimabukuro inherited “By Request” in 1998 and continues to field requests and solve those mysteries.
Her new book, “By Request — Highlights,” highlights compiles top recipes from Betty’s first two books “By Request — The Search for Hawaii’s Greatest Recipes” and “By Request 2 — The Continuing Search for Hawaii’s Greatest Recipes” and adds more than 30 new recipes. The collection covers plate lunch standards, long-gone classics, signature restaurant dishes, and dozens of other dishes celebrating that cuisine we call “local.” It may not have a clear definition, but we know it when we taste it.
The opening chapter is a salute to the foods of the Hawaii’s school cafeterias. The following chapters cover breakfast foods, dishes for both meat lovers and vegetarians, and desserts. The final chapter is for the advanced motivated home cook who has the time and wherewithal to take on more complicated dishes.
Shimabukuro is a managing editor at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and editor of the newspaper’s weekly food magazine, Crave. She has written the recipe column “By Request” for many years, beginning when it was part of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
She is a graduate of Kaiser High School and the University of Hawaii journalism program. She’s had a long career in newspaper work, spanning all manner of reporting and editing jobs, landing in food writing in 1998.
Until then her cooking training involved nothing more than a spotty apprenticeship with her mother, Betty Zane Shimabukuro, a home economist and a fine home cook. She has since improved on this base by working with some of Hawaii’s best chefs and home cooks.
The 196-page book, published by Mutual Publishing, retails for $16.95.
Info: Visit www.mutualpublishing.com.