Tom's Hawaiian Papayamole

Ingredients:
Small Strawberry papaya - very ripe
6 Small cooked shrimp - w/o tails
A few green onions
Lemon
Hawaiian sea salt
Red pepper flakes/chili powder/ichimi togarashi (optional)
Sugar (optional)
Ritz crackers

Directions:
Cut and de-seed the papaya. Scoop out and cut into bits. Chop up shrimp. Combine and add a squeeze of lemon juice and a pinch of salt. You may keep the papaya/shrimp chunky like salsa, or food process it so that it's more smooth like guacamole. Once it's at the consistency you like, stir in green onions. Spoon onto crackers!

Variations: you may also substitute sugar for salt, an a sweet onion for the green onion. This will make it sweeter vs savorier. And if you're like me, I need more kick so I garnished with some red pepper flakes, etc.

Ps this recipe was originally the idea of Divemaster Tom Wong. If you enjoy it, don't thank me, thank the Wong Tom. :)

Tako Tacos

The inspiration for this came from always seeing, but not ordering tako poke when I order my ahi poke... And the fun name! In this recipe I used tako poke / already marinated octopus, as I figured they've already added some spices that will taste good. I used rice and some cabbage for some diversity of textures. And added additional spices and soy sauce to taste. This is good when the rice is warm, but other items are cold.

Ingredients:

Taco shells
Chuka iidako (whole baby octopus)
Tako poke
Spicy tako poke
Shoyu soy sauce
Nori Komi furikake
Ichimi togarashi
Seaweed
White rice
Brown rice
Shredded cabbage

Directions:
Place all ingredients in separate containers and build your tako taco to your liking. Add seasonings as needed. Enjoy!

In 3 taco photo (L to R): tako poke with seaweed, white rice, and some furikake and togarashi; white rice, cabbage, chuka iidako and shoyu; brown rice, seaweed, togarashi, furikake and spicy tako poke.

Banana Rice

This is just a little change-up for those of you who like oatmeal and bananas for breakfast. Today instead of using oatmeal, I used last night's white rice!

Ingredients:
Rice
Banana
Brown sugar

Directions:
Combine rice and banana in bowl. Stir / mash the bananas and rice until your desired chunkiness has been achieved. Sprinkle the top with brown sugar ad microwave for 2-3 minutes until the sugar has melted.

Maybe toss in some raisins? Yum.

Hot Shoyu Poke Sub

Ingredients:
Hot Shoyu Poke w/brown rice
seaweed salad
soy sauce
wasabi
wheat bread sub bun

Directions:
Deconstruct the poke bowl. nicely re-layer the poke.
top bun
seaweed salad
poke
wasabi
soy
brown rice
bottom bun

Enjoy!

Crushed Red Pepper Tea

Ingredients:

1-2 packets of crushed red pepper (like you get with pizza)
1-2 little creamer buckets (optional)
honey (optional)
hot water

Directions:
Steep the crushed red peppers in the hot water. using a reusable tea bag or coffee strainer helps... unless you like your tea "pulpy". add honey to sweeten if you'd like. also, if you drink the tea straight, the spiciness will stay with you. however, if you add the creamer, the tea is still spicy, but it doesn't bond with your mouth/throat as much. i recommend 1 red pepper packet to one "normal" mug of hot water. ideally 1:1 pepper packet to creamer bucket as well.

Pear Sauce

This recipe isn't anything out of the ordinary, but I'd been eating some apple sauce lately and decided I wanted some pear sauce! So I bought a bunch of pears and made some. Totally natural, no sugar added. Yum!

Ingredients:

10 pears (bartlett)
lemon juice

Directions: Peel and core pears. Peeling is usually easier if you do it first. After coring, use the regular blade on your food processor and start processing them. Add a good squirt of lemon juice to keep it from getting too brown. Process until a slightly chunky, but liquidous texture is created. Keep refrigerated.

Try Try 'Ems

Ingredients:

bread or pizza dough
crumbled bacon
alfredo sauce
fresh ground black pepper

Directions:
prepare your dough as directed, then roll it out and cut into 2" x 10" or so strips - maybe a pinch narrower. create an even number of strips. cutting the dough with a pizza cutter works well. brush on alfredo sauce atop each strip. sprinkle every other strip with crumbled bacon. grind pepper over all strips. turn over non-baconed strip onto a baconed strip (alfredo side down). this will make a long, skinny alfredo-bacon-pepper sandwich of sorts. lightly press together, and maybe even pinch the edges together a bit to help it stay together. do this for each pair of dough strips. give 2-3 half twists for each strip. then bake as directed for your dough... or maybe about 400 degrees for 15 minutes or so (convection), at least until dough is golden. remove from oven. brush the twist-strip with alfredo and pepper again in the edge/cracks where you see the bacon inside part.

consume. (he go, eh?)

notes: when brushing the final alfredo, you can also choose to use butter. the alfredo / pepper combo makes the twist taste similar to biscuits and gravy. experiment with maybe... ground beef/pizza sauce/cayenne... bbq sauce/cheddar/pulled pork.

* what's with that name? ...well, instead of something obvious, like "alfredo bacon twists", i happened to be watching an episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. they were in hawaii making "dirt shirts". the silk screen lady, had a shirt that said "try try em" on the front and "he go, eh?" on the back. "try try em" is a means of encouragement/suggestion to try whatever it is you're doing. "he go, eh?" is a response/confirmation stating that what you just try-tried was a success. (of course if what you tried wasn't good, then "he no go". anyway, as i was making these, watching the show and then eating this new creation, and in the spirit of hawaii/my inventive recipes, i named these twists as such! give this (or any of my recipes) a shot. you might just like them. Try try the Try Try 'Ems!