Alan Wong Cooks for Charlotte's Birthday

The event described here took place on March 6. We had to wait until it had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser (http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com) before we could post it in the blog. Special thanks go to Richard Ha for inviting us to such wonderful event, and to our good friend Macario for allowing us to "piggy back" on his beautiful photograph settings...

Alan Wong is a very famous chef from Honolulu. How famous? his main restaurant in Honolulu (he has two restaurants in Honolulu, one in Kona and one in Tokyo http://www.alanwongs.com/) was rated by Gourmet Magazine as the # 8 restaurant in the country!

So, we decided to bring Alan and his team of cooks to make a big dinner to celebrate Charlotte's birthday.

Well... not quite. As it turns out, Alan Wong uses several of the products grown in Hamakua Springs Country farm (the farm where Charlotte works) and he comes once a year to the Big Island with a team of his cooks gets fresh produce from the local farms and prepares a BIG Cookout at Richard's farm. Besides produce from Hamakua Springs there were mushrooms (several different kinds), goat cheese, grass fed beef, Hawaiian style smoked pork & beef , heart of palm, fresh prawns from a stream that runs through the farm, and who know what else, all from local growers.

They set up tents, stoves, grills and just went bananas! They prepared over 10 courses, all of them delicious.

The tents are up and the cooks are gathering their ingredients under the close supervision of Alan

Some of the ingredients from Hamakua Springs Country Farm.

Fresh prawns

Cold Prawns

Yummy Prawns (sounds like a Dr. Seuss' Book, eh?)

The prawns were part of the pupu's (all you people from the mainland, stop laughing, pupus are appetizers) along with smoked goat cheese wrapped in Shiso leaves and topped with pancetta (what cholesterol!?), chicharrones (pork rinds) in a very fancy array, and smoked Hawaiian style sausage.

The rest of the meal was just as decadent, there was steak, fish, more steak, mushroom poke, vegetables, paella, and a whole parade of delicious food

the paella and the fish getting cooked


putting together one of the salads

grilling some of the steaks
and some more steaks

And this is Alan Wong supervising the team....

Richard has this old bus called a sampan. These were the public buses in Hilo during the 50's. Richard got his at an auction and has kept it in excellent shape. So part of the activities of the day included rides in the sampan around the area!

Charlotte and Richard in front of the sampan

All aboard!

Taking Pictures like a Pro

Macario, a good friend of ours was in charge of taking photographs of the dishes prepared during the event. He is a professional photographer, so he had a table set with a black back drop, special lights and the whole enchilada. So, seeing how everything was set by a pro, for a pro, I took the liberty of piggy-backing on to his set and took some pictures as well......

Macario (the real Pro) at work

Array of produce from the farm


Mushrooms with green and white string beans and white wine

Fried fish with mushrooms and a delicious almost sweet sauce...hmmmmmmm




Smores, yes SMORES! can you believe it? after all that food, there still was dessert! And not any smore either, sure it had the conventional Graham crackers and marshmallows, and that was as ordinary as it got, the chocolate was a locally grown and produced chocolate and the smores also had bananas from the farm cooked in butter and sugar.... oh dear...


Here is a most unusual scene: Leslie with two free hands! Leslie is another very good friend of ours, she is Macario's wife and Emma Rose's mom (Emma Rose is the little Angel in Charlotte's hands). Emma Rose is the reason why Leslie hardly ever has more than one hand free. But last night Charlotte offered to hold ER so that Leslie could go freely to the food tables. Turns out Leslie is now my new "food-buddy" for she also has an appetite for any kind of food! Just look at the smile on her face!



Alvin the Legend




This is Alvin, a friend of Kimo's (Richard's son in law) and a well recognized wild hog hunter in Hawaii. Legend has it that he took Captain Cook hunting for wild hogs during his first visit to the islands and has been hunting them ever since. Alvin and Kimo built a smoke house just for the occasion and smoked over 30 lbs of marinated pork, pork sausage, and beef.......

Newspaper Article and Video...

The Honolulu Advertiser (Hawai'i's biggest newspaper) featured today (March 20th) two articles and a video on the Alan Wong cookout. Here are the links to them:

Smoked Meat Article: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070321/LIFE02/703210345/1083

Green House Article (Featuring Charlotte "Greenhouse Goddess" Romo: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070321/LIFE02/703210344/1083

Alan Wong's trip: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070321/LIFE02/703210343/1083

Video: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070321/VIDEO04/70320007/1083