If You Read Only One Grandpa Gotta Cook post...
..this is it.
Four recipes.
Four sets of ingredients.
A meal so large it took a night and a day to get it prepared.
This special edition of Grandpa Gotta Cook starts now.
The Occasion
Sunday, April 19 was four years to the day since my wife and I, our two sons and their wives arrived on the island of Oahu.
After disembarking, picking up our rental van, dropping off our stuff at the AirBnB home we stayed at and finding a nearby beach, the next thing we did was look for something to eat.
Our search took us north along the Windward Coast into the region known as the North Shore in search of the Famous Kahuku Shrimp Truck.
Yep, that's it.
Of course, that's not the side they show you in the brochure.
Last Friday, when I realized that Sunday would indeed be the anniversary of our landing, I started looking through all the images I took of that trip. Aside from the truck, I also found this:
This is the food plate I ate that day, four years ago.
Garlic Butter Shrimp
Hawaiian Beef Teriyaki
Hawaiian Cole Slaw
Hawaiian Macaroni Salad
Rice (with Garlic Butter sauce on top)
We've been talking as a family about going back some day, probably to Maui. Since that day four years ago, though, three grandchildren have arrived, everyone has graduated from college, my sons have jobs and so do my wife and I, so trying to coordinate schedules, and how to finance this next trip, has been a little more challenging than the first time around.
The Mission
As I sat looking at the image, I came to a realization.
As the saying goes, if you can't bring the family to Hawaii...
...you bring Hawaii to the family.
I determined then and there, no matter what it took, no matter how much time was required, no matter how much sweat, blood and stress it would exact of me, I was going to make that combo Garlic Butter Shrimp and Hawaiian Beef Teriyaki plate.
With all the sides.
Or die trying.
The Prep Before The Prep
Fortunately, for the first time since I've been tasked with cooking once a week, I knew before the day of what I was going to do. That gave me more than 24 hours to collect all the recipes I needed, determine what ingredients I might be lacking, go shopping, and get some of it going ahead of time.
The recipes for both the Hawaiian Macaroni Salad and the Hawaiian Beef Teriyaki suggested getting them started the night before, so the salad could soak in its flavors and the meat could marinate. I've cooked meals where those types of suggestions were made, but never got things rolling early enough so that I had more than a few hours to let things sit.
This time would be different.
It meant switching days to cook with my wife, which she agreed to do, and the two of us going on a long overdue date—to WinCo—to fetch the missing ingredients. We went in search of skirt steak, lemon juice, ginger, garlic, cabbage, macaroni and Hawaiian Maid fruit juice. We ended up with everything, except we used Carne Asada steak instead, and we had to substitute the Hawaiian Maid for Mexican Jumex.
Fortunately, Jumex has Guava, Pineapple and Papaya flavored drinks.
This all took place Saturday afternoon. After the evening meal and doing some other things (like finishing up a post), I began making the macaroni salad and the marinade for the steak around 9 PM.
Hawaiian Macaroni Salad
For the salad I needed the following:
- 1 pound uncooked macaroni pasta
- 4 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 2 1/2 cups Best Foods mayonnaise
- 1 cup 2% milk
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp black pepper
I also added shredded carrots and bacon bits to the mix.
Aside from getting the macaroni boiling long enough to soften it up, the main part was getting the salad dressing ready.
Okay. Boiling water and occasionally stirring pasta isn't that tough. Neither was mixing the dressing. The pasta took about ten minutes. When it was done, I was told to pour it into a colander, rinse and set aside.
While the pasta was still boiling, I put the dressing together. Staring at a big glob of mayonnaise is kind of disturbing, so I got right to adding the other ingredients.
Even with the layers of cider, milk, sugar, salt and pepper, it still wasn't very appetizing.
Thankfully, it only took some whisking to smooth everything out.
All that was left to do was add the grated carrots, the bacon bits and the dressing to the macaroni and voila:
Part one of this Hawaiian Food Truck masterpiece was complete.
Next up...
Hawaiian Beef Teriyaki
The ingredients to get the marinade ready included:
- 1 can of pineapple chunks with juice
- 1 cup soy sauce
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 cloves of minced garlic
- 1 tsp minced ginger
The idea was to mix all of that together in a bowl, set aside some to refrigerate overnight for use after grilling the meat, and then dunk meat in to ziplock bags and soak them in the marinade.
Easy enough.
The marinade turned out looking like this, which you might expect with two cups of soy sauce and a 20 oz can of pineapple chunks pretty much dominating everything.
Then, it was time to separate the meat slices and put them into the bags. The recipe called for one pound of steak, but I needed two pounds to feed everyone, so I doubled the recipe, more or less. We didn't quite have enough brown sugar (we meant to get more at the store and then didn't), but what I had was close enough.
In went the meat, then the marinade over the top.
Once that meat was done, I took it and the bowl of macaroni salad and put it all in the refrigerator where it sat until Sunday afternoon when I was ready to use it.
It was sometime after 10 PM Saturday night when I finished up with the pre-prep. The cole slaw and the garlic butter shrimp could wait.
Hawaiian Cole Slaw
On Sunday, I waited until around 3:30 PM to continue getting dinner ready. The recipe for the cole slaw said it would be good to prepare it about an hour ahead of time so that it could be refrigerated and served cold.
The ingredients for it were:
- A half head of cabbage (the recipe called for a coleslaw mix)
- The remaining shredded carrot I used for the macaroni salad
- 1 can crushed pineapple, drained
- 1/2 cup of onion
- 1/2 cup of mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 2 tbsp brown sugar (I ran out, so I used regular sugar instead)
- 1 teaspoon dried cilantro (I left this out since we didn't have it)
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1/4 teaspoon of ground black pepper
Since I went with the cabbage over the coleslaw mix, I had to first cut it. There's only one way to cut it so that it comes off looking like slaw, so I kept working the side that was already cut until it was all done. Then I chopped up about a quarter of an onion, since I'm not that big of a fan.
Next came the dressing, which was pretty similar to the one for the macaroni with the addition of the crushed pineapple. Once all the ingredients were combined and whisked, onto the cole slaw it went.
Once it was refrigerated, phase three was complete, with only one more to go.
Garlic Butter Shrimp
Up until this point, the preparation was fairly simple to execute. However, at this juncture, I needed to prepare things for the shrimp, while also having time to grill the teriyaki steak.
My wife offered to help, and so I let her. I couldn't be in two places at once after all. Only problem was, I knew the recipe better than she did, so I ended up assisting while I should have been grilling the steak.
Because she was there and raring to get going, I didn't have a chance to line up the ingredients. They are, however, as follows:
- 1 pound white shrimp (it's best if they're uncooked for this recipe, along with deveined, shell off except for the tail—we didn't have uncooked however, and we also doubled the recipe like I did for the steak)
- Five tbsp extra virgin olive oil (I used vegetable oil)
- 4 tbsp salted butter
- 3 heads fresh garlic minced
- 1 lemon (I used lemon juice)
- 1/2 tsp coarse Hawaiian sea salt (I used regular)
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/4 tsp paprika
Half of the butter was melted to sauteé the garlic until a golden brown. Most of the oil went in to help things along.
Once the garlic was caramelized, the next step was to add the rest of the oil, butter and then the spices and lemon. The idea was to let the garlic butter sauce set up before putting in the shrimp, since it doesn't take long for shrimp to cook through. Especially, when using already cooked shrimp like we were doing.
With the sauce pretty much ready, in went the shrimp. All of this went pretty fast. It was at this point that I was able to go out and start grilling the steak.
Grilling Steak
I like to get the grill fired up first, so it can reach about 350 degrees Fahrenheit before putting on the meat. It just helps to have a hot grill to work with, even though use aluminum foil to try to keep cleanup at a minimum. Downside, no grill marks, but that's about it.
I managed to fit all 13 slices of the steak on the piece of foil, and following instructions, gave each side about three minutes to cook. I didn't want it drying out on me after marinating it for so long.
Final Touches
Before we started the shrimp, my wife took out the cooker and got the rice going. In this case, we were just trying to get sticky rice, which according to what I read, didn't require a whole lot. So, while we worked on the shrimp and the steak, the rice finished up in the cooker.
That was it. Everything was ready to go.
Taste Test
From the reactions I got from my wife, sons and their wives, the teriyaki beef was a hit. My younger son wanted more. A sweet but bitter soy sauce taste was definitely present.
The shrimp was good, but could have spent a minute or two less on the stove, just enough to warm it up. It probably needed more butter, or a way of soaking in it beforehand because it wasn't quite as tasty as what we had on Oahu.
The macaroni salad was good. Probably need a little more black pepper, though.
The flavor hit of the meal for me, though, surprisingly, was the cole slaw. The apple cider vinegar and the pineapple combined for such a blast of flavor, it was amazing. It was a taste sensation I'd never experienced before. Hands down, best tasting cole slaw. Ever.
Oh, and by the way. Substituting the Jumex worked well, too. Very tasty stuff.
The Dinner Show
Okay. No one danced or sang Hawaiian songs. We're talented, but not that talented. We did look at some of the images and video I took of our trip. Some of it was pretty funny. Our granddaughter had a good time, too, seeing her parents, aunt, uncle and grandparents taking in the sites.
The Wrap Up
Was it worth it? Heck, yeah. I'll do it again. Spreading the preparation out like I did helped, and since none of it was overly time consuming, I could probably spend a couple or so hours putting it all together next time.
As it is, I've already promised to attempt to recreate the luau food we ate at the Polynesian Cultural Center the second day we were there, but that will probably have to wait until next year.
Or we could just go again. :) I imagine they have luaus on Maui, too, right?
Only one way to find out.
Until then...
...Enjoy!
All images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen
This post is published in conjunction with the weekly 