Pocket Slider Burgers

For Christmas our friends Rob and Wendy gave us a fun little kitchen gadget that makes perfect patties for slider burgers and we finally had the chance to use them. We’ve wanted to try it out for a while now, but felt that we didn’t want to add just another burger, so we got creative. These pocket sliders made a perfect appetizer for a Sharks watching party we were going to later that evening. This month we’re getting ready to plant our “Victory Garden” in the back yard. We planned on this last year and failed due to lack of dirt, and a bent thumb on Eric's end. We looked back on why we never finished our planters and the obvious answer was "hammers hurt". Eric needs to get better at aiming that thing. When Eric first described the garden area as our victory garden, Charisse asked "its not a vegetable garden? How do you grow victories?" Okay, so maybe we added that last part for dramatic effect but here in the US and in England a backyard garden holds more meaning than just a fun hobby. Beginning in 1917, American and British citizens were encouraged to grow small portable foods like vegetables and . While victory gardens made a terrific marketing tool, the effect on the home-front was fairly pronounced in a number of ways. Most of the time when someone thinks of a victory garden one conjures images of 1940's war propaganda. In reality both world wars depended on individual households doing everything they could to reduce their draw on existing resources. A garden in the front lawn meant more than just more food on the plate and happier people, there was more food for G.I.s fighting overseas even with a reduced labor pool as so many of the laborers normally involved in agriculture were enlisted. At this point, Charisse began rolling her eyes and summed up Eric's whole lecture with a comment along the lines of "so everyone had more food and was happy". 

Lilikoi Kālua Pork Sliders with Pineapple BBQ Sauce

Mahalo no kou heluhelu ʻana mai i kēia puke. Okay, so technically that says "Thank you for reading this book", and this is a blog but Eric ever learned the word for "blog", and we figured that this was close enough. Last night we put together the second entry in our Foodbuzz Project Food Blog Challenge. This time around were tasked with tackling a foreign classic, something outside of our comfort zone. We were kicking around ideas on what culture we could tackle and what kind of dish we wanted to prepare and promptly hit some major problems. We were starting to get really frustrated when Eric announced that we would just cook a traditional Hawaiian breakfast. This was meant as a joke because the traditional breakfast in Hawai'i is very basic and involves fried SPAM, something Charisse is just not a fan of. While Eric's Hawaiian breakfast idea didn't fly, it did get us thinking about other Hawaiian foods. It seemed like it would be too easy for us though, since Eric went to college there but lets face it, frozen pizza and Top Ramen is no cuisine (it turns out that college food is truly universal). We kicked around different kinds of dishes that are native to the islands, and found that about half of them involve SPAM, but hit on a few possibilities, one being Kālua pork and the very mention of it set Eric salivating. This is the Luau pork, traditionally cooked by digging a big hole in the ground, having a nice fire then burying a whole pig in there for a few hours. Eric ran and got the shovel and Charisse,  the voice of reason, reminded him that burning the neighborhood down is not the best way to make friends, so we used a more practical approach, our oven.  
One of the things that gives the Kālua pork such a unique flavor is the Alaea salt. This is a large grain sea salt that is drawn from the red clay native to the islands. This clay is a huge source of various minerals and adds a real earthy tone. To sweeten the meat we wrapped it in a large banana leaf which added more flavor and helped retain the pork's moisture (the leafs actually added way more moisture than the meat had to start with, a huge plus). Banana leaf? Alaea salt? Not going to find these at Safeway, at least not one in San Jose. We ended up going to three different Asian markets trying to track everything down and that was an adventure in and of itself. The trip took us almost 3 hours, and practically drove Charisse nuts. Okay, the part that drove Charisse nuts wasn't the fact that we couldn't read any of the packaging nor was it the fact that we really stood out, but Eric's complete in-ability to focus on the task at hand. He wanted to stop and look at everything and half the time was to excited to remember what it was he was looking for. We also picked up what we needed for the Lilikoi BBQ sauce and Pineapple slaw. 
 We enjoyed the smell of roasting pig for over 3 hours, and we should have opened it in a pan because a river a juice hit the floor, something we're not used too with meat! We were pretty worried that we'd screwed up and ruined the pork, but when we pulled a piece off, we knew we had a winner. This pork is sweet and earthy, like nothing else we've ever had. The banana leaves impart just enough sweetness and the salt brings that sense of Hawai'i style earthiness, which is something you'll get if you've ever been there, if you haven't been there, its the off season now, so flights are cheap! We tossed the pork in a Lilikoi Pinapple BBQ sauce and topped it with a Pineapple coleslaw on a taro sweet roll (also at the Asian market). This was the closest we've gotten to tasting Hawai'i since we were there last, and if you've never been there, this is what your missing!