Make the meal: Hawaiian laulau

Part of a limited series on unique dishes for the holidays

In celebration of the holidays, I thought I'd do something a little different for these next few Monday subscriber-only posts: write about a number of my favorite foods and how to make them. Not your everyday eats, I'm hoping to share ideas for dishes you've possibly never tried - or at least have never tried to make at home. Let me know what you think - and share what you make this holiday season, whatever it is! ~JRC

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Who doesn't like comfort food? Hearty, stick-to-your-ribs, meat & potatoes meals that fill your belly and soul. For me, growing up in the Midwest, these are mom's homemade chili, chicken-pot-pie, and beans & cornbread. Yes, comfort food emanates from the home kitchen - it’s about family. And it’s also about place.

“Familial feelings" are arguable ubiquitous with comfort food, but meals almost always exemplify the local flavor of a region too. The go-to foods we cherish often celebrate what is unique for our homelands. Hand picked and commonly available, comfort foods build on both supply and tradition. And never is this more true than in the Hawaiian islands.

Here, family - ohana - is everything. And so are the islands themselves. A tropical paradise and a growers dream; Hawaii is alive with fresh produce, plentiful waters, and ample talent to make something delicious out of it all. It will thus come as little surprise that the comfort food of choice in Hawaii exemplifies family, the land, and the sea - all wrapped into one. It is the humble yet sophisticated laulau.

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Laulau (sometimes written Lau Lau or lau lau) means literally "leaf leaf." It's more a way of cooking than one single recipe. Fatty meat of some kind wrapped in edible taro leaves (luau) is then wrapped again with ti leaves to form a natural cooking vessel (the ti is not eaten but serves as a container, akin to corn husks used in Mexican tamales).

The meal is deceptively simple, with unadulterated ingredients steamed inside these fist-sized bundles. The most common laulau recipe I know of consists of just five things: cubed pork, pork belly fat, butterfish (black cod), all salted liberally and wrapped in taro leaves. The ti leaf outside keeps it bundled up while cooked for hours. Once finished, the pork, fish, fat, & greens morph into a tender dish like no other. Imagine the texture of a perfectly cooked stew with a side of the best-steamed greens you've ever had, and you start to get the idea.

Laulau flavor is hard to describe, though. It's never fishy, despite having fish as a main ingredient. And it doesn't come off salty or overcooked, although being incredibly salted and steamed for hours on end. The process of laulau itself imparts an otherworldly amalgamation of tastes that in one bite seems familiar, and at the same, utterly new and surprising.

It’s all umami and it’s all delicious.

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The best way to experience laulau is to visit Hawaii, of course. Mainly because it's hard to find fresh taro and ti leaves anywhere else. But one can make a respectable version of it using ingredients found almost anywhere. The result is similar and surprisingly delicious, if not a perfect replica of this uniquely Hawaiian dish.