Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 4, 1 April 2000 — Traditional food preparation [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Traditional food preparation

Ua ahu ka imu, e lawaiu ka 'i'i. The oven is ready, Iet the fish wrapped in ti leaf be cooked. AII preparations have been made; now Iet us proceed with the work.

IN ANCIENT times, food was cooked using three methods: broiling, boiling and cooking in the imu, whieh is a combination of steaming and roasting. The kapu relating to food and eating was the most important one. Established by Wākea, this social code of behavior required men and women to eat separately. Their food was also prepared in separate imu. This code gave men the responsibility of preparing the imu and

cooking. In imu cooking, both baking and steaming are eombined. The man, or men, of the family would make the oven for the women first. Then he went to the mua to start an imu for himself and the men of the family. When the food was cooked, the man would open his wife's oven, elean the kalo, pound and knead it into the poi and put it into the calabash for her. Retuming to the mua, poi was prepared for the men. Kalo, the embodiment of the god Kāne, was sacred and only men could plant, harvest and handle it. The broiling method of kō'ala or pūlehu was normally used for small quantities of food that did not required an imu. Kō'ala refers to broiling on hot coals, while pūlehu is cooking in hot ashes. Cooking by spreading the food out on a bed of hot coals is called pālaha, and 'ōlala is the term used when food is

placed near the fīre and turned from time to time while eooking. While 'ulu and mai'a were broiled in their skins to keep the

flesh from burning, fish was wrapped in tl when cooked over coals. The process is called lāwalu. To boil foods, red hot rocks and the food to be cooked .

were dropped into a bowl eontaining water. Here, the heat source is on the inside of the container, compared to our system today. Leafy greens, such as lū'au, palula (sweet potato leaves) and others, were cooked using this method. Occasionally, heated stones, 'eho, were placed on the inside of fowl, and the fowl was wrapped in tī during the eooking process. Rocks used in these cooking processes were the type that would not burst when they were heated and required careful selection. Afamiliar mo'olelo tells how Maui-a-Kalana obtained the secret of fire from the great mud hen of Ilina. The very first fire of ka po'e kahiko burned eontinually and was tended by the gods. Then the gods snatched the fire away from the people. The fire and its secret source

were guarded by two bird women, 'Alaehuapipi and 'Alaenuiahina. One day, Maui eame upon two women who were broiling bananas over an open fire. Frightened, the women quickly changed themselves into mud hens, 'alae. Maui was able to grab 'Alaehuapipi by the throat, but her eompanion escaped. He held 'Alaehuapipi dangling from her head with her wings crossed and demanded that she tell him the source of the fire or he would kill her. Realizing that she would die, she revealed to Maui the source of the fire and where to find it. This is how Maui discovered that the secret of fire was in wood and that it was made with sparks from rubbing two sticks of wood together. From that day forth, fire started by friction was the source of fire for all ka po'e Hawai'i. ■

"The man, or men, of the family would make tne oven for the women first. Then he went to the mua to start an imu for himself and the men of the family."

[?]

By Clalre Hughes Dept. of H e a I t h