[.ca] Alan Wongs New Wave Luau (ISBN 0898159636)

From Amazon.com:
Alan Wong's New Wave Luau is a glamorous book full of color photos that convey the complexity of his lush and exciting cooking. It is also alive with Chef Wong's passion for his Asian heritage and that of the Hawaiian Islands, where his restaurant has three times been selected Best Restaurant of the Year by Honolulu magazine. Chosen Best Regional Chef for the Pacific Northwest in 1996 by the James Beard Foundation, Wong is a master of multicultural cooking. Called Hawaiian Regional Cuisine, his dishes fuse local ingredients and traditions with foods and techniques from Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Taking the succulent meat from whole Kalua Pig, pit-roasted luau style, he uses it in a risotto dotted with corn and crunchy water chestnuts, then enriched with truffle butter. He also features this smoky pork in nachos built on crunchy taro chips, topped with chile-spiked guacamole. As you feast on the photos, it is almost possible to taste the artistic creations depicted, each one dense with contrasting flavors and textures. His Surf and Turf, for example, features grilled beef tenderloin and a Kona lobster tail wrapped around a scallop. They are served with a roasted potato topped with wasabi-spiked mashed potatoes. This potato sprouts leaves of tat soi, an Asian green, and spiraling antennae of fried linguini. Grilled marinated mushrooms and asparagus add to the plate, which is drizzled with a sauce combining cream, truffle butter, and soy vinaigrette. Then it is ringed with shining dots of basil oil and finished with a sprinkling of chives and diced tomato. Lest this strenuous cooking intimidate you, it is easy to make Wong's Asian Guacamole flavored with ginger and sake, Five Spice Risotto rich with shiitake mushrooms, and Asian Ratatouille, unexpectedly enhanced with oyster sauce and sesame oil. Each adds immeasurably to a meal of grilled fish or store-bought roast chicken. Anyone with an ice-cream maker must try the recipes for tropical Guava, Lychee-Ginger, and Mango Lime ice cream, and a quartet of memorably exotic, liquored sorbets. --Dana Jacobi

Very Hard to Replicate:
Beautiful pictures, but the dishes were nearly impossible to replicate and some were overly arranged. Food as art. Some of the ingredients are unavailable or overly expensive. But the pictures in the book are fabulous!

Pretty but not practical.:
I actually purchased this book. The recipes are not practical if you do not live in Hawaii. Unless you are a chef, the directions are difficult to execute. He lists no alternative ingredients for mainlanders like myself. If you want a picture book to stick on your coffee table, this might work. Otherwise I would rather pass. I will be selling this book on Amazon shortly.

Great Dishes require attention to details:
Sometimes there are cookbooks that you can taste and then there are the ones that prefer a more clinical approach to cooking . Alan Wong's New Wave Luau is a very good exposition of Pacific Rim Cuisine. This book along with Sam Choy and Roy Yamaguchi give the cook/reader a flavorful and expansive overview of what is the cuisine of the islands and the Pacific Rim. The recipes explore Hawaii's culinary influences and then creates a few influences of his own. The book is not for beginners. For those who are interested in learning more about contemporary cuisine this is a great read. The ingredients can now be found in most international markets, and if not then with a little research you can find just about everything through an online retailer. The recipes do work if you follow the directions. There is much to learn from New Wave Luau and all you have to do is read, study the photos, learn about how the flavors interact and then cook your way through them. It's a lot of fun. I have had the book for several years now and still return to it every now and then for a few inspirations and guides when researching new foods that I am interested in. This is a book for the serious cook. And then, once you get past the hard stuff it is all fun and adventure, really. Hawaiian cuisine is a marvel of color, flavor and aroma. Of course seafood is king in any book of island recipes, and it should be. Alan Wong's New Wave Luau just jumps off of the page inviting the reader into the grocery store and the kitchen, and sometimes into the fishing boat. What is New Wave Luau? Well, go to page 86 and cook the Steamed Opakapaka and Gingered Vegetables in Truffle Broth, and there you have it. Bringing Japan, Thailand, Hawaii and France together in one recipe without disturbing the wonderful quality and design of the food itself. The cookbooks of the three great Hawaiian writer/chefs are excellent examples that we must live to eat, not eat to live. I recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding what makes the foods of the 21st century so in love with life and flavor.

Great Dishes require attention to details:
Sometimes there are cookbooks that you can taste and then there are the ones that prefer a more clinical approach to cooking . Alan Wong's New Wave Luau is a very good exposition of Pacific Rim Cuisine. This book along with Sam Choy and Roy Yamaguchi give the cook/reader a flavorful and expansive overview of what is the cuisine of the islands and the Pacific Rim. The recipes explore Hawaii's culinary influences and then creates a few influences of his own. The book is not for beginners. For those who are interested in learning more about contemporary cuisine this is a great read. The ingredients can now be found in most international markets, and if not then with a little research you can find just about everything through an online retailer. The recipes do work if you follow the directions. There is much to learn from New Wave Luau and all you have to do is read, study the photos, learn about how the flavors interact and then cook your way through them. It's a lot of fun. I have had the book for several years now and still return to it every now and then for a few inspirations and guides when researching new foods that I am interested in. This is a book for the serious cook. And then, once you get past the hard stuff it is all fun and adventure, really. Hawaiian cuisine is a marvel of color, flavor and aroma. Of course seafood is king in any book of island recipes, and it should be. Alan Wong's New Wave Luau just jumps off of the page inviting the reader into the grocery store and the kitchen, and sometimes into the fishing boat. What is New Wave Luau? Well, go to page 86 and cook the Steamed Opakapaka and Gingered Vegetables in Truffle Broth, and there you have it. Bringing Japan, Thailand, Hawaii and France together in one recipe without disturbing the wonderful quality and design of the food itself. The cookbooks of the three great Hawaiian writer/chefs are excellent examples that we must live to eat, not eat to live. I recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding what makes the foods of the 21st century so in love with life and flavor. What is more important to food than advancing ideas of unity to the table so that others may learn to do the same? Alan Wong's New Wave Luau along with the writings of Sam Choy and Roy Yamaguichi do just that.

Coffee table book:
I received this book as a gift. I found that it was not very practical. Ingredients I could not get. Instructions were too difficult. I'd recommend getting a different Hawaiian cook book.