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Foodies, you’ll love this show!

By Catherine Toth Fox • May 19, 2013 • Food

photo-16

It’s not everyday you get to go to the premiere of a new TV show.

And it’s not every show that makes you both hungry and inspired to travel.

But that’s how I felt watching “Family Ingredients,” a new one-hour pilot airing on PBS Hawaii on May 23.

The show follows the origins of a featured guest’s favorite dish and the family roots associated with it. In this case, it was renowned chef Alan Wong who shared two of his childhood favorites: tamago kake gohan (rice with egg) and miso soup (see recipe below).

These two simple dishes took him to his hometown of Wahiawa and his birthplace of Japan with the show’s host — and fellow chef — Ed Kenney (@edstown) of Town Restaurant.

The goal is this pilot show will get picked up by PBS (or any other network) and feature different people in the community, tracing their favorite dishes back to their origins around the world.

“It’s a foodie show, it’s a travel show, it’s an ancestral show,” says executive producer Heather Haunani Giugni. “I mean, how cool is that?”

Very, actually.

I don’t want to give away too much of the show — I’d rather you see it for yourself — but here are some highlights:

• Wong and Kenney visit the 96-year-old Honda Tofu Factory in Wahiawa. It’s the oldest tofu company still in production in the United States. And it’s in our backyard!

• The pair visits Asano Poutry, an egg farm that raises special roosters and sells eggs through a vending machine.

• Wong shares a lot about his life and career, from his childhood in Wahiawa to his years in New York City, where he honed his culinary skills. I’m not sure if he’s ever shared these stories before, and they were fascinating.

• Scenes from a home-cooked dinner with the Hachisu family in Saitama Prefecture. Wong and Kenney brought some local ingredients — limu, inamono and Hawaiian salt — with them to Japan, so they could prepare a meal for their hosts. It was fun to watch these two culinary masters at work.

• Seeing how the farmers at the self-sustaining Frostpia Farms grow its shiitake mushrooms. (You gotta see it. I won’t spoil it.)

• Wong and Kenney dine at the world-famous Sukiyabashi Jiro, a Michelin Guide 3-star sushi restaurant in Ginza, owned and operated by sushi master Jiro Ono.

• Kenney made a great host. Humble, open-minded, smart, funny — he nailed the job. And the camera loves him.

The show ran an hour and I actually wanted more. I wanted to see more of Wong pounding mochi — something he’s never done before — and see more of the places they visited in Japan. The cinematography was stunning and the storyline interesting. And the message was important, too: “We should leave this place better than when we first got here,” Wong says. “It’s our responsibility.”

Here’s what the premiere on Saturday looked like — and yes, there was food!

The premiere

The premiere
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The premiere of "Family Ingredients" was held on Saturday at — where else — Alan Wong's Pineapple Room at Ala Moana Center.

“Family Ingredients” with Chef Alan Wong will air at 9 p.m. May 23 on PBS Hawaii. For more information visit www.familyingredients.com.

Mom’s Miso Soup
Courtesy of Alan Wong

Ingredients:
4 tsp. hondashi
4 c. water
3 T white miso
5 small cubes Honda Tofu, firm
Garnish with green onions, cut saimin-style

Directions:
In a small sauce pot, dissolve the hondashi in water. Bring to a simmer.

Place the miso in a small strainer and place the base of the strainer into the simmering soup.

Using a spoon, slowly push the miso through the strainer, so it blends into the soup smoothly, eliminating any clumps of miso.

Once the miso soup has come to a boil, add the tofu cubes and heat through. Pour into a small soup bowl and garnish with green onions. Serve immediately.

Alan WongEd KenneyFamily IngredientsHawaiiHonda Tofupbs hawaiiWahiawa
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Catherine Toth Fox

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9 Comments

  • Reply Annoddah Dave May 19, 2013 at 10:40 pm

    CAT: Sounds like fun, fuud, and guud times.

  • Reply David Jackson May 20, 2013 at 1:22 am

    You must have been in heaven.

  • Reply M May 20, 2013 at 6:37 am

    Hello Cat!
    I didn’t know Alan was half Japanese.

  • Reply Lusus Naturae May 20, 2013 at 10:17 am

    Aw man, I so want to see this! Does anyone know if it will be viewable at some point online, for us poor buggahs up on the mainland?

  • Reply rayboyjr May 20, 2013 at 11:25 am

    Hey Cat: … I love food shows … don’t know if I can watch it when it airs … hopefully, I can catch it online too … for us poor buggahs who will not be home …

    … is the egg in the tamago kake gohan still raw??? … or does it get cooked by the hot rice??? … it kinda looks like scrambled eggs by the time it’s whipped …

  • Reply uncleb May 20, 2013 at 2:14 pm

    Ahhhh… the tamago kake gohan… I used to make it all the time when I was in high school… it was like my once in a while dinner appetizer. We called it tamago meshi though… rayboyjr, the egg is raw but gets cooked by the hot rice. If the rice is not hot, it doesn’t taste too good.

    • Reply matt May 23, 2013 at 7:54 am

      that got me through college. rice cooker and microwave (bc you can’t cook one serving of rice so tomorrow I could reheat it).if i was lucky, I had some portuguese sausage I could zap, too for the original pac rim fusion.

  • Reply Maria May 21, 2013 at 12:14 pm

    I grew up with tamago kake gohan too! And COINKYDINK: just had that for breakfast! 🙂

  • Reply matt May 23, 2013 at 7:57 am

    I’m coming home to visit in a couple of weeks so I’m making sure my mom records this for me. sounds like a very cool show.

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About Me

About Me
Born and raised on O‘ahu, Hawaiʻi, Catherine Toth Fox has been chronicling her adventures in her blog, The Cat Dish, for more than a decade. She worked as a newspaper reporter in Hawai‘i for 10 years and continues to freelance—in between teaching journalism, hitting the surf and eating everything in sight—for national and local print and online publications. She’s currently the editor of HAWAIʻI Magazine.

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