Sam Choy's Island Flavors [Hardcover]

Sam Choy (Author), U`i Goldsberry (Author), Steven Goldsberry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 1999

Charismatic restaurateur Sam Choy, famous throughout America for his innovative take on Hawaiian home cooking, brings the flavors of the islands right into your kitchen. Chef Choy's unique cuisine is based on fresh, healthy ingredients, unexpected combinations of spicy and sweet, and low-key preparation, often involving grilling with friends. This gorgeously designed cookbook celebrates Choy's diverse culinary heritage with over 200 recipes ranging from imaginative appetizers, to seafood and meat entrees, to delicious desserts and tropical drinks. With dishes like Baked Teriyaki Mahimahi, Roasted Chicken with Macadamia Nut Stuffing, Big Island Beef Short Ribs, and Mango Guava Sorbet, Choy proves that you can have great flavor with minimal fuss and maximum flexibility. Perfect for entertaining, intimate dining, or dinner with the kids, Choy's cooking is as vibrant and easygoing as Hawaii itself. Aloha!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Hawaiian chef Sam Choy is sassy and sweet. So are the flavors of his food. Choy's cooking is hapu, a hybrid of Polynesian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and European influences, combined in what he calls local-style cooking. In Wok-Seared Shrimp with Pepper-Papaya-Pineapple Chutney, a typical example, Choy marinates the main ingredient, then stir-fries it, and serves it with a colorful accompaniment.

Fish or seafood stars in many dishes. Choy's marinades are generally a blend of garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and sugar, with varying accents of scallion, sesame oil, and hot peppers. Both the preparation of ingredients and the cooking method are quick for most dishes. The accompaniment, often a salsa or chutney, is usually a toss-together of chopped fresh fruits and vegetables that can be made ahead of time.

Choy takes pride in his Hawaiian heritage. He talks about his family and local goings-on. His Catfish in Sweet and Sour Sauce supports local farming of this freshwater fish. Enticing, succulent Hibachi Pineapple Spears were invented one day at the beach to please the kids.

A fish-lovers delight, this book also offers appealing chicken recipes: Quick and Easy Shoyu Chicken, made with teriyaki sauce, will please just about everyone. Sixteen color pages help you present dishes as nicely as Choy does at his restaurants. If you can chop, stir-fry, and grill, Sam Choy's Island Cooking provides a fast, fun taste trip to the tropics. Don't miss the desserts and exotic drinks, like Lava Flow and Kona MacFreeze. --Dana Jacobi

From Publishers Weekly

"Cook your way to paradise," Hawaiian chef, restaurateur and popular cooking-show host Sam Choy boldly asserts in his new cookbook on island (Hawaiian) fare. Choy's colorful, if a bit too exuberant, patter punctuates the text: about his Spicy Chicken Wingettes, "I'd like to say it's 'finger lickin' good,' but I know it's even better than that"; on making salads, "Don't be timid. Just let it rip...." His philosophy is to "build a dish" with fresh ingredients as the foundation, adding marinades, then pastas, rice or vegetables as the "walls and roof" and finally, the sauce to bind and "decorate." While chapters cover various meat and vegetable side dishes (and even tropical drinks), seafood dishes predominate, including a section called Working with Fish and Shellfish. The Ingredients Glossary offers helpful purchasing tips and suggests substitutes for hard-to-find ingredients. His 200-plus, easy-to-make recipes represent a multicultural hodgepodge of flavors (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and European) as in Crab-and-Shrimp Stuffed Shiitake Mushrooms with Mango Bearnaise Sauce, Honomalino Lamb with Satay Sauce and Pineapple Coconut Yum Yum. Although Choy incorporates Asian ingredients and seafood into his dishes, readers shouldn't automatically expect low-calorie meals: he's just as likely to use butter, cream, sugar, coconut milk and macadamia nuts alongside flavor enhancers such as Japanese wasabi and sambal oelek (Asian chili paste). Choy's passion for food coupled with a minimum fuss/maximum flexibility approach will inspire readers to fire up their hibachis and start cooking.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1st edition (April 14, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786864745
• ISBN-13: 978-0786864744
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #802,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Pacific Rim

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite cookbooks, July 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Sam Choy's Island Flavors (Hardcover)

Sam Choy's book is one of my favorite cookbooks. The recipes are so simple and always have great results.

This is not a diet book, but it is great for the evenings you have company over and want to WOW them with a minimal amount of work. The Crab and Shrimp Stuffed Mushrooms with Mango Bearnaise Sauce is worth the price of the book. A close second is the Ahi Salad with Creamy Peanut Dressing (translation: seared ahi on a salad of radishes, cabbage, sprouts, and green onions tossed with a spicy peanut, cilantro dressing - it's killer). The Macadamia Crusted Mahimahi with Coconut Cream Spinach Sauce is so easy and will really impress the in-laws.

Other dishes regularly made at our house include: Seared Albacore Tuna with Coconut Ginger Sauce, Roasted Chicken with Macadamia Nut Stuffing, both of his recipes for BBQ pork ribs, and Sesame Ginger Snap Peas.

I really can't say enough about what a great and easy cookbook this is. Every recipe I have tried from it is a "make againer". The next recipe I have flagged to try is something he calls My Kids' Favorite Seafood Lasagne. It has scallops, shrimp, mahimahi, and salmon smothered with great sounding white sauce and lots of cheese and pasta - is your mouth watering yet?

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All cookbooks should have recipes this easy to prepare!, October 31, 1999

By 

Monita Olive "Cookbooks EtCetera" (Sunny Southern Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sam Choy's Island Flavors (Hardcover)

Well, the high point of my first visit to Hawaii last week was my dinner at Sam Choy's Restaurant on the island of Maui. Everything I tasted was excellent. The meal started off with a green salad which was pretty ordinary, except for the dressing. It was the house dressing and was called Sam's Original Creamy Asian Dressing. I believe the sesame oil is what gave it the little extra kick and I plan to make the recipe myself and relive the experience. I started to order crab cakes (I always order crab cakes if they're on the menu because I love them) and shrimp cocktail because it was just before the long night flight home and I didn't want to feel stuffed. However, I decided I had to go for it if I was going to really get a Hawaiian dish so I asked the waiter for a suggestion for the classic Hawaiian specialty. He advised that Sam's signature dish was Steamed Mahimahi Laulau. Laulau is a traditional Hawaiian dish. The preparation is to wrap pork, fish, beef, or chicken in ti leaves, tie off the tops and put them in a earth oven called an imu. If you can't get ti leaves, you can use corn husks or aluminum foil. I admit that I was a little nervous about eating steamed fish since I usually eat it fried (sounds terrible doesn't it?), but when the waiter brought out the Laulau, I got excited that I was eating something that was wrapped up in a leaf. --so exotic! It was very tasty and quite delicious. The creamy herb sauce had a nice flavor and the vegetables were "easy" to eat because they were julienned. I will order this again if ever I'm lucky enough to go there again.

There are over two hundred recipes in Sam Choy's Island Flavors that are specially adapted to work in any kitchen. I was thrilled to see that the recipes for the dishes I ordered are in this cookbook. Sam Choy opened his first restaurant in 1991 and I understand he has restaurants in San Diego, Tokyo and seven in Hawaii. Before that he got his start by helping his father cater feasts for large groups of tourists and then went on to become the executive sous chef at the Hyatt Kuilima Hotel, chef at the Oscar Restaurant at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, and executive chef at the Kona Hilton.

The recipes range from the Lava Flow that I heard so much about before I went to Hawaii to the Macadamia Nut Pie and Ginger-Pineapple Sherbet -- yummmmmm -- have to try those. There are excellent recipes for sauces and marinades and they seem to be simple enough to make. There are gorgeous pictures and on most pages, a little intro on the recipe, which I really like to read. This is really a neat, neat cookbook and I highly recommend it.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The recipes are GREAT!, November 17, 1999

By 

NDBruin (Southern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sam Choy's Island Flavors (Hardcover)

I have been eating Hawai'i sytle for many years and the food is the best food you'll ever eat. Sam's book captures some of the best recipes that I have ever tasted. The recipes are so easy to follow and the meals created with them have left even my Japanese mother just praising the food. I have tried to re-create many Hawai'i style food and with this book it is exactly the way I remember from the island and the way my friends from the Island remember. I really like the way he show how to cook the tunas. Thanks to you, Sam Choy for bringing the Island food to the Mainland for the Mainland people to try