Poi Day

Fresh hand pounded poi from our garden 

Aloha from Kauai. Today we got to harvest fresh taro or in Hawaiian we call it "Kalo" from our garden.  The taro took about 6 months to grow.  This variety of taro which is Mana Ulu is the fastest growing taro then any other variety of taro.  

Taro is kind of similar to potato but not really.  Taro is a lot more sticky when cooked. Needs to be boiled or steamed till soft.  We usually just wash the dirt off the taro root and cook it by steaming or boiling with the skin on.  Needs to be cooked thoroughly or else it will make your mouth itchy. You dont want that.  So if you'll start to feel an itch, specially in your throat, it will need to be cooked longer. 

Once its all soft, you could let it cool, or put the taro root in an ice bath, then you could start peeling the skin off.  There's so many uses and different ways to eat taro.  You could make a taro salad, similar to how you would make a potato salad.  Today, we used the taro root to make poi.  In the photo, we used a wooden poi board.  It's used for pounding poi. Also a "pohaku" which is a pounding rock. Both rock and wooden board were cured and handcrafted. The wooden board usually takes about a 1-2 months to cure in brackish water. My board was cured in Wailua river's brackish water. After all that, still needs to dry, then shaped, and sanded.  The rock is handcrafted also, with no power tools.  All done by hand. Had to use a piece of stone to chisel and shape the rock. It took some time.  Then brought the rock to the beach to sand and smooth it on the ocean rock.  That's alot of process.  Im glad thats all completely done.  Now we can make poi and we did it! 

The taro variety we used to make poi today was Mana Ulu.  This variety of taro is yellow.  Made the poi yellow.  It was so ono. It almost tasted like candy. The texture of a laffy taffy.  It was so sticky and so gooey and so yummy delicious.