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Tiki Talk with Ben Willis: Fake Exotic and Still Delicious · Mega Rock On Demand

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's Friday afternoon, and it's time we light the torches once again for Tiki Talk on Mega Rock.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ben Willis with you.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the things that I and so many other Tiki aficionados love about the culture, the trend, the aesthetic of Tiki is in some way the fact that it is wholly inauthentic.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Tiki truly is an American invention pulled together from bits of flotsam and jetsum of different cultures from the Pacific into Asia, into Africa, into, in some cases, even the Near East.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Caribbean, as well, has massive influence on tiki cocktails, and the popular tiki foods that you'll often see associated and served, in fact, in some establishments, have less in common with, say, Cantonese or Japanese cuisine, or even Polynesian cuisine, than they do with 1950s and 60s homemaking trends.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: What do I mean?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we can start, for example, with one of the basic concepts that we now associate with Hawaiian food, which is, for example, the pineapple glaze on meat, like a ham.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And originally in Hawaii and other parts of Polynesia, you would not necessarily find a sweet glaze on meat.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Traditionally, Kalua pork is salted and wrapped in leaves and slow roasted in a pit oven.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is fantastic, but it is not what we commonly think of as a sweet Polynesian pineapple dripping dish in the American consciousness.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Where did that come from?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: That of course came from the popularity and accessibility of things like canned pineapple in the early and mid-20th century, and the trend in the 50s and 60s of having recipes that you could crack open a can, dump into a tray, or dump over a pre-prepared ham, throw it in the oven, and have dinner ready in no time.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise with pineapple and ham, sweet glazed chicken and ribs, while delicious and having some roots in Asian cuisine, are much more reflective of American tastes rather than authentic Polynesian or even Asian cuisine.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Crab Rangoon, one of my favorite little appetizers to grab at a Chinese buffet, completely invented in the 1950s, supposedly by Trader Vic himself.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Poo-poo platters were introduced by none other than Don Beach in the 1940s and 50s.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: The sampler platter of fried wontons, shrimp toast, chicken wings, little spare ribs, completely an American invention.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise, Hawaiian pizza, not even a US invention, it was created in Ontario by a Greek-born Canadian, Sam Pinopoulos, added canned pineapple and ham to a pizza at his restaurant, and he only named it Hawaiian pizza after the brand of canned pineapple he was using.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But one of my absolute favorite faux exotic appetizers and dishes has to be another Don the Beachcomber invention from the 1940s, that classic little pop it in your mouth wonderful bit of happiness.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about rumaki, and if you've never had rumaki, this is gonna blow your mind because this is absolutely delicious.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You start off with one pound of fresh chicken livers, one pound of sliced bacon, thin sliced, not thick cut, a 12-ounce can of whole water chestnuts, and for our marinade, we're gonna take a teaspoon of aniseed, three tablespoons of brown sugar, one tablespoon of kitchen bouquet browning sauce, two crushed up bay leaves, and one and a half teaspoons of salt.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to take our chicken livers and all the ingredients for our marinade and let those sit together for about an hour after you've blended the marinade.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then take everything and saute it slowly over medium low heats until the chicken livers are just barely cooked through.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: You do not want to overcook the chicken livers at this stage.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Take them off the heat, let them cool completely.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna cut them into pieces similar in size to the water chestnuts that we have on hand.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now we get to assembling.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Take our bacon slices, cut them in half widthwise.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Going to take one piece of chicken liver, one watered chestnut, wrap that in a half slice of bacon, and skewer it with a toothpick to secure the bacon around everything.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got your choice.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can either deep fry these as was traditionally done, or now you can bake or even use an air fryer at high temperature, around 400 degrees, until the bacon is brown and crisp.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Pull them out, set them on a paper towel to cool just a little bit, but these are absolutely best served nice and warm.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your traditional for tiki, but absolutely inauthentic to any culture outside of America, rumaki, one of my favorite appetizers.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So until we meet on another island out there somewhere, this is Ben Willis saying aloha.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: On Tiki Talk, we're gonna leave you with a burner! It's Joe, Satriani, doing some surfing with the alien on Tiki Talk on Mega Rock.