You looking to eat something healthy on holidays, but you’re sick and tired of salads, grilled chicken and seafood… Not to worry, today, we have a hip, exotic option that’s the latest trend in international cuisine, Poke. Delicious, easy to prepare and incredibly healthy.
For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Poke is a Hawaiian dish made with cooked white rice and marinated raw fish (nearly always tuna). You can add different dressings and it’s typically seasoned with soy or sesame sauce.
To add to the taste and mix, you can simply add some extras or veg like seaweed, cucumber, avocado, sesame and spring onion. It’s usually ordered to go and served with fish in a bowl.
It’s extremely healthy, full of nutrients and easy to add to any type of diet.
Poke bowls have been hugely popular in the US for a while now and are quickly finding their place in Europe. More and more Poke dishes are constantly popping up in restaurants and takeaways that have decided to add it to their menu of international dishes.
Before it became popular in the West, native Hawaiians used to make it from maka, kneaded raw fish cut into strips, and this is literally where the word Poke comes from, which basically means to slice or cut in sections. Salt was added to preserve it along with thin sheets of basaltic glass called limu (which is sometimes made when the pahoehoe lava enters the sea) to give it texture and inamona, a condiment or relish that’s traditionally used in Hawaiian cooking and made from sea salt and roasted kukui nuts.
In due course, more elaborate, more ingredients added.
The dish was clearly influenced by Japanese cuisine and over time became progressively more complex. The original recipe was changed to its present-day form in the 1970s to what we know today as Poke. With the massive influx of Japanese to work in construction and on the sugar plantations in Hawaii, soy sauce and rice were then added to the raw fish dish that the Polynesians in the area were already eating.
The internationalisation of the dish
As with other dishes or recipes, Poke became the in thing, and that’s when different varieties of the dish started to appear, and it became popular all over the world. In the last 10 years, the popularity of Poke has become increasingly popular outside Hawaii, which unfortunately has meant the desired quality is not always maintained.
There’s an endless number of compliments to personalise the dish, but they by no means make it better.
To take into consideration before eating it
Hawaiian restaurants only serve a few combinations of the dish, and we recommend staying as faithful as possible to the original. Tuna (or octopus), rice and soy sauce. The rest of the ingredients are limited and don’t tend to be ordered as much, but you could try it with seaweed, onions in vinegar, Korean taegu, tsukemono (Japanese preserved vegetables) or boiled peanuts.
Lastly, and as a precaution, if you want to try and make it yourself at home, make sure to freeze the fish to avoid allergic reactions like anisakis. And, to season it properly, don’t marinate it, all you need to do is leave the mix to stand for 5 minutes, as this helps to keep the flavour of the raw tuna.
