hawaii cooks & eats

Mom made some shoyu pork the other day using a recipe from "What Hawaii Likes To Eat" by Betty Shimabukuro & Muriel Miura.

On the page before the shoyu pork recipe is a recipe for an Oki Dog. (Click on the photo to see the different parts of the Oki Dog)

An Oki Dog was invented by "an Okinawan native, Sakai "Jimmy" Sueyoshi, who opened an Oki Dog stand on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood and got rich selling a burrito filled with a hot dog, chili and shredded pastrami. In 1989, one of the organizers of the Honolulu's Okinawan Festival met Sueyoshi and brought the idea for his Oki Dog home. It has become a festival staple, although it's made here with Zippy's chili (Zippy's being Okinawan-owned), Okinawan shoyu pork and iceberg lettuce for crunch, with a hot dog at its heart..."

NOTES: Mom didn't follow the recipe for the shoyu pork, just the measurements for the sauce to boil the pork butt in. She can't say how long she boiled it for but thinks it was about an hour and a half.

Here's the measurments for the sauce: from "What Hawaii Likes To Eat"

3 pounds of boneless pork butt.

1/2 cup awamori (Okinawan rice wine)
1 cup sugar
1 cup soy sauce
1 clove garlic
small piece ginger.

The meat comes out really tender and well marinated.

For the Oki Dogs, we didn't use Zippy's chili, we made our own. We used whole wheat flour tortillas (regular size instead of burrito size. If you use a bigger tortilla, you can fit more "stuff" inside). We used homegrown leafy green lettuce instead of iceberg. And we shredded the pork.

To make the Oki Dog:

Lay the tortilla on a flat surface.
Place some chili on the tortilla, place the hot dog on top of the chili.
Fold in one side and the bottom of the tortilla up.
Add the shredded lettuce and shoyu pork.
Roll tightly.

The Oki Dog is messy, but really good.