Monday, July 4, 2016

Day Five Maui: Kihei is Home plus Cooking with Jason

After being stranded in the SUV for 4 hours on Saturday night, we vowed to keep Sunday low key. We attended an early morning church service in Wailuku. Directly after church, we drove to Home Maid Bakery, just a few minutes away from church. We're getting our fill of malasadas on this visit. It's not everyday that we can get fresh hot malasadas. Evan, as always, was delighted to get his share.


We headed back to Kihei. I dropped off the family at the condo, while I drove to Foodland for poke. Foodland sells a variety of poke, and it was so convenient to be able to drive there (only 5 minutes away). I opted for the Blue Crab Kimchee Poke and Fresh Ahi Shoyu Poke.

For the rest of the morning, we just stayed put inside the condo, cleaned up a little, wrote my blog, and soon after, I prepared a familiar Filipino dish, but I made it Island-Style...Pinoy Bistek (aka Beefsteak marinated in soy sauce, Passion Orange Guava drink by Aloha maid, lemon juice and seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic).


Quite a few friends asked how I cooked it, so here goes. I'm not exactly the best person to ask for recipe. I don't measure while cooking. I just eye ball it. But I'll give it the old college try:

Jason's Island Style Filipino Bistek
1-2  lbs of Beef (I just use whatever is on sale...chuck roast, was on sale), thinly sliced
1/2 yellow or brown onions cut into rings
2-3 cloves of garlic minced
3 tbsp of oil

For the marinade
1/3 to 1/4 cup of Shoyu or Soy Sauce
1/3 cup of Aloha Maid's POG (Passion Orange Guava)
Juice of 1-2 lemons (I only used 1 yesterday)
Couple of pinches of Kosher Salt
Black pepper to taste


  • Combine beef, lemon juice, soy sauce, Aloha Maid POG, onions, garlic and pepper. Massage marinade into meat and marinate for about 30 minutes (or more if you have the time). Remove meat, onions and garlic from marinade. Squeeze the excess liquid and set aside.
  • In a pan over high heat, heat oil. Add beef and fry for about 3 to 5 minutes per or until lightly browned. Reserve released meat juices during frying. Remove meat and set aside
  • In the pan, add onions and garlic, and cook, stirring regularly, Return meat to pan.
  • Add reserved marinade and meat juices. Add water (if desired) and bring to a boil. Cover, medium heat and simmer for about 20-30 minutes or until meat is fork-tender and liquid is reduced. Just check the meat ensuring it's not too tough to eat. Season with salt to taste. Turn off heat and add the remaining onion rings. Cover and allow to simmer for a couple of minutes. 
This is always a big hit with the family. I actually served this with a side of steamed spinach...you gotta have your greens y'know?

The next thing I cooked, as you can tell, I love to cook, I bought Fresh Kauai shrimp from Costco the other day. We kept it in the freezer and decided to have some for lunch. Here's my recipe:

Jason's Island Style Garlic Butter Shrimp
1/2 to 1 lb of fresh shrimp (with or without the head)
1/2 to 3/4 of a stick of butter
1/3 cup of Aloha Maid's Lilikoi Passion Drink
Aloha Shoyu or Soy Sauce (to taste, if needed)
3 cloves of garlic minced
Salt/Pepper to Taste

1. In medium high setting, add the butter to your pan, make sure it does not burn.
2. Fry the garlic until medium brown
3. Add the shrimp, and cook for 2-3 minutes each side until pink, 
4. Add the Aloha Maid, Shoyu, salt/pepper
5. Cover for a couple of minutes.

The key thing about cooking shrimp is NOT over cooking the shrimp. I like eating when it's juicy and succulent. Keep it simple.

Voila! You're done! Best served on top of steamed rice.

After lunch, we all got ready for the beach. It was a cloudy day, but still warm. We drove a couple of minutes over to Kamaole Beach Park III, our favorite beach from our stay in 2014. It was just across the street from the condo we rented. Easy access to the beach. We all went in the water, enjoyed riding the body board with the kids. It was an afternoon well-spent. 








I've begun to realize that if ever we visit Maui again, we've done all the touristy stuff already, we can just stay put in one location, and not have to drive all over the island. We didn't plan to climb Haleakala during this visit - not sure the younger kids will appreciate being woken up at 2am to climb Haleakala.

We headed back to the condo, washed up, and got ready for another attempt of having sunset shots. We decided to go back to Kamaole III for these pictures. As you can imagine, we took hundreds of pictures. These sunset pics are a tradition for us in Hawaii.






What's for dinner? We were still stuffed from everything we ate earlier today. Ethan had a craving for
Mexican food, so we went with a local favorite, and a favorite from our last visit, Maui Tacos and ordered their Nachos. That was our Day 5, relaxing compared to the other days. We would not have it any other way. Mahalo for following our journey.








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