October 17, 2019 • 24 mins
This Hawaiian staple starch made from pounded, fermented taro root is delicious, nutritious, and sometimes misunderstood. We dip into the history and science of poi, along with a restauranteur and a cultural practitioner who both grew up with it on Oahu.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
So when people eat Hawaian food, I always say that
the most culturally significant dish is going to be the POI,
But from any other perspective, it's probably the most unappealing. Hello,
and welcome to Savor protiction of I heeart Ay and
stuff Media. I'm Any Rees and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and
(00:29):
today we're talking about POI. Yes, that clip from the
top was from third generation restaurant owner Monica to Gucci
Ryan of Highway in on Oahu, and um, yeah, that
that quote sort of captures the difficulty that exists in
explaining POI to people who are unfamiliar with it. Yes,
(00:50):
and that is something I was totally unfamiliar with POI
until we started planning our trip and we were workshopping
possible topic ideas and POI was one that came up
up and something I was like, what is that? And
before we left, we picked the brain of our friend Louisa,
who was from ahwah who's North Shore, and when we
asked her about BOI, she was kind of vague about it,
(01:12):
pretty much like you're just gonna have to go and
try it to understand, and we were eager to do that.
So We sat it out at Helena's, a restaurant well
known for traditional Hawaiian dishes, and we spoke about this
experience when we got back to our studio here in Atlanta.
We went to Helena's right, Yes, our first boy, which
this is a very famous Hawaiian restaurant. Yes, very small,
(01:38):
very small. The waitress was very patient and a little
bit like very patient. I think she guided us and
we needed guidance. We did. I love when we were
like boy all around her, she was like, nope, one,
then we can see we can go from there. You
(02:00):
just immediately was like nope, nope. That I was like,
you seem just tired enough. You're going to be real
real with us. Yes. And the food was delicious. Oh yeah,
Oh my goodness, it was so delicious. Oh yeah. We
also had poi at the Wyre Hole, a Poi factory,
(02:20):
which is a restaurant that offers poi demonstrations and it
was amazing. And we had a poor donut somewhere at
Lily Ho Bakery. Yes, it's one of the very few
donuts that we actually got to eat from our first
round of lily Ha before we sadly left a bag
in a makeshift production studio. Yes, but Lauren and I
rectified that later, never fear. But okay, that about brings
(02:45):
us to our question, boy, what is it? Well? POI
is a preparation of steamed taro roots that's pounded out
either by hand or by machine with a bit of
her until it's this sticky mash or sort of paste
or sort of putting um, which is then allowed to
(03:06):
ferment either a little or a lot traditionally with just
whatever local microbes are floating around, which like in yogurt,
wind up being mostly lactic acid bacteria, until this product
is thick and almost doughy and a little or a
lot tart. It's often a grayish purple in color because
terror root is often purple, and it's served as a
starch or or as the starch in Hawaiian meals meant
(03:30):
to be taken either together in between bites with with
the proteins and vegetables that you're eating, and it reminds
me of um. Okay, so the flavor is sort of
like a like a mild or sour dough bread, like
slightly sweet and slightly creamy, but with this twinge of
sourness and the more sour that POI is, the more
that it can balance the sweetness and the richness and
(03:50):
saltiness of vegetables and meat and the texture. The texture
is really individual in my experience. Um, I guess it's
almost sort of like a like a only or a
cake batter um, or if you've ever had mochi served warm,
or like if you have a rice dish with a
poached egg and you stir the yolk of the poached
egg into the rice. Um, but like smoother than that. Yeah,
(04:15):
I will say. For me, it had kind of been
built up because of our friend Louisa, and I had
no idea what it even looked like. So when it
appeared on the table, I thought it was gonna be
um sweet and don't write in angrily. But I thought
it was kind of anticlimactic. I thought it was going
(04:35):
to be like something to punch you in the real weird,
like so strange, because I mean, yeah, like like we
said in that clip, like the waitress was like, I'm
not giving you that much boy, your yeah exactly. So
I thought it was going to be something that was
clearly like a very strong like an acquired taste, like
like Nato or something like that, right, And I I
(04:55):
can see how it is or how some people would
describe it that way. To me, it was just kind
of like, oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah, okay, yeah, I
like this. Um, And we didn't, or at least I
didn't really know the best way to eat it, so
I was mixing it with other things, and I thought
it did complement those other things very well. But from
what I read doing the research for this episode, uh,
(05:18):
it's often meant to just be scooped with your fingers. Yeah,
and um, the consistency is in fact judged by how
many fingers you'll need to scoop it one, two or three? Yeah,
how how liquidy it is? Right, A good three finger
scoop would be the most liquidy preparation of the boy exactly. Yeah. Um.
But let's back up a tiny bit and talk about
(05:39):
tarot um, which we'll have to do a whole episode
about at some point because it is fun and fascinating,
one of my favorite dessert flavors, and um is really
big in many dishes all of the world. But h yeah.
In brief, the tarot plant is a tropical or sometimes
subtropical vegetable that's grown for its greens and for its
storage roots UM, which are these these star cheat tubers
(06:01):
also called corms. Yes, I love that word form to
corm oh gosh. Anyway, yeah yeah. The plant grows these
storage roots UM so that it can survive through difficult
conditions like drought or storms and uh as you know
side benefit, humans can eat those storage roots too. Yep.
It's grown and used again in dishes all over the world, UM,
(06:23):
with concentrations in Africa, Asia and Oceania. The Hawaiian word
for tarot is colo, and although pounded and fermented tarot
products have been developed in other Polynesian cultures and in
western Central Africa, I don't think that any of those
ever developed into like a like a primary staple um
(06:44):
the way that they did in Hawaii. Yes, and poi
and taro are hugely important in Hawaii historically and modern ly.
Until the nineteen twenties and the construction of the Alaway Canal,
the area that is now waiki Ki was covered in
taro field. About the tero grown on the neighboring islands
of Maui, Kawaii, and Hawaii are shipped to Hawaii, and
(07:07):
all but three percent of that is turned into poi. Yeah,
you can find poi and all kinds of things, point crackers,
point muffins, point cheesecake, poi bread, poyt dog biscuits. Here's
Kioloa Domingo, who describes himself as a cultural practitioner who
cooks for us in Hawaii, for Hawaiians in general, the
Hawaiian people, I should see. Of course, you said you
(07:29):
tried the point that tarot is is the the number
one crop for us. It's our sustenance, it's ours, our
staple food. And okay um I sort of skipped a
step in the making of poi when you're when you're
specifically hand pounding the tarot in the traditional method with
a stone on a wooden board with an absolute minimum
of water, and is to get the taro to the
(07:51):
right texture, to to smooth it and develop that stickiness
by working the starch molecules. That the result of that
is this undeluded paste called patty i that is much
thicker than than a one finger poi um um and
it is very very shelf stable. Here's Monica again. And
the thing about it is, I think you know within
the Pacific and even Southeast Asia, taro is used throughout
(08:14):
Southeast Asia and through the Pacific. What is really I
think you need to Hawaiian culture is the fact that
they pound the taro, so we say coot e i
and then it turns into what we call putt e i.
So put ei is it's very use only enough water
to be able to pound the poi or pound the tower.
(08:34):
I'm sorry, And then you get it into this form
called put e i and you wrap it in in
tea leave to keep it fresh, and once you're ready
to actually you know, eat it and share. Hawaiian's is
a culture, very generous, generous culture. You add the poi
so you can stretch the colo, you can stretch the
taro and share it with other people. But also, like
we spoke about earlier, is that it it has a
(08:57):
very healthy aspect to a product where the fermentation process occurs.
So poi is potti i that's been diluted with water.
And depending on your preference, and yeah, how much putty
i you have to go around, you might dilute it
a little or a lot. And also, as I was
saying before, um it's sort of the same with how
(09:18):
long you let it ferment. It's to taste but also,
I mean, you know, like it's a lot of work
to make a batch. So if you make a bunch,
then the poi you eat on the first day is
not going to be as sour as the poi that
you eat on the fifth day. Um, because what's going
on when you make patty i and poi is um.
All Right, it's time once again to talk about fermentation
(09:40):
and yes, back teria food what because fermentation is um
is controlled spoilage through microorganisms. And when we say that
food is spoiled, we mean that microbes have eaten it
before we got the chance to. And when you're talking
about that like sad celery that's kind of liquefying in
(10:01):
the bottom of your fridge, um that might involve funguses
or bacteria that will eat that celery and poop compounds
with unpleasant flavors or maybe that are even pathogenic, meaning
that they could make you sick. But implementation, humans set
up situations where we let helpful bacteria eat some of
our food and poop flavor that we like um and
(10:24):
also keep pathogenic bacteria from growing and also often help
break down or or pre process if you want to
think about it that way. That the food so that
our bodies can do more with the food more efficiently.
So take tarot um. If you steam these roots, they're
they're mostly carbohydrates as starches and dietary fiber along with
(10:45):
a little bit of protein and fat and healthy smattering
of minerals and vitamins. Um. The process of pounding it
out into patty eye and then poi reduces the dietary fiber,
but makes all those carbs more easily digestible and ups
the vitamin and mineral content of the finished product. It's
just really a very smart way of getting the most
out of the taro root. And the sound that you
(11:06):
just heard there was of poi being pounded with the
traditional tools by performers at the Polynesian Cultural Center on
Oahu and Uh. The PCC isn't without its weirdness. Is
at any time that you're performing aspects of indigenous cultures
from mass audiences, you know it's it's delicate territory um.
But we are so grateful that we got to attend
(11:28):
the food demonstrations there. For visitors unfamiliar with poi and patyi,
it might be something that they shy away from, but
that's a mistake. Don't do it. No, and don't just
take our word for it. Take Kyle Ruttner's the brand
manager and minority partner in Kohana Ram. The epiphany food
is potti i, which is essentially like the precursor to poi.
(11:51):
For lack of a better way, so pounded taro root
and then you would take it and you could griddle
it and and make it sort of like caramelized and
sweet on the outside and still have this like crazy
sustenance and it's purple and super weird. And every you know,
Hollie person is supposed to hate poi and all this,
(12:12):
and it's like this, it's it's perfection. And honestly, it's
like that dish. I would have to say, is is quintessential?
Like it is? If I could tell somebody to have
one thing while they were here, I would be like,
you have to find great boy like even like sour.
Point of course, companies found a way to mechanize the
(12:33):
traditional process of making poi and you can go find
plastic bags are tubs of poi and grocery stores for
around three dollars. Around Hawaii, forty years ago, poi production
on a wah who was double what it is today,
and the yearly per capital consumption was about thirty pounds
or thirteen kilos. In the nineteen eighties that number was
closer to five pounds are two and a quarter kilos.
(12:56):
But there was a time when daily per capital consumption
might have been just about that much. And we will
get into the history of Poi, but first we've got
to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(13:16):
and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, Okay.
The terror plant is one of the world's oldest cultivated
crops as early as five thousand BC. Historians think it
most likely originated somewhere in Southeast Asia, where it's spread
throughout the rest of the continent to Europe, Africa, and
the Pacific Islands. When the Polynesians made the long journey
(13:38):
to Hawaii, the tarot plant was key in sustaining them
both on their voyage and once they arrived. Because pie
E I keeps so well, some researchers think that those
first settlers prepared it to eat on the trip sor
to like an ancient conrola bar. Either way, tarot is
one of the island's oldest crops. It's sometimes called a
canoe plant because it was bought over on those first canoes.
(14:01):
And there's a Hawaiian myth about tarot Um that the
terror route was the first child of the sky father Waukea,
and Godda says she, she who gives birth to the
stars um Ho Ho Kulani. And this child, Halloa was
was still born, and so they buried him in the earth,
and from his grave Calo or Taro grew um. Their
(14:22):
second child was the first Hawaiian man, and he was
tasked with with caring for his brother, the Tarot plant.
For a long time, only men were permitted to to
handle Calo. It was considered their sacred duty. And so yeah,
that makes that makes Tarot calo Um the original ancestor
of native Hawaiians. By the smith, here's Kioloha again. The
(14:43):
Hawaiian people, we truly did worship our food. We view
our food as a physical manifestation of our ancestral deities
and traditional gods. You know, the Tarot planet itself, that's
for us, you know. I'll tell you the truth. In
(15:04):
my day, I grew up eating poi out of a
plastic bag, and I'm totally fine with that. But as
time went on, you know, I learned more about traditional
history and culture and beliefs. And with this cultural renaissance,
we're teaching our children what we've learned from the history books,
(15:24):
that Carol is our ancestor. The tarot plant is literally
related to us. Yeah, we're descending from entire plants. So
we treat it as as our elder brother, as our
as our ancestor, as our copuna. And when the tarot
is on the table, whether in the form of bowl
(15:46):
of poi or whatever else it is, we behave accordingly.
You wouldn't speak harshly over it. You wouldn't be scolding
the kids. You wouldn't be saying, you know, how terrible
what day you had. That really lends through that whole family,
that positive vibe. You know, when you're around food, it's
(16:06):
about being grateful for what you have and about sustenance
and about you know, so I always say, we Hawaiians,
we love our food. We love our food. So it's
not just about sticking into your mouth and and enjoying
the flavor, you know, which, don't get me wrong, you know,
(16:27):
it's um definitely something that I love. But just the
fact that when you consume this food, it's really partaking
of the gods. Even the Hawaiian word ohanna meaning family,
as we all learned in lie Loan, stench um derives
from the word oha, which is the Hawaiian word forum
(16:49):
for the shoots that grow off of the main bulb
of a taro root, which are the parts that are
harvested while that main root is allowed to keep growing.
So ahna literally means something like um all from the shoots.
It wasn't appreciated nearly as much by the Europeans who
colonized the islands. James Cook called poi quote a disagreeable
(17:09):
mess from its sourness. Post contact, the arrival of immigrants
from Asia and Europe, bringing with them starches like rice
and potatoes, and the decimation of the indigenous population started
chipping away at the production and consumption of poi. It
was a slow process, uh Poi was still eaten at
every meal by many Hawaiians in the eighteen eighties. Some
estimates suggest five pounds a day for working adult um.
(17:33):
The first factory that used a machine to grind tarot
for poi opened in eight and the first regulations on
pois manufacture hit the books in nineteen eleven um. But Yeah,
as plantations growing things like sugarcane moved in, that pushed
tarot out, leading to shortages starting in the nineteen twenties.
That encouraged to switch to other starches like like rice
(17:53):
and wheat flour products which were cheaper anyway. Later, as
more waves of immigrants came to the islands, the housing
boom would take over even more former taro fields. Acreage
devoted to taro steadily decreased, but poi was still fairly
common in the early twentieth century. As of nineteen thirty two,
it was estimated that the thirteen factories on Awah who
(18:14):
were producing a combined total of twenty thousand, seven hundred
pounds of POI per day, and that's nine thousand, four
hundred kilos. And there was a decent amount of scientific
interest in poise. Yeah. A lot of this research focused
on its potential health benefits. In nineteen seventeen, VONN McCaughey,
a botanist with some troublesome views around Japanese, wrote about
(18:36):
how easily poi is digested. Walter C. Alvarez wrote in
nineteen thirty eight about poise uses as a substitute for
allergies to things like rice, corn, and wheat. This use
was employed for soldiers experiencing food allergies while stationed in
Hawaii during World War Two. Researchers in the sixties even
experimented with giving point of babies allergic to are intolerant
(18:58):
to cow's milk and soy's milk. Despite all his interest
around the health benefits of poi, it's consumption did continue
to decrease until the eighties and a resurgence in interest
in traditional Hawaiian foods and cultures. And uh, and we'll
(19:19):
get into that after we get back from one more
quick break forward from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you so yes. Like we talked
about in our intro episode Welcome to Oahu. Since the eighties,
Hawaiian culture has been going through revitalization thanks to the
(19:43):
hard work and determination of Native Hawaiians and other folks
in the culinary scene who were interested in uplifting regional cuisines.
In the nineteen eighties, only a handful of Native Hawaiian
elders knew how to pound poi with a board. Now
that number is up to a couple of thousand, while
people living in Hawaii are more likely to report eating
(20:04):
rice on a regular basis um as compared with poi.
There is a renewed interest in and enthusiasm for it
um and of course for some that that interest never
went away. There have been a number of taro festivals
held around the islands over the years that do celebrate
poi um one still running today. The East Maui Taro
Festivals started up in and is going strong year. Maui
(20:28):
sounds like it's got a lot of food festivals we
need to get to all I'm saying yeah. In two
thousand nine, poi maker Daniel Anthony started a poi business,
hand pounding pipe ei with traditional tools wooden board and
a stone pounder. After a photographer published a photo of
him making pipe ei like this at the Farmer's Market,
the Department of Health issued a cease and desist with
(20:51):
the concern that the pores in the wood and stone
could harbor harmful microbes, but the locals considered it safe
and his product was delicious enough that Honolulu chef Ed
Kinney put the illegal pot ei on the menu of
his restaurant Town, which we did eat at. Here's Kyle Again,
back then it was like illegal. So like there's this
(21:12):
really rad guy, Daniel Anthony with I think it was
called Mona oh something like that. He was pounding it
traditionally and you know, delivering it to certain restaurants that
weren't supposed to be serving and they were like, screw it,
Like this stuff is like traditional, it is clean, it's healthy,
it's perfect. Like we're gonna we're gonna satiate the needs
(21:32):
of people in the right way. And and eventually like
like legalized potti I was a thing, and like it
actually like now it's cool. Now it's finally to the
community kind of came together on this one and within
two years um it was legalized. As long as makers
sun bleached their boards, they're good. Kiloha stumbed up poise,
(21:55):
present and future pretty well. What's exciting is that in
the past thirty years there's been this resurgence of the
traditional culture language, bringing back all traditions, things that we
stopped doing for generations, and uh, you know, it's it's
exciting bringing things back like pounding point by hand, cooking
(22:18):
a pig in the in the emore, the on the
ground of it. You know, things like that. Not everyone
in Hawaii today. It was privileged to have that growing up.
And like I said, I mean I grew up eating
out of a plastic bag. And that was the point
a plastic bag came about from commercialism, you know, it
came about from our people. At one time. We're being
(22:41):
steered to be industrious and do things that we were
not traditionally doing, and making POI kind of fell off
the wayside. And why are we going to go and
spend the day and pound this poi with a with
a board and stone when you could go to the
store and buy out of a plastic bag. And about
(23:03):
chen or fifteen years ago, I was asked by our
friends and say, what are you doing this evening? Let's
get together. Um, I have a friend, We're going to
try this sting out. We're gonna palm poi. And I
had never done it in my life, and um, yeah,
just that simple act of striking the tarot and making
(23:24):
into a product that I'm so happy to feed my family.
You know, it's it's yeah, there's no words to describe it.
It's like, yeah, it's just a spiritual it's a spiritual affair.
This brings us to the end of this our episode
on POI, but we would love to hear from you listeners.
Have you had any POI experiences? Send them all away.
(23:47):
You can email them to us at Hello at saber
pod dot com. You can also find us on social media.
We are on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at sabor Pod.
We do have to hear from you. Thank you so
much to our superproducers Dylan fay In and Andrew Howard,
and our executive producer Christopher Hassiotis and our interviewees. Also
many thanks to Michelle McGowan, Rice of the Hawaii Food
(24:08):
and Wine Festival, Don Sakamotapaiva of Put It on My Plate,
Enjoy Goto, and Maria Hartfield of the Hawaii Visitors and
Convention Bureau for putting us in touch with all of
those interviewees. Savor is a production of iHeart Radio and
Stuff Media. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks to you for listening,
(24:29):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
So when people eat Hawaian food, I always say that
the most culturally significant dish is going to be the POI,
But from any other perspective, it's probably the most unappealing. Hello,
and welcome to Savor protiction of I heeart Ay and
stuff Media. I'm Any Rees and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and
(00:29):
today we're talking about POI. Yes, that clip from the
top was from third generation restaurant owner Monica to Gucci
Ryan of Highway in on Oahu, and um, yeah, that
that quote sort of captures the difficulty that exists in
explaining POI to people who are unfamiliar with it. Yes,
(00:50):
and that is something I was totally unfamiliar with POI
until we started planning our trip and we were workshopping
possible topic ideas and POI was one that came up
up and something I was like, what is that? And
before we left, we picked the brain of our friend Louisa,
who was from ahwah who's North Shore, and when we
asked her about BOI, she was kind of vague about it,
(01:12):
pretty much like you're just gonna have to go and
try it to understand, and we were eager to do that.
So We sat it out at Helena's, a restaurant well
known for traditional Hawaiian dishes, and we spoke about this
experience when we got back to our studio here in Atlanta.
We went to Helena's right, Yes, our first boy, which
this is a very famous Hawaiian restaurant. Yes, very small,
(01:38):
very small. The waitress was very patient and a little
bit like very patient. I think she guided us and
we needed guidance. We did. I love when we were
like boy all around her, she was like, nope, one,
then we can see we can go from there. You
(02:00):
just immediately was like nope, nope. That I was like,
you seem just tired enough. You're going to be real
real with us. Yes. And the food was delicious. Oh yeah,
Oh my goodness, it was so delicious. Oh yeah. We
also had poi at the Wyre Hole, a Poi factory,
(02:20):
which is a restaurant that offers poi demonstrations and it
was amazing. And we had a poor donut somewhere at
Lily Ho Bakery. Yes, it's one of the very few
donuts that we actually got to eat from our first
round of lily Ha before we sadly left a bag
in a makeshift production studio. Yes, but Lauren and I
rectified that later, never fear. But okay, that about brings
(02:45):
us to our question, boy, what is it? Well? POI
is a preparation of steamed taro roots that's pounded out
either by hand or by machine with a bit of
her until it's this sticky mash or sort of paste
or sort of putting um, which is then allowed to
(03:06):
ferment either a little or a lot traditionally with just
whatever local microbes are floating around, which like in yogurt,
wind up being mostly lactic acid bacteria, until this product
is thick and almost doughy and a little or a
lot tart. It's often a grayish purple in color because
terror root is often purple, and it's served as a
starch or or as the starch in Hawaiian meals meant
(03:30):
to be taken either together in between bites with with
the proteins and vegetables that you're eating, and it reminds
me of um. Okay, so the flavor is sort of
like a like a mild or sour dough bread, like
slightly sweet and slightly creamy, but with this twinge of
sourness and the more sour that POI is, the more
that it can balance the sweetness and the richness and
(03:50):
saltiness of vegetables and meat and the texture. The texture
is really individual in my experience. Um, I guess it's
almost sort of like a like a only or a
cake batter um, or if you've ever had mochi served warm,
or like if you have a rice dish with a
poached egg and you stir the yolk of the poached
egg into the rice. Um, but like smoother than that. Yeah,
(04:15):
I will say. For me, it had kind of been
built up because of our friend Louisa, and I had
no idea what it even looked like. So when it
appeared on the table, I thought it was gonna be
um sweet and don't write in angrily. But I thought
it was kind of anticlimactic. I thought it was going
(04:35):
to be like something to punch you in the real weird,
like so strange, because I mean, yeah, like like we
said in that clip, like the waitress was like, I'm
not giving you that much boy, your yeah exactly. So
I thought it was going to be something that was
clearly like a very strong like an acquired taste, like
like Nato or something like that, right, And I I
(04:55):
can see how it is or how some people would
describe it that way. To me, it was just kind
of like, oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah, okay, yeah, I
like this. Um, And we didn't, or at least I
didn't really know the best way to eat it, so
I was mixing it with other things, and I thought
it did complement those other things very well. But from
what I read doing the research for this episode, uh,
(05:18):
it's often meant to just be scooped with your fingers. Yeah,
and um, the consistency is in fact judged by how
many fingers you'll need to scoop it one, two or three? Yeah,
how how liquidy it is? Right, A good three finger
scoop would be the most liquidy preparation of the boy exactly. Yeah. Um.
But let's back up a tiny bit and talk about
(05:39):
tarot um, which we'll have to do a whole episode
about at some point because it is fun and fascinating,
one of my favorite dessert flavors, and um is really
big in many dishes all of the world. But h yeah.
In brief, the tarot plant is a tropical or sometimes
subtropical vegetable that's grown for its greens and for its
storage roots UM, which are these these star cheat tubers
(06:01):
also called corms. Yes, I love that word form to
corm oh gosh. Anyway, yeah yeah. The plant grows these
storage roots UM so that it can survive through difficult
conditions like drought or storms and uh as you know
side benefit, humans can eat those storage roots too. Yep.
It's grown and used again in dishes all over the world, UM,
(06:23):
with concentrations in Africa, Asia and Oceania. The Hawaiian word
for tarot is colo, and although pounded and fermented tarot
products have been developed in other Polynesian cultures and in
western Central Africa, I don't think that any of those
ever developed into like a like a primary staple um
(06:44):
the way that they did in Hawaii. Yes, and poi
and taro are hugely important in Hawaii historically and modern ly.
Until the nineteen twenties and the construction of the Alaway Canal,
the area that is now waiki Ki was covered in
taro field. About the tero grown on the neighboring islands
of Maui, Kawaii, and Hawaii are shipped to Hawaii, and
(07:07):
all but three percent of that is turned into poi. Yeah,
you can find poi and all kinds of things, point crackers,
point muffins, point cheesecake, poi bread, poyt dog biscuits. Here's
Kioloa Domingo, who describes himself as a cultural practitioner who
cooks for us in Hawaii, for Hawaiians in general, the
Hawaiian people, I should see. Of course, you said you
(07:29):
tried the point that tarot is is the the number
one crop for us. It's our sustenance, it's ours, our
staple food. And okay um I sort of skipped a
step in the making of poi when you're when you're
specifically hand pounding the tarot in the traditional method with
a stone on a wooden board with an absolute minimum
of water, and is to get the taro to the
(07:51):
right texture, to to smooth it and develop that stickiness
by working the starch molecules. That the result of that
is this undeluded paste called patty i that is much
thicker than than a one finger poi um um and
it is very very shelf stable. Here's Monica again. And
the thing about it is, I think you know within
the Pacific and even Southeast Asia, taro is used throughout
(08:14):
Southeast Asia and through the Pacific. What is really I
think you need to Hawaiian culture is the fact that
they pound the taro, so we say coot e i
and then it turns into what we call putt e i.
So put ei is it's very use only enough water
to be able to pound the poi or pound the tower.
(08:34):
I'm sorry, And then you get it into this form
called put e i and you wrap it in in
tea leave to keep it fresh, and once you're ready
to actually you know, eat it and share. Hawaiian's is
a culture, very generous, generous culture. You add the poi
so you can stretch the colo, you can stretch the
taro and share it with other people. But also, like
we spoke about earlier, is that it it has a
(08:57):
very healthy aspect to a product where the fermentation process occurs.
So poi is potti i that's been diluted with water.
And depending on your preference, and yeah, how much putty
i you have to go around, you might dilute it
a little or a lot. And also, as I was
saying before, um it's sort of the same with how
(09:18):
long you let it ferment. It's to taste but also,
I mean, you know, like it's a lot of work
to make a batch. So if you make a bunch,
then the poi you eat on the first day is
not going to be as sour as the poi that
you eat on the fifth day. Um, because what's going
on when you make patty i and poi is um.
All Right, it's time once again to talk about fermentation
(09:40):
and yes, back teria food what because fermentation is um
is controlled spoilage through microorganisms. And when we say that
food is spoiled, we mean that microbes have eaten it
before we got the chance to. And when you're talking
about that like sad celery that's kind of liquefying in
(10:01):
the bottom of your fridge, um that might involve funguses
or bacteria that will eat that celery and poop compounds
with unpleasant flavors or maybe that are even pathogenic, meaning
that they could make you sick. But implementation, humans set
up situations where we let helpful bacteria eat some of
our food and poop flavor that we like um and
(10:24):
also keep pathogenic bacteria from growing and also often help
break down or or pre process if you want to
think about it that way. That the food so that
our bodies can do more with the food more efficiently.
So take tarot um. If you steam these roots, they're
they're mostly carbohydrates as starches and dietary fiber along with
(10:45):
a little bit of protein and fat and healthy smattering
of minerals and vitamins. Um. The process of pounding it
out into patty eye and then poi reduces the dietary fiber,
but makes all those carbs more easily digestible and ups
the vitamin and mineral content of the finished product. It's
just really a very smart way of getting the most
out of the taro root. And the sound that you
(11:06):
just heard there was of poi being pounded with the
traditional tools by performers at the Polynesian Cultural Center on
Oahu and Uh. The PCC isn't without its weirdness. Is
at any time that you're performing aspects of indigenous cultures
from mass audiences, you know it's it's delicate territory um.
But we are so grateful that we got to attend
(11:28):
the food demonstrations there. For visitors unfamiliar with poi and patyi,
it might be something that they shy away from, but
that's a mistake. Don't do it. No, and don't just
take our word for it. Take Kyle Ruttner's the brand
manager and minority partner in Kohana Ram. The epiphany food
is potti i, which is essentially like the precursor to poi.
(11:51):
For lack of a better way, so pounded taro root
and then you would take it and you could griddle
it and and make it sort of like caramelized and
sweet on the outside and still have this like crazy
sustenance and it's purple and super weird. And every you know,
Hollie person is supposed to hate poi and all this,
(12:12):
and it's like this, it's it's perfection. And honestly, it's
like that dish. I would have to say, is is quintessential?
Like it is? If I could tell somebody to have
one thing while they were here, I would be like,
you have to find great boy like even like sour.
Point of course, companies found a way to mechanize the
(12:33):
traditional process of making poi and you can go find
plastic bags are tubs of poi and grocery stores for
around three dollars. Around Hawaii, forty years ago, poi production
on a wah who was double what it is today,
and the yearly per capital consumption was about thirty pounds
or thirteen kilos. In the nineteen eighties that number was
closer to five pounds are two and a quarter kilos.
(12:56):
But there was a time when daily per capital consumption
might have been just about that much. And we will
get into the history of Poi, but first we've got
to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(13:16):
and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, Okay.
The terror plant is one of the world's oldest cultivated
crops as early as five thousand BC. Historians think it
most likely originated somewhere in Southeast Asia, where it's spread
throughout the rest of the continent to Europe, Africa, and
the Pacific Islands. When the Polynesians made the long journey
(13:38):
to Hawaii, the tarot plant was key in sustaining them
both on their voyage and once they arrived. Because pie
E I keeps so well, some researchers think that those
first settlers prepared it to eat on the trip sor
to like an ancient conrola bar. Either way, tarot is
one of the island's oldest crops. It's sometimes called a
canoe plant because it was bought over on those first canoes.
(14:01):
And there's a Hawaiian myth about tarot Um that the
terror route was the first child of the sky father Waukea,
and Godda says she, she who gives birth to the
stars um Ho Ho Kulani. And this child, Halloa was
was still born, and so they buried him in the earth,
and from his grave Calo or Taro grew um. Their
(14:22):
second child was the first Hawaiian man, and he was
tasked with with caring for his brother, the Tarot plant.
For a long time, only men were permitted to to
handle Calo. It was considered their sacred duty. And so yeah,
that makes that makes Tarot calo Um the original ancestor
of native Hawaiians. By the smith, here's Kioloha again. The
(14:43):
Hawaiian people, we truly did worship our food. We view
our food as a physical manifestation of our ancestral deities
and traditional gods. You know, the Tarot planet itself, that's
for us, you know. I'll tell you the truth. In
(15:04):
my day, I grew up eating poi out of a
plastic bag, and I'm totally fine with that. But as
time went on, you know, I learned more about traditional
history and culture and beliefs. And with this cultural renaissance,
we're teaching our children what we've learned from the history books,
(15:24):
that Carol is our ancestor. The tarot plant is literally
related to us. Yeah, we're descending from entire plants. So
we treat it as as our elder brother, as our
as our ancestor, as our copuna. And when the tarot
is on the table, whether in the form of bowl
(15:46):
of poi or whatever else it is, we behave accordingly.
You wouldn't speak harshly over it. You wouldn't be scolding
the kids. You wouldn't be saying, you know, how terrible
what day you had. That really lends through that whole family,
that positive vibe. You know, when you're around food, it's
(16:06):
about being grateful for what you have and about sustenance
and about you know, so I always say, we Hawaiians,
we love our food. We love our food. So it's
not just about sticking into your mouth and and enjoying
the flavor, you know, which, don't get me wrong, you know,
(16:27):
it's um definitely something that I love. But just the
fact that when you consume this food, it's really partaking
of the gods. Even the Hawaiian word ohanna meaning family,
as we all learned in lie Loan, stench um derives
from the word oha, which is the Hawaiian word forum
(16:49):
for the shoots that grow off of the main bulb
of a taro root, which are the parts that are
harvested while that main root is allowed to keep growing.
So ahna literally means something like um all from the shoots.
It wasn't appreciated nearly as much by the Europeans who
colonized the islands. James Cook called poi quote a disagreeable
(17:09):
mess from its sourness. Post contact, the arrival of immigrants
from Asia and Europe, bringing with them starches like rice
and potatoes, and the decimation of the indigenous population started
chipping away at the production and consumption of poi. It
was a slow process, uh Poi was still eaten at
every meal by many Hawaiians in the eighteen eighties. Some
estimates suggest five pounds a day for working adult um.
(17:33):
The first factory that used a machine to grind tarot
for poi opened in eight and the first regulations on
pois manufacture hit the books in nineteen eleven um. But Yeah,
as plantations growing things like sugarcane moved in, that pushed
tarot out, leading to shortages starting in the nineteen twenties.
That encouraged to switch to other starches like like rice
(17:53):
and wheat flour products which were cheaper anyway. Later, as
more waves of immigrants came to the islands, the housing
boom would take over even more former taro fields. Acreage
devoted to taro steadily decreased, but poi was still fairly
common in the early twentieth century. As of nineteen thirty two,
it was estimated that the thirteen factories on Awah who
(18:14):
were producing a combined total of twenty thousand, seven hundred
pounds of POI per day, and that's nine thousand, four
hundred kilos. And there was a decent amount of scientific
interest in poise. Yeah. A lot of this research focused
on its potential health benefits. In nineteen seventeen, VONN McCaughey,
a botanist with some troublesome views around Japanese, wrote about
(18:36):
how easily poi is digested. Walter C. Alvarez wrote in
nineteen thirty eight about poise uses as a substitute for
allergies to things like rice, corn, and wheat. This use
was employed for soldiers experiencing food allergies while stationed in
Hawaii during World War Two. Researchers in the sixties even
experimented with giving point of babies allergic to are intolerant
(18:58):
to cow's milk and soy's milk. Despite all his interest
around the health benefits of poi, it's consumption did continue
to decrease until the eighties and a resurgence in interest
in traditional Hawaiian foods and cultures. And uh, and we'll
(19:19):
get into that after we get back from one more
quick break forward from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you so yes. Like we talked
about in our intro episode Welcome to Oahu. Since the eighties,
Hawaiian culture has been going through revitalization thanks to the
(19:43):
hard work and determination of Native Hawaiians and other folks
in the culinary scene who were interested in uplifting regional cuisines.
In the nineteen eighties, only a handful of Native Hawaiian
elders knew how to pound poi with a board. Now
that number is up to a couple of thousand, while
people living in Hawaii are more likely to report eating
(20:04):
rice on a regular basis um as compared with poi.
There is a renewed interest in and enthusiasm for it
um and of course for some that that interest never
went away. There have been a number of taro festivals
held around the islands over the years that do celebrate
poi um one still running today. The East Maui Taro
Festivals started up in and is going strong year. Maui
(20:28):
sounds like it's got a lot of food festivals we
need to get to all I'm saying yeah. In two
thousand nine, poi maker Daniel Anthony started a poi business,
hand pounding pipe ei with traditional tools wooden board and
a stone pounder. After a photographer published a photo of
him making pipe ei like this at the Farmer's Market,
the Department of Health issued a cease and desist with
(20:51):
the concern that the pores in the wood and stone
could harbor harmful microbes, but the locals considered it safe
and his product was delicious enough that Honolulu chef Ed
Kinney put the illegal pot ei on the menu of
his restaurant Town, which we did eat at. Here's Kyle Again,
back then it was like illegal. So like there's this
(21:12):
really rad guy, Daniel Anthony with I think it was
called Mona oh something like that. He was pounding it
traditionally and you know, delivering it to certain restaurants that
weren't supposed to be serving and they were like, screw it,
Like this stuff is like traditional, it is clean, it's healthy,
it's perfect. Like we're gonna we're gonna satiate the needs
(21:32):
of people in the right way. And and eventually like
like legalized potti I was a thing, and like it
actually like now it's cool. Now it's finally to the
community kind of came together on this one and within
two years um it was legalized. As long as makers
sun bleached their boards, they're good. Kiloha stumbed up poise,
(21:55):
present and future pretty well. What's exciting is that in
the past thirty years there's been this resurgence of the
traditional culture language, bringing back all traditions, things that we
stopped doing for generations, and uh, you know, it's it's
exciting bringing things back like pounding point by hand, cooking
(22:18):
a pig in the in the emore, the on the
ground of it. You know, things like that. Not everyone
in Hawaii today. It was privileged to have that growing up.
And like I said, I mean I grew up eating
out of a plastic bag. And that was the point
a plastic bag came about from commercialism, you know, it
came about from our people. At one time. We're being
(22:41):
steered to be industrious and do things that we were
not traditionally doing, and making POI kind of fell off
the wayside. And why are we going to go and
spend the day and pound this poi with a with
a board and stone when you could go to the
store and buy out of a plastic bag. And about
(23:03):
chen or fifteen years ago, I was asked by our
friends and say, what are you doing this evening? Let's
get together. Um, I have a friend, We're going to
try this sting out. We're gonna palm poi. And I
had never done it in my life, and um, yeah,
just that simple act of striking the tarot and making
(23:24):
into a product that I'm so happy to feed my family.
You know, it's it's yeah, there's no words to describe it.
It's like, yeah, it's just a spiritual it's a spiritual affair.
This brings us to the end of this our episode
on POI, but we would love to hear from you listeners.
Have you had any POI experiences? Send them all away.
(23:47):
You can email them to us at Hello at saber
pod dot com. You can also find us on social media.
We are on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at sabor Pod.
We do have to hear from you. Thank you so
much to our superproducers Dylan fay In and Andrew Howard,
and our executive producer Christopher Hassiotis and our interviewees. Also
many thanks to Michelle McGowan, Rice of the Hawaii Food
(24:08):
and Wine Festival, Don Sakamotapaiva of Put It on My Plate,
Enjoy Goto, and Maria Hartfield of the Hawaii Visitors and
Convention Bureau for putting us in touch with all of
those interviewees. Savor is a production of iHeart Radio and
Stuff Media. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks to you for listening,
(24:29):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
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