The author of Cook Real Hawai'i brings the essence of Hawai'ian cuisine to everyday cooking with over 100 unfussy and flavorful recipes featuring easy ingredient substitutions, clever new techniques, and creative (and often plant-based) spins on traditional dishes.
Beloved chef and two-time Top Chef fan favorite Sheldon Simeon's food joyfully reflects Hawai'i's flavors and cooking styles, a mixture of island influences including Native Hawai'ian, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, and other cuisines. With creative plant-based spins (like swapping out raw fish with pan-seared ripe avocado for a delicious "tataki", or using mushrooms to create the best "escargot") and shortcut cooking techniques (like searing shoyu-marinated tuna in a hot wok or pan to mimic smoking, or using a Chinese dry wok cooking style to perfect fish sticks), the recipes in Ohana Style shows how quick, easy, and flexible Hawai'ian cuisine can be.
Sheldon's recipes show how to blend sweet, savory, and tangy Hawai'ian flavors into every day meals, all the while centering the cuisine's legacy of communal-style eating, reminiscent of the traditions and memories of foods we all grew up with. In Ohana Style you'll find umami-packed recipes meant for family-that's what ohana means in Hawai'ian-weeknight dinners, quick lunches, snacks, cookouts, and barbecues.
From Pork Belly Tocino with garlic rice for breakfast and Stir-Fried Olives with ginger as a midday snack, to a pan-fried Lemon-Caper Mahi dinner with Furikake Animal Crackers for dessert, Ohana Style has recipes for every mood and any event-for people who want to get something flavorful and delicious on the table quickly without forgoing the exciting and layered flavors of local Hawai'ian cooking. Sheldon Simeon is the chef and owner of Lineage, a restaurant that explores the ancestral roots of Hawaiian cuisine, as well as Tin Roof, where he serves contemporary Hawaiian dishes in a casual setting, both in Maui. In 2019, Lineage was named one of Bon Appétit's Top 50 Nominees for America's Best New Restaurants. Sheldon was a finalist on Season 10 of Top Chef: Seattle, becoming a finalist en route, and later competed on Season 14 of Top Chef: Charleston-he was voted Fan Favorite on both seasons. Sheldon's first book, Cook Real Hawai'i, was named one of the best cookbooks of 2021 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Taste of Home, Vice, and Serious Eats.
