Star-Bulletin
Blue food stars, from left, are blue gelatin,
blueberries and blue corn chips.

Red and white are easy,
but how are you going to add blue
to your Fourth of July
holiday spread?

By Nadine Kam
Assistant Features Editor

Some things in life are inexplicable. Take All Sport Body Quencher, one of the blue liquids being marketed to athletes. Its label advertises "Blue Ice Natural Flavor."

What is so natural about "blue ice" and does "blue" have a generic flavor? And why aren't more foods blue?

If these questions have never bothered you before, maybe now they will when you start dressing your table for the Fourth of July.

There's an abundance of red foods: juicy strawberries, cherries and the insides of watermelons, tomatoes in all their condimental glory, burgundy wine sauces and slivers of rare beef.

There are white foods in the form of rice, tear-wringing onions, flour tortillas, ivory cheesecakes, tako, snowy coconut meat, milk and milk products, and boiled pastas.

But when it comes to setting the table with blue, choices seem rather limited.

At Strawberry Connection, co-owner John Stout said, "I haven't seen any good, appetizing blue entrees.

"The strange thing is, blue is my favorite color -- to wear, to color with -- but not to eat. The ocean is blue, and I surf a lot, I wind surf a lot. I love blue. It's good for packaging food, but to put on a plate, no."

We're certainly not born with an aversion to blue. In childhood we couldn't wait to grab a paper cone filled with blue shave ice, and of course Louis "Bloo" Raspberry was the coolest of the Otter Pops waiting in the freezer as an after-school treat.

Even so, the flavor of blue was one of the world's biggest mysteries. Why does blue shave ice have a vanilla flavor? To add to the confusion, blue sometimes took on the flavor of pineapple when shades of yellow were already assigned to lemon and banana. Why didn't adults do the logical thing and give the thing the flavor of blueberries?

We embraced blue for its very artificial, decadent, nature-defying essence, knowing full well this color arrived with only with an assist from Blue Dye No. 1. Now that we prefer our chickens free-range and our veggies organic, we supposedly are distancing ourselves from the processed and painted.

Lahaina Grill chef David Paul Johnson said that when he first introduced the Peruvian blue potato in his restaurant, he was accused of dyeing them.

People were shocked, he said, because "very few foods are truly blue. One is corn. Another is blueberries. Then there's the blue potato. We use two of them, the Peruvian and the Okinawan, which is very sweet.

"Eight years ago probably no one thought too much about potatoes; now we have 120 varieties to choose from," he said. "I come from Utah, which is right below the potato capital (Idaho) so being a meat-and-potato eater most of my life, I love potatoes."

Now that more people seek the unusual dining experience, he said, "They dive into them."

At Lahaina Grill, Johnson has three favorite methods of preparing the blue potatoes. The first way is to pick the smallest specimens, cut an X into the tops, bake them, then push out the meat through the four fingers so they form a blue "tulip."

Another way is to mash them with chipotle chiles in adobo sauce with salt, pepper and butter for serving with pork chops.

And the fanciest way is to use a Japanese turning machine or stringer to cut the potato into a long thread. These can be pressed between ladles and deep-fried to form a crisp blue potato nest for white "Bird's Nest Scallops."

For humbler fare on the Fourth, top blue corn chips with white cheddar and salsa for a celebratory dish of nachos. Strawberry Connection's supply of blue corn chips sold out last Thursday to advance party planners, but the corn chips can be found at most supermarkets. Strawberry Connection still has a supply of blue corn meal at $1.65 per pound. Use the meal to make blue cornbread or polenta.

Blue flowers can also dress up a celebratory salad. Strawberry Connection's flower mix generally consists of nasturtiums in red, orange and gold, and daisies, with a few violets and pale blue chive flowers. A mix of 100 pieces runs $16, or 25 pieces will sell for about $5, for dressing up desserts and salads. Blue pansies can be made available by request, with a couple day's notice.

Planet Hollywood crumbles bleu cheese into its Hollywood Salad. You can do the same with pasta, or simply serve the cheese on a pupu tray with bread and port.

Some blue foods cook up white or pink, as with prawns, blue crabs and Pacific blue marlin, or kajiki, available for about $3.25 to $4.99 per pound this week at seafood retailers.

Blue crabs retain their color when served in the shell in poke form, a la Sam Choy's recipe for Blue Pincers Poke, from his book, "The Choy of Cooking."

Tamashiro Market offers blue crab from Florida at $4.95 per pound. They suggest picking up the crab early in the morning because supplies generally sell out by noon.

Quench your thirst with Blue Hawaiis -- 1-1/2 ounces of light rum, 1-1/2 ounces of pineapple juice, an ounce of blue curacao, and an ounce of fresh lemon juice over a cup of cracked ice.

If all else fails, rip open a bag of M&M's. You're bound to find a few with a glossy blue coat.

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Blue Food Recipes