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TheBuzz
Erika Engle
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COURTESY HECTOR MORALES
Executive chef Hector Morales has created a recipe featuring Kahuku prawns and Idaho potatoes for seven food service publications.
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Plugging prawns, and potatoes from Idaho
Turtle Bay Resort Executive Chef Hector Morales has been picked to promote potatoes from Idaho - in the Idaho Potato Commission's
"Project Reinvent" campaign.
A recipe Morales created will be featured in print ads for placement in seven food service industry publications including Nation's Restaurant News, Food Arts and Restaurant Hospitality magazines and will also be included on the commission's Web site.
However, it is no secret that culinarians place great priority on local ingredients.
"I was looking for something locavore," to address the trend of eating locally raised, locally grown foods, Morales said.
Hence, the recipe also plugs provincial prawns - Kahuku prawns, of course.
The Idaho potato people launched "Project Reinvent" last September, after challenging renowned chefs to come up with creative ways to prepare and serve potatoes, in both classic and new presentations.
One goal, Morales said, was to bring people back to spuds after years of Atkins-induced eschewing of starches.
Several chefs were asked to submit recipes, "and they picked the ones they liked, including Morales' Idaho potato crusted Kahuku Prawns dish that includes a homemade lemon pasta and fruit salsa.
It would be an ambitious undertaking for most home cooks - not that using a Japanese mandoline to turn large potatoes into long strings would be hard - but wrapping the long shreds artfully around the cleaned, deveined and marinated prawns could be daunting.
"It is slightly tedious, but worth the effort," Morales said.
A former banquet chef for the King of Norway, he knows from experience.
Is it on the menu at a Turtle Bay restaurant?
"We haven't done it yet, but it's coming," Morales said.
Meanwhile, the commission is going to make hay with the chefs' potato recipes.
It has produced a folded recipe card set, which it will distribute at trade shows and conferences as well as online, according to its media relations office.
Though not yet on the Idaho Web site, Chef Morales' recipe can be found at starbulletin.com/2008/09/03/business/recipe.html.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4747, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at:
erika@starbulletin.com