How to make a vegetarian poke that's a ringer for tuna
I've never been to Hawaii, not even back when the main ingredient in its native dish, poke, was part of my diet. So now that poke shops are proliferating on the mainland, I have to confess that I don't have a point of taste comparison when trying to think up a vegetarian version.
Thankfully, Honolulu-based food writer Martha Cheng has done the research for me, and in “The Poke Cookbook” (Clarkson Potter, 2017) she features a chapter of plant-based takes on the snack that use such ingredients as fiddlehead fern, tofu, mango, carrot and pineapple. But it was the combination of beets and macadamia nuts that I knew I'd try. The beets, ruby red and glistening, are a ringer for tuna, and another ingredient — wakame, a dried seaweed — brings the taste of the ocean. Vinegar, sesame oil, garlic and crushed red pepper flakes all do their thing, and the nuts add a dose of fat and protein to the mix.
My only tweak was to double the macadamias. If you're not going to be eating tuna, and there are plenty of reasons for that, you deserve another indulgence.