Hey Poke A-Way By David W. Brown Draw a line from from California to Canberra, and cross it with one from China to Chile to create an X, and right where the two lines intersect, that’s Hawaii. Because the islands are at the crossroads of many diverse cultures, their cuisine is unlike any in the world — ever evolving and ever expanding. And one of its most celebrated dishes — poke — is a testament to this. Like all Hawaiian fare, the seafood delicacy has changed slowly but inexorably over the centuries, one ingredient at a time, one flavor at a time, and attracting one fan at a time until the world had no choice but to look up and take notice. These days on the mainland, you’d be hard-pressed to go a mile without crossing one poke shop or another, and you need not even go that far: Your local Rouses offers poke in its sushi section. At its most basic, poke is diced, marinated fish served over rice. (The word literally means “to slice.”) If that sounds like the sort of thing guaranteed to appeal to the Gulf Coast palate, you are exactly correct, says Michael Westbrook, the director of deli, cold cuts and sushi for Rouses Markets. “In our part of the country, we saw shoppers jump on poke much faster than the rest of the U.S. — even more than California, where poke first arrived from Hawaii.” Poke — sometimes spelled poké with the accent, and always pronounced poh-kay — was born on the Pacific hundreds of years ago as a solution to a basic problem for fishermen: hunger while working on the water. Hard workers pulled nets from the sea, sunup to sundown, and on their boats they had rice, fish — and appetites. One knife and one bowl later, a Hawaiian delicacy was born. The dish changed gradually over time as it encountered different peoples — soy sauce and other marinades were eventually introduced to the preparation. In that sense, poke is like the gumbo of Hawaii: a living cuisine made a thousand and one different ways and influenced by a thousand and one different cultures, and yet somehow always the same.
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When poke arrived on the continent, it took the West Coast by storm, and soon began cropping up in major East Coast cities. It was natural, then, that when it arrived on the Gulf Coast, the food capital of the country, it would yet again be transformed. Poke is deceptively simple: easy to prepare yet requiring a specialist’s skill to chop and cut the fish just right.
Fresh poke bowls are available every day at your local Rouses Markets!
