Chicken Hekka (Hawaiʻi Local Plantation-Style Chicken Sukiyaki)

The sugar-camp table had many hands on it, and no one hand owned the whole pot. Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, Filipino, Puerto Rican, everybody working hard, everybody eating what was there, everybody making dinner out of the same stove and the same tired evening. That is where this Hawaiʻi Local dish belongs: chicken hekka, our islands' take on sukiyaki, cooked soft and saucy so the rice can carry it.

This is Hawaiian in the Local way, not an old ceremonial food from the imu, the Hawaiian earth oven. It came later, from plantation life, from Japanese sukiyaki walking into a Hawaiʻi kitchen and meeting long rice, bamboo shoots, shiitake, watercress, cabbage, and the sweet-salty shoyu we use for half the comfort food in these islands. No blame the plate for being humble. Two scoops rice, one scoop mac salad, hekka over the top, plastic fork, everybody quiet for the first few bites.

Across the Triangle, the deep foods still hold the root: Sāmoan palusami, Tongan lū, Cook Islands rukau, Hawaiian laulau, poi and paʻiʻai back home, same elder brother under many tongues. Chicken hekka sits on the other half of the table, the Local plantation-creole half, and it deserves its respect too. ʻĀina, kānaka, meaʻai: land, people, food. Sometimes that relationship is a taro board. Sometimes it's one big skillet feeding the cousins after work.