Poke is diced raw fish served either as an appetizer or as a main course and is one of the main dishes of Native Hawaiian cuisine. Traditional forms are aku and heʻe. Heʻe poke is usually called by its Japanese name tako poke, except in places like the island of Niʻihau where the Hawaiian language is spoken. Increasingly popular ahi poke is made with yellowfin tuna. Adaptations may feature raw salmon or various shellfish as a main ingredient served raw with the common poke seasonings.
History
The traditional Hawaiian poke consists of fish that has been gutted, skinned, and deboned. It is served with traditional condiments such as sea salt, candlenut, seaweed, and limu. According to the food historianRachel Laudan, the present form of poke became popular around the 1970s. It used skinned, deboned, and filleted raw fish served with Hawaiian salt, seaweed, and roasted, ground candlenut meat. This form of poke is still common in the Hawaiian islands. Beginning around 2012, poke became increasingly popular in North America. From 2014 to mid-2016, "the number of Hawaiian restaurants on Foursquare, which includes those that serve poke," doubled, going from 342 to 700. These restaurants serve both traditional and modern versions of the dish. The modern version is sometimes called poké bowl, and has the ingredients arranged in a grouped way rather than mixed. Variations may include avocado, ponzu sauce, teriyaki sauce, mushrooms, crispy onions, pickled jalapeño, sriracha sauce, cilantro, pineapple, or cucumber. Unlike traditional Hawaiian poke, the mainland style is typically not pre-marinated, but is instead prepared with sauces on demand. Contemporary poke restaurants are mostly—but not exclusively—fast casual style restaurants where the dish is fully customizable from the base to the marinade on the fish. They may use other seafood but ahi tuna is the most popular. There is a three-day "I Love Poke" festival to celebrate the dish and its many variations.
Ingredients
Poke began with fishermen seasoning the cut-offs from their catch to serve as a snack. While poke is a regional American-based cuisine from Hawaii, traditional poke seasonings have been heavily influenced by Japanese and other Asian cuisines. These include soy sauce, green onions, and sesame oil. Others include furikake, chopped dried or fresh chili pepper, limu, sea salt, inamona, fish eggs, wasabi, and Maui onions. Other variations of poke may include cured hee, other types of raw tuna, raw salmon and various kinds of shellfish. Traditional Hawaiian poke may consist of cubed raw fish, maui onions, Inamona, Limu, soy sauce, green onions, or sesame oil.
Similar dishes
Poke comes from the same culinary and linguistic origins as other Polynesian fish salads such as oka in Samoa, ika mata in the Cook Islands, and kokoda in Fiji. A very similar dish is the kinilaw of the Philippines, known as the "Philippine ceviche". Kinilaw is usually raw diced fish marinated in citrus juice, sour fruits, or vinegar with extracts from mangrove bark or fruits. It is indigenous to the islands, with traces recovered from archaeological sites dated to the 10th to 13th centuries AD. This process can also be applied to other seafood and lightly blanched or grilled meat. The dish was introduced to Guam during the Spanish colonial period, resulting in the derivative Chamorro dish of kelaguen. The Ilocano dish poqui poqui of the Philippines also likely derived its name from poke, after the influx of Ilocano sugarcane workers to Hawaii during the American colonization of the Philippines. However, they are very different dishes, with poqui poqui being a scrambled egg dish with grilled eggplants and tomatoes. Raw fish dishes similar to poke that are often served in Europe are fish carpaccio and fish tartare. Also similar to poke are Korean hoedeopbap, marinated raw tuna served over rice, and Peruvian ceviche. Japanese sashimi also consists of raw seafood; other similar Japanese dishes are zuke don, a donburi dish topped with cured fish along with avocado topped with furikake, and kaisendon, a more elaborate version served with additional non-fish toppings.
