Owner of Tin Roof restaurant on Maui, Top Chef and Cook Real Hawai'i author, Sheldon Simeon reminiscences about growing up in the Simeon household in Hilo. We talk story about the power of deliciousness, how his family inspired his becoming a chef and he shares four Genius recipes! -- including his dad's all-time fave pupu pantry pleasers.
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Kristen Miglore (voiceover): Hi, I'm Kristen Miglore, a lifelong genius hunter. For a decade, I've been unearthing the recipes that have changed the way we cook. Now on The Genius Recipe Tapes, we go behind the scenes with the geniuses themselves. This week, I had the chance to sit down with Sheldon Simeon. One of my favorite ever top chef contestants and the author of the cookbook cook real Hawaii. So this week's genius recipe is two of Sheldon's pantry-friendly, anytime depths from the heavy pupus chapter of his book. But it's even more than that because these two recipes, creamy, salty, tangy shoyu dip, and kim chee tip. Also, give you the keys to a couple more pantry hacks, making your own crunchy fried garlic without deep frying and a way to pour on the sunshiny as lemon. Without the sharpness of actual lemon juice. Later in the episode, Sheldon will tell us the genius stories behind all four of these recipes. But first, here he is to tell us more about how he became the top chef he is today. Growing up in the Simeon household in Hilo, on the big island of Hawaii, where the power of deliciousness was a constant,
Sheldon Simeon: I guess I was lucky to be born into a family. I appreciated food that loves food, that food and family was. It was an integral part in that, and the generosity of taking care of your family, your friends, your neighbors, that was just like an essential part of our upbringing. And all food was always at the forefront of whether it was a celebration or dinner. It's like you do your homework, or you're not going to be able to come and have dinner or do your chores. And I never talked. My talent was something that shined true. Maybe I had a knack for cooking, but I felt like I needed to work hard and all, whatever. That's what my, especially watching my dad work so many jobs. It was constantly working. So my work ethic was what I thought would get me through everything. And that love for food was always. But just so involved in the grind as I went through my career and always wanted to do the best, and anything I did, I poured 110% into it.
Kristen: What was it like learning from your dad? Did that sense of hard work come through when he taught how to do things in the kitchen?
Sheldon: Yeah, I guess it wasn't my dad, wasn't the type of coming here, I'm going to shoyu, I'm going to shoyu how to do something, and we're going to learn it. And all he did, he let us experience so many things that it became routine. It was like, always you better keep up whatever he says to do. You're doing it. And then you just learn by observation. And as, as you do it often, then it. Natural and normal to you. And I think that's one of the things that may lead me to be a successful chef.
Kristen: Do you remember any moments just watching him cook that kind of, as you're watching him, it blew your mind a little bit like, oh that's how we get that.
Sheldon: Our family cooked for a large part is, and here in Hawaii, there are certain milestones that you go through. So first birthday parties are celebrated when significant, and large attendance weddings, high school graduations. So we were always a family that cooked for that and had a ton of cousins, families, and friends. We had a lot of those to be cooking throughout the year years. And. I know whenever there was a luau party, it'd be a week of preparation. One of our things that one of the recipes I talk about in the book is pork and peas. And my family is known for pork and peas. You cut up your pork, and we'd have to marinate it the day before. And my dad went off with just. He would marinate things, no matter how big the size, he would know, just offer its smell. And my brother and I would always like; I don't know how you do. But then there comes a day that light switch turns on after you're doing it so much that you can tell that it needs more vinegar, it needs more source sauce. It needs black pepper just by the touch, feel, and smell. Yeah, just watching him as a kid, it's like, why are you smelling it? How do you know? I know exactly how much to put into it and the. He always got it.
Kristen: Wow. So he did not even need to taste it, just smell?
Sheldon: Sometimes the piece is for 600, and he just knows how much of something to put into it, just by the feel of going off. And then there's sometimes the part is four 50.
Kristen: Do you feel like you can do that now too?
Sheldon: My brother does it better than anybody else, but as I said, he would make us do it as time went on. It's okay, your guys' turn. We're like, oh no, here you go. You do it enough. Like we just, as I said, we've done it so many times that I don't know. There's a, your mind and your senses there's a light switch moment where it's okay, I get it. I teach anyone that you just have to go through the process so many times to understand it, though. I am definitely from the school of learning technique before measurements and understanding reacting to moments like when something is cooking in the pan or are you seeing, are you tasting something and calculating what it needs instead of going off of a recipe? But I always teach technique first and then understanding of cooking. We're just talking and having a conversation over lunch with my cousins and my aunts and uncles about watching grandma and grandpa cook, not using any measurements, and all they had the same spoon to measure everything. And they're pinch. It was delicious every single time. And I guess that feeling that the generational knowledge passed through to understand the recipe in that technique. And luckily for me, I was intrigued by it. I enjoyed it more than anything. It's fun to see. One of my daughters, in particular Quinn, she's my youngest daughter. She just made us dinner last night. And I just see her love of being in the kitchen and enjoying preparing something and feeding it to her brother and sisters and the family. And that's simple things like hamburger helper, but start to finish, you'll finish it off and present presented on the table.
Kristen: And that stoke that she has is I remember having that same stoke at that age. When you were that age, were you excited to cook things for your family?
Sheldon: Yeah. My brother and I were the prominent people cooking in the house at that age. So my mom was sickly. She had a stroke back then. And then my dad was working multiple jobs. So my brother and I would fend for ourselves and cook for a family. We get instructions from dad on what to make and then—cook it up. How did that feel?
Kristen: Were you excited to do that? Did it feel like it definitely, wasn't a chore? I guess it sucked in some points as a kid, right?
Sheldon: Usually, you watch your friends; they're riding their bikes around the neighborhood. Not saying that we never did that, but there are moments where we'd have to be cooking and cleaning and prepping while your friends are out cruising and doing all that stuff—looking back at it. We were so fortunate to be able to do that. Now that's, it's a natural thing and not the thing that we want to do, who will want to cook for people. I love entertaining. I can't wait to have people over our house. It's something. That I enjoyed the most, that's why I love the pupu section of my book. I love you can never come over to the Simeon household and just sit down and talk. Sorry. There's always a need to drink, and there's always a need to eat, whether it's something simple as opening up a can of sardines and warming it up in the pan or just making it—some fried rice. There's always going to be food. And in front of you is you're not going to come over and sit down and not have food at our house. So it always happens. That's a great segue into talking more about pupus because that's two of the genius recipes that we're featuring this week are from the very beginning of your book, the heavy pupus chapter the first chapter. It's a whole chapter dedicated to heavy pupus.
Kristen: That seems like it must be a critical part of your life and your cooking and the Simeon household.
Sheldon: So pupus are Hawaii form of these snacks, of these appetizers or small little bites that you can have in a minute. Or, as I said, over a conversation of hanging out, it's food that you're going to be picking at first.
Kristen: And is your dad is the master of pupus like you?
Sheldon: He'll take a moment, and he'll always have something to nibble on. Whether we're going to go down to the beach or we're going to watch a baseball game, or we're hanging out at auntie's house, it's oh, what are we bringing? What are you eating? So pupus are those smaller bites and snacks that you have? It's just like food that's in the middle of the table that you're going to be snacking.
Kristen: Can you describe what a party scene looks like where heavy pupus are like a big feast?
Sheldon: Yeah. So it's communal dining; the way that we eat in Hawaii is communal dining. So you lay out a table with many smaller bites. Hawaii cuisine has influences from all these cultures that eat like that. Koreans with their bunch on and Filipinos with their small salads and tomatoes. And. And depths are all on the side Portuguese with their bread and pickles. So all of these cultures that have this communal-style dining all influence the food of Hawaii. And you have a bite, a little picking from each one, it sounds. And that's how we grew up with put as much different food in the middle of the table as you can.
Kristen: like sometimes they can get epic you, you described in the book that people are still talking about your son Asher's first birthday party spread. What was that like?
Sheldon: Yeah, it gets epic. I judge in a party here in Hawaii, but. By your poop spread. And of course, his first birthday party, I had to go all-in on that. And we're at something like 17 or 18 different dishes just for the pupu line, consisting of smoked meats. And. Several types of poke and me, we had goats on there. We had soups, we had all kinds of, so we had fiddlehead ferns. We had pickles and boiled peanuts. We threw the kitchen sink at the, at that pupu line.
Kristen: Wow.
Sheldon: Yeah, we celebrate food in that way. And pupus are the best way to celebrate the food of Hawaii because you get to have a little bit of everyone's cold. One of my favorite photos in the book is this spread at my dad's house, where a few dozen pupus cover the whole table. And then you have a tray, and you grab a little bit of everything, and everything just mixes up. It's not supposed to be this fusion where you're piling on top of things. They all just work together in harmony on the plate, just because you have all these different flavors, some sour, some savory. Yeah. And bitter some spicy hot code. It all works well.
Kristen: Specifically, the dips that we're going to be talking about from that first chapter, the shore you dip you mentioned in the book that you just by gallon-sized containers of mayo and shoyu at Costco. These are like staple ingredients in your cooking, specifically for this step. Can you take us back to the version that you grew up with at family parties in Hilo?
Sheldon: Those are two definite mother sauces. We use the word shoyu, the Japanese term for soy sauce. Growing up, I always correct my kids when they say soy sauce, as I shoyu, and then. And then mayonnaise in particular best foods or helmets as others might know it as, but yeah, that was the basis of so many sauces for Hawaii. My dad was a simple man. If he had something in the cupboard that he could make, why go to the store and buy it? Pre-made if he has it and shoyu in mayonnaise once his dip for him, it was his salad dressing for everything like they would just mix those two, and he'd eat it with his carrots. He put it over ten beats. I was like, what? Individually? Yeah, but we loved it. We put it that was a credited dip shoyu in mayonnaise there's so when I know I'm moving on when it came up, but the restaurant lineage, I was like how to pay homage to that. And how do I kick it up a little bit? And a recipe in the book is. The base is still shoyu in mayonnaise. But we top it off with a little bit of lemon and black pepper and toasted Sesame seeds to heighten it up. That's the thing, even as we're cooking. But the idea of this is, again, let's get food on the table as quickly as possible and straightforward as possible.
I need something to munch on and to eat. So if somebody shows up to your house unexpectedly and I've got some that's some carrots, or I've got, we'd even use it as dip chips and dip I can, it takes a second to put a scoop of a dollop of a Manny's. A couple of drops of shoyu in a bowl and mix it.
And you have something that you can snack on. That's the idea of the dips. One of the most potent powers in the world is the power of deliciousness. It's undeniable. When something is on, or something tastes delicious, there's no way around it. So shoyu and mayo are delicious.
Kristen: And it sounds like that was all that went into your dad's version, right? Just those two ingredients. Just those
Sheldon: two ingredients, all you need. That's all you needed. That's, it's one of those recipes that resonate with the people who grew up in Hawaii. They see shoyu, man is dipping in there, and they laugh because yeah, something as simple as that, that we take for granted that we can still celebrate these two ingredients.
Kristen (voiceover): Hey, it's Kristen. If you're enjoying this chat with Sheldon, head over to the The Genius Recipe Tapes and hit follow. So you don't miss out on other stories like this one and like our recent episode with Zoe, author of Zoe's Ghana Kitchen, who shared with us a comforting light chicken soup, and a fiery freezable tomato sauce that unlocks the holy Trinity of Ghanaian cuisine. In the second half of this episode, Sheldon tells us more about how he put his spin on his family's classic pantry dips and two genius cooking hacks that have already changed how I cook. Meet you back here for that.
Kristen: The updates that you mean to the version you had at Lineage and the one in the book? The lemon oil, in particular, seems like it's a powerful ingredient for you. I know that you said it was one of your secret ingredients you took to Top Chef.
Sheldon: Yeah. Talk about these moments that changed me in my career. I got the chance to work at an Italian restaurant, and I grew up only eating poke, so it's like pure, raw sashimi-style. And then as I went to school, everybody. I started doing an apostle crew, like a Tahitian CV, Chet, and I first tasted ceviche, and I was like, no poke greater than everything else.
Just because of the flavor of fish and all that, the silkiness of poke is what I liked. And once you add acidity to it, it cooks the fish, and then you lose that beautiful thing that I love about poke. So when I went to work at Vinos, I saw them coating their tartare with this lemon oil that you get the flavor of lemon, but it doesn't cook the fish. It was an aha moment.
Kristen: Do you have favorite ways to use the lemon oil now, besides in this short.
Sheldon: Lemon oil, just in those cup noodles, just even cup and them right out of the microwave, instant ramen, just some that Lemon oil on top of steaks to finish it off with the crunchy salt and lemon oil on poke. Those are some of my favorites.
Kristen: Wow, those all sound amazing. I'd also love to hear more about this second genius dip that we will feature, the kim chee dip. And first of all, you have a note in your book about the spelling of kim chee. Can you just share with our listeners why kim chee is spelled differently in Hawaii compared to other parts of the United States?
Sheldon: It's spelled both ways, but here in Hawaii, you see K I M C H E here. It's another one of those things that are unique to Hawaii. And it's just those that language barrier that happened whenever all these immigrants are coming here to work on the plantations, and those people shared their language, just this kind of all came to mix up, and then people start writing it out. And that's how.
Kristen: Was this another one that you just remember being at your on the pupu spreads at parties when your family growing up? Was it just an early presence of the classic version of the kim chee dip?
Sheldon: I grew up in a Filipino house. So then I always said, I thought kim chee was part of our culture and did one of my favorite things this day. When I go to the talk stories at high schools, Which I, hopefully, I can do again, through all of this is, I asked who has kim chee in the refrigerator. And I love that here. It's always 50% or more of the kids have kim chee no matter their background, race, or nationality. So I love how everything has just blended here in Hawaii and kim chee dip. All of these dips are all these moments where. I need to come up with something very quickly. And how can I make something that's delicious that we can eat? Yeah, simple as putting some cream, cheese, and sour cream together; back in the days, if we didn't have that, our old friend mayonnaise was there to put it together. That's a kim chee and mayonnaise and some shoyu together that would be a dip also. But I love that we serve this at Lineage, and it was on our, it was on our pool card that would show up to your table as you sat down. And you got to have something to eat as you're looking at the menu right off the bat and the kinship. No, of course, we took steps to make this as delicious as possible while keeping it still accurate to itself. And we made our kim chee we over fermented it to bring out. The sourness in it, knowing that we're going to tone it down with a little bit of cream, cheese, and sour cream and then top it off with some fried garlic and some Parmesan cheese in there for some umami and some texture. Yeah. We had a beautiful dish.
Kristen: The fried garlic. That was one of the genius tricks in your book. That stood out a lot. The idea is to fry the garlic in a bowl in your microwave. In addition to how you do it at the restaurants in bigger batches, can you just tell us a little more about how fried garlic plays into your cooking? And then where does this microwave trick come along, and how do you use it at home?
Sheldon: Yeah, I love kitchen hacks, right? Kitchen hacks are like, what are these ingredients or this technique that will give your dish a boost in a moment's notice and fried garlic is one of those dishes. One of those ingredients top it off on top of noodles, top it off on rice, top it off on steak. If you like garlic, which most people who love food, it's just going to benefit from having fried garlic on top of it. And it's such a component that I wanted everybody to have in their pantry, but I wanted to do something that you could replicate in your home. The fried garlic is in the microwave. What an epic thing. I was skeptical; I'm not going to lie. I have to shout out to my coauthor Garrett Snyder for that. We dialed it in and got the fresh garlic, too.
Kristen: Do you do it that way at home too? Or do you still fry in big batches?
Sheldon: Just steal from the restaurant.
Kristen: Oh, good. That's the ultimate hack? For those of us who aren't lucky enough to have access to a restaurant to steal it from the microwave, garlic is a game-changer. Yeah. And then you get the garlic.
Sheldon: Garlic oil is better than cooking in regular oil. Every time. Like stories about my grandma, I would always have liked this: her CRC, her pot on the stove, and she'd go from cooking. But Dewey, these banana fritters right into cooking longer, Nissa ran in that same oil. Landing it shell straining it, that same oil, and there'll be frying fish in it again. And the next day, maybe some lumpia again, then we got accustomed to having oil be tasting like that. We survive. We have to think about it. Cooking oil when we're frying something, the least amount of fat that you can use, you'll even buy filters that cost more than cooking oil to strain the cooking oil. That's how much they love food. My dad doesn't want to waste anything. I was like, wow, it doesn't make sense. So I confessed—one of the first things. Once I graduated culinary school, I told myself is I was going to work hard enough that I was not going to care about how much oil I was using when I wanted to fry something. Although your dad will be in the back of my head, I'll be like, yeah, I can pour this much oil when I'm frying my chicken. That's like all these moments where I was scraping the bottom of the rice pot then came not throwing away his tea after work. Bring it home to eat white rice because he didn't want to waste it. It's odd. His moments all come together. And I guess it decided for itself me becoming a chef from having all these moments. My brother is also a chef himself too, so yeah, we're surrounded by that culture. It's still learning from them and still cooking and looking at these recipes where we take for granted growing up and going through the layers of it, of what makes that dish delicious. What's the nostalgic ness of it. And what. Why why is it delicious? Is it the story? Is it the ingredient? Is it its technique and all of that plan two points each recipe has its moments? Its significance might be the story more than the recipe itself, the ingredients, but all of it makes it delicious.
Kristen: Yup. But that's all we try to do to live a life of delicious.
Kristen (voiceover): Thanks for listening and my things to Sheldon Simeon, chef, owner of tin roof restaurant in Maui, and author of the book cook real Hawaii. This week's show is composed by Amy Shuster, Harry Sultan, and Emily Hanhan. What dips and snacks can you magic out of the pantry when you want to share something delicious? I would love to hear about it at genius@food52.com, or you can tag me at @miglorious on Instagram. And if you The Genius Recipe Tapes and the Food52 podcast network, the very best thing that you can do to support us and to help other people find the show is to take a moment to leave us a five-star rating or review or send this episode to someone who you permission to cut you in the pupu line. Thanks so much. I'll talk to you next week.