The Luana Culinary Experience

The Luana cuisine is conceived for longevity, wellness and enjoyment. It promotes mindful eating, organic raw foods and creative un-cooking.  Our culinary experience includes selecting whole food ingredients, preparing them with minimum processing for maximum digestibility and palatability.

Sourcing high quality ingredients

Our culinary experience starts with sourcing high quality ingredients.  We aim for diversity, freshness and healthy plants.  We work with a variety of farmers all over the island to get the best organic produce available.  Beautiful greens, macadamia nuts, colorful heirloom tomatoes, peppers and carrots are usually available in our farmers markets in Hilo, Maku’u, Captain Cook or Keauhou.  We grow our most commonly used herbs such as dill, parsley, cilantro, oregano, tarragon, lemon grass, curry and kefir lime leaves.  Tropical fruits, papayas, mangos, white pineapple, dragon fruit, star fruits, bananas and noni grow in abundance on our land.  When the pineapples are in season, we juice the whole pineapple in our Norwalk juicer, including its thick peal, to obtain a delicious juice high in the digestive enzyme, bromelain.  We like variety and produce that we don’t find locally, we buy organic at the health food store.  We are proud of our farmers who are constantly adding more variety to their production.

Avoiding most common allergenic foods

Wheat, dairy products, soy, sugar, high fructose corn syrup and processed foods are not part of our cuisine.  These products irritate most people’s digestive tract, producing inflammation and generating minor disorders such as gas and bloating or more serious such as bleeding ulcers.  As a rule of thumb, we like to start our food from scratch to make sure there are no hidden harmful substances such as MSG in disguised form or wheat, dairy or sugar known to be commonly employed in salad dressing, sauces or any processed foods.  Flour produced from wheat is expected to be the main ingredient in baked goods and pasta, but it can also be found in products such as salad dressings, sauces and soups, processed meats and energy bars.  Cheese, yogurt, ice cream are the most identifiable forms of dairy but there are multiple products containing hidden forms of milk like chewing gum, cereals, gravies, mash potatoes, canned and processed meats and salad dressings.  In the same way, sugar is found in the obvious goods like pastries and candies or ice cream but it is also used in savory foods like soups, sauces and crackers to extend shelf life and change the texture

Starting from scratch

Starting from scratch is the only guarantee that the food you will eat contains undamaged healthy nutrients and is void of harmful substances like taste enhancers, preservatives and fillers or plastics leached from packaging.  The food industry is propagating the idea that it is convenient and cheaper to buy industrial food.  However, we must review this narrative in the light of the existing health problems caused by the way we eat.  Consider the completely avoidable obesity and diabetes pandemic.  Type 2 diabetes has tripled since 1980 but also has the consumption of ultra-processed foods.  Processed foods act like a drug substance creating addictive behavior and driving the obesity/diabetes epidemic.  It takes the spirit of a warrior to reverse diabetes naturally, addressing the food-substance addiction, changing eating habits and staying at a healthy weight.  Starting food from scratch can be creative and fun.  In the long run, paying a higher cost for better quality is worth it, considering the danger of processed foods to your health.  

Raw food is medicine

Raw food is the best culinary experience & we have been offering it since our business was founded in 2001.  Not only is raw food therapeutic, but it is also delicious and pleasing to the eye.  The therapeutic aspect of raw food is multifold.  Raw food conserves all the vitamins and minerals otherwise destroyed by high temperature cooking; raw foods keep nutrients in their original form therefore facilitating their absorption. Raw food preserves enzymes by avoiding the changes in proteins and carbohydrates due to cooking.  High temperature cooking has many unhealthy effects on proteins and carbohydrates that have been studied: denaturation and aggregation of proteins and browning of carbohydrates.  These chemical reactions create toxic compounds that have been found to be carcinogenic.

International cuisine

Raw food remains an important part of traditional culinary cultures around the world. From salads to soups and sauces, raw dishes may be served at the beginning of a meal for their appetizing properties or at the end of a meal for their cleansing properties or to balance taste between courses.  From the refreshing Andalusian gazpacho, to the Italian Caprese salad or the raw French hors d’oeuvre, each country has a unique way to assemble summer vegetables for the best tasting experience.  We like to inspire you to travel with the flavor of foods from around the world by featuring Italian, Mexican, French, Greek, Japanese Thai and Indian cuisine. We have incorporated in our wellness menus green papaya salad, and sushi but also are serving raw curries and pizzas inspired from the traditionally cooked dishes.  This is a brief list of the most common sauces we make frequently: pesto, chimichurri, tapenade, tzatziki, raita, salsa, Pico de Gallo & guacamole.  We also make a wonderful ceviche with coconut meat.  As a rule of thumb, we make sure to include a mix salad green every day in our menu or other grated root vegetables like celeriac, radish, beet, carrot or cabbage 

Full spectrum tasty well-presented plant-based food  

Each meal is consciously created to contain a full rainbow of macro and micronutrients from vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Each meal contains plant-based proteins and plenty of vitamins and minerals essential to sustaining a healthy body and brain.  We believe that food should also be pleasurable and satisfy our taste buds and we use medicinal plants and spices like fresh turmeric, ginger, saffron, garlic, onions to that effect.  We are using the entire natural palette of flavors, bitter, sweet, salty, sour and umami.  We can retrain our palate, adulterated by processed food to produce maximum stimulation so that we don’t stop eating that food.  It takes some time for our taste buds to enjoy the relatively mild flavor of natural foods after they have adapted to chemical food enhancers contained in industrial food.  Bitter, a very medicinal flavor is used in the treatment of high blood sugar.  Bittermelon grows as a weed on our land and we use the leaves and the fruits in juicing or food preparation

Presentation

Food art or aesthetics is an important part of our culinary experience. Beauty is an important component of our presentation and plays an important role in the stimulation of gastric juices essential to break down the food.   A beautiful dish stimulates our senses, increases salivation and enzyme production.  Presentation plays an essential role in mindful eating, encouraging us to slow down and savor each bite of the food we eat, therefore creating a respectful relationship with food, important for healthy food habits.

Methods used in raw food preparation

Raw food preparation adopted methods such as fermentation and dehydration that were already in use by the culinary culture prior to the advent of refrigeration for preservation.  It also expanded the use of methods such as maceration and sprouting for softening and enhancing the taste of food  

Fermentation 

The nouvelle cuisine, backed by recent research on the role of probiotics on overall health, has brought the traditional fermentation technique to the forefront of healthy eating.  Foods and drinks such as sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, pickles and kombucha have now become mainstream.

Maceration and marination

Other techniques like maceration and marination, used since the 17^th century as a way to soften meat and fish, prevail in the preparation of raw vegetables for main dishes to change their texture and enhance their taste.  For instance, cauliflower rice marinated in lemon salt and oil for ½ hour prior to being dehydrated will remove the raw taste of cauliflower and softens it. 

Dehydration was mainly used in the past to preserve fruits.  Dehydration or low temperature cooking 110 to 130 degree, avoids the toxic effect of high temperature.  Technically the food is still raw and not adulterated

Soaking Sprouting 

Nuts, seeds and beans are soaked overnight or a few hours depending on their size.  Our raw hummus is made from sprouted garbanzo beans, crackers from sprouted seeds, pizza crust from sprouted buckwheat.  Milk is made from soaked nuts, creams and cheese from cashew yogurt or fermented coconut milk

Juicing Blending 

Mashing fruits for health benefits can be traced back to the Essenes 150 BC, but it was not until the 1930s that the first efficient juicer, the Norwalk juicer was created.  The first juice bar opened in NYC in 1996.  Juicing removes the fibers of the plant, whereas blending uses the whole plant including the fibers to make a thicker drink.  Juicing is a very potent medical procedure that can reverse chronic conditions.  As our soil becomes more and more depleted, so are our vegetables.   Juicing is a wonderful way to concentrate nutrients.  Carrot juice is known to lower blood sugar, the addition of beetroot helps with muscle building.  Green juice, high in chlorophyll, increases oxygenation of the blood.

Blending 

Smoothies are the products created by blending.  We could say that the first smoothie appeared in India in the form of a mango lassi.  Mango lassi is a blend of yogurt, mango and cardamom.  Another smoothie common in Brazil is the avocado, milk, and honey smoothie.  We use coconut yogurt or milk freshly extracted from our coconuts for the preparation of these drinks.  

Our recommendation for optimum health

Raw food and juicing coupled with other detoxification techniques can help reverse many chronic illnesses. To that effect, raw food and juices  need to be consumed on a strict daily basis.   Raw food and juicing can also be incorporated in anyone’s diet  for optimum health in the form of daily juices and salads in addition to cooked foods.  Another way to eat more raw foods is to occasionally incorporate full raw meals each week.  Raw food will keep you fit, vibrant, energetic and sharp.  If you’d like to check our recipe blog, we suggest you try some of our most popular recipes https://www.hawaiinaturopathicretreat.com/raw-lasagna or come visit us in Hawaii to try our delicious food!