Raised on Maui, Alana Kysar is a down-to-earth recipe developer known for her debut cookbook, “Aloha Kitchen.”
Sitting at her dining room table in Upcountry Maui, she recalls her favorite dish growing up was her mom’s mochiko chicken. “That’s what childhood tastes like to me.”
As a kid, Kysar sharpened her cooking skills in her family home. “I grew up in the kitchen,” she says with a smile. “My parents made me help cook and my first thing was salads.” Her dad scored her creativity, presentation and overall flavor, she says. “Doing that, I learned a lot of skills.”
In 2015, Kysar launched her blog Fix Feast Flair, and in 2019, published her first cookbook, which is packed with recipes celebrating Hawaiʻi’s culinary history and multifaceted traditions.
READ MORE: A Maui-Born Food Blogger Channels Her Love for Hawaiʻi in a Nostalgic Cookbook
After living in California for more than a decade, Kysar returned to Upcountry Maui with her husband and miniature dachshunds about four years ago.
Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino
“During the pandemic, I thought it was a great idea to do a book on local-style veggies, but it was put on the shelf,” she says. “When we moved back, I felt this type of cookbook needs to exist.”
And it will be available very soon—on April 28.
Kysar’s second cookbook, “Aloha Veggies,” is a collection of more than 100 vibrant, flavorful recipes that are also easy to follow. “What was most gratifying about writing ‘Aloha Kitchen’ and hopefully for ‘Aloha Veggies’ is getting to see the joy it brings people cooking in their kitchens all around the world,” Kysar says. “I get messages from people in India who picked ‘Aloha Kitchen’ for their cookbook club, and they’re trying recipes they might’ve never seen. It’s so cool.”
In the pages of her new cookbook, Kysar continues to explore the Islands’ culinary heritage and culture while also finding inspiration from Maui’s farms and farmers markets. She approaches island classics like mochiko, adobo, loco moco and fried rice by putting vegetables at the core of the dishes.
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“When I wrote ‘Aloha Kitchen,’ I was tapping into other people’s experiences because I wanted people to feel seen,” Kysar explains. “For the second cookbook, I was taking inspiration from local flavors, dishes and cooking methods, but really trying to create dishes that haven’t existed for the most part.”
Based on the familiar structure of the local plate lunch, Kysar’s formula for a meal is built on a main, a starch and a side. And there’s always room for dessert, too.
For people who don’t know where or how to start incorporating more vegetables into their meals, Kysar’s advice is: “Start with one thing. Find one vegetable you like and start to find recipes using that one vegetable. The more you cook with that one veggie, you might start to realize that you can make it taste good in a bunch of different ways. Hopefully, that will open the door.”
For more information and to preorder a copy of “Aloha Veggies,” visit penguinrandomhouse.com/books/753096/aloha-veggies-by-alana-kysar.
Grace Maeda is the editor of HAWAIʻI Magazine.
