Colour me mellow

With winter's imminent arrival, I thought it best to get the hell out of here. I'm in Hawaii and it's 27 degrees all day, every day. The beer is light and cold, the local fare is fresh.

Last year, I was here for the Pro Bowl American Football tournament and we're back now for a family reunion and a general chillax around the Hang Ten bar at Turtle Bay watching whales, surfers and the odd turtle working out how to get back in the ocean.

You wouldn't come here for a gastro-getaway. Most of the food seems yellow, which makes me, rightly or wrongly, believe it's laced with corn syrup. A breakfast sandwich - yes, a breakfast sandwich - turns out to be yellow French toast with really yellow, bright yellow, eggs, and even the ham seems to have a yellow hue. So I've given up looking for food in the mornings, sticking with coffee. And on coffee - again making a huge sweeping statement - if the styrofoam cup they call ''small'' looks like what we'd call a bucket, no number of extra shots will make this end well.

The Turtle Bay Resort juts out on the northernmost peninsula near Kawela Bay on the north coast of Oahu - naturally, it backs right on to the beach.

This is surfing heartland, with some of world's best breaks along the raw, volcanic coastline. The resort was originally a Hilton, and on a good day it has a kind of cool 1970s dated look to it, a little like Jack Lord in flares - dated, sure, but damn he looks cool.

We've come here for a family reunion, and it sounds good on paper. Great location, exotic, whales, turtles, all that stuff; the only problem is that this side of my family makes North and South Korea look amicable.

There is no underlying issue, such as creeping communism, but they just don't seem to want to get together and socialise. There must be at least 80 family members in this branch, but only half a dozen of them make it to the reunion, and even then, it's boosted by ring-ins. But it's a good opportunity to get some warmth before winter and to wind down from the grape harvest.

There's a strong Asian feel to much of the food once you get away from the overdone Tex-Mex theme. Here you are on a beautiful island and it's all taco this and jack cheese that.

The only dish I can find that doesn't seem yellow to me is the poke, which is sort of a salad I guess - it's a little like sashimi; based around raw fish, algae and candlenut.

Once you get into higher-end cooking, this becomes quite a work of art - chefs use the local seasoning, alea, which is sea-salt mixed with volcanic clay; sashimi-grade yellowfin; furikake, a dried fish paste; and the local Maui onion, which is sort of like a fat, ovular spring onion.

If you've enjoyed some of the raw fish recipes from Tetsuya and Nobu, this is in the same impressive ballpark.

The dish is based on good fresh fish - it works just as well with quality kingfish, ocean trout or Atlantic salmon - and in a land that sure does yellow well, it is my sanctuary.

> Bryan Martin is a winemaker at Ravensworth and Clonakilla - see bryanmartin.com.au

Ahi poke with taro chips

200g sashimi-grade blue-fin tuna or an alternative, such as kingfish or salmon

3 spring onions, very finely sliced

1tsp finely grated ginger

2tbsp olive oil

1tsp red-wine vinegar

1tsp soy sauce

3 drops sesame oil

6 candlenuts, dry roasted and chopped coarsely (from Asian grocers)

20g wakame, soaked briefly in water, chopped very finely

Hawaiian sea salt or Aussie pink salt

Other options

fish roe

dried chilli flakes

furikake, or use fish sauce

tomato, diced

mizuna lettuce

Dice the tuna into one-centimetre squares. Mix together the spring onion, ginger, olive oil, red-wine vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil. Use this to season the fish lightly – remember this will cure if left too long, so use just before serving. Add whatever other ingredients you can find, the candlenuts and seaweed being the most important, but there’s no rules here. Don’t add too much of anything, it’s about balance and subtlety.

Taro chips

1 taro, or use white sweet potato

oil for frying

salt and pepper or chilli flakes

Shave the taro or sweet potato with a mandolin so you have very thin, even slices. Set the oven at 150C to keep them warm. In small batches, fry the shavings until crisp, drain, toss in salt and keep warm until they are all done.