This week’s Pacific Island challenge spanned so many countries, it was surprisingly hard to stray from the enticing flavors that Hawaii offers. While Hawaiian pizza may be all too fitting for a pizza metatheme, the style actually originated in Canada, thus Kalua pork was slapped on for extra credit.

Entrusting a slow cooker with three pounds of pork shoulder led to hours of tasty aromatics roaming around the house.

In lieu of liquid smoke, I smothered the pork shoulder with a heap of smoked salt from Scotland.

Canadian bacon was substituted with actual bacon because I do what I want.

Pineapple meanwhile remained pineapple.

After a 12 hour cooking session, just a small portion of meat was pulled for topping purposes. The pork leftovers were later transformed into a week-long diet of carnitas tacos.

The pizza base was a red pie with mozzarella, as per the standard Hawaiian pizza build.

For wine, I opted to follow the “pork and pinot” pairing mantra and selected a New Zealand Pinot Noir not only for its punchy red fruit characteristic but also for the additional love tap on the Pacific Island theme, albeit sourced from the opposite end of the geographic zone.

Spy Valley was a refreshing sipper of a wine that played nicely with the pineapple sweetness but also contrasted the heaps of savory notes brought on by the pork and bacon. It also went well with carnitas tacos.