What do Elvis Presley and Vancouver's just-concluded Powell Street Festival have in common? It's not immediately obvious. But if you browse through a copy of the Powell Street Festival Society's freshly minted cookbook, you'll find out.

“If Elvis Presley had been Japanese Canadian, this is what he would have eaten,” writes Hiromi Goto beside her recipe for Elvis Presley yaki onigiri. Although Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi swoons over Elvis, as the world found out on his recent pilgrimage to Graceland, it's not apparent right away why the King would favour grilled rice balls. But more on that later.

Goto's creation is one of the offerings in Bento Box #30, the cookbook created by the PSFS to celebrate its 30th anniversary. On the line from the society's Vancouver office days before the big festivities, general manager Miko Hoffman says the book brings together a little of everything, the same way a Japanese bento box combines tidbits of varying taste and texture. Not all the recipes are traditional, but not all are as eclectic as Elvis. “It's a very nice mix of obaasan [grandmother] recipes as well as contemporary fusion food,” she tells the Straight.

“It's primarily a community cookbook,” Hoffman continues. “We did a call-out [for recipes] to our members and as far as we could in the community. We also solicited recipes from restaurants in town.” Among the professional contributors, Hapa Izakaya gave instructions for how to make renkon gyoza (dumplings of pork sandwiched between lotus-root slices) and Hidekazu Tojo offered his recipe for ethnic tofu salad, a Chinese/South Asian hybrid take on Japanese hiyayakko (chilled tofu).

Individual entries include home-style favourites like okonomiyaki (savoury pancake), spinach gomaae, and salmon miso yaki. Many reflect the fact that traditional recipes change when brought across the ocean and evolve over generations. Hence, we get B.C. sockeye with orange-miso sauce, and the aforementioned Presley rice ball.

Quintessentially Japanese, the rice balls are normally grilled over charcoal. Local author Goto explains to the Straight by phone how she came to adapt them into something that would make Elvis salivate. “One day—I think it was in winter—I didn't want to go outside [to grill them], so I decided to fry them,” she says. Then she brought out the butter. “After that, when I fried them in butter, I thought ‘Elvis Presley would have loved it.'” (The King's fondness for peanut-butter-and- banana sandwiches, fried in butter, is legendary.

North American fusion recipes also take on a Japanese flavour, like tofu-and-turkey-stuffed cabbage rolls, and brownies with matcha icing. PSF volunteer Michael Tora Speier puts an Asian twist on three appetizers showcasing B.C. clams. In one, he pairs fried clams with a rakkyo (Japanese sweet pickled scallion) tartar sauce. Speier tells the Straight by phone that the Japanese side of his family grew up clamming near Santa Cruz, California, and family stories from those days abound. “They're really food-oriented; everything revolves around the feast,” he says with a laugh. Now, Speier clams on Cortez Island.

The recipes in Bento Box #30 run from home-cooking to festival food, as one would expect from a cookbook that honours the Powell Street Festival. If you stopped by last weekend, you may have sampled one favourite, mitarashi dango, skewers of soft mochi balls dipped in a thick, sweet soy sauce mixture. “Mitarashi dango originated from the festivals they have in the Shinto religion in Japan,” Rika Uto tells the Straight by phone. Uto is the chair of the Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall, which makes the confection to sell at their own bazaars and at the festival.

The school's recipe is unique because they've adapted it to integrate tofu. Uto explains that traditionally dango is made from glutinous rice flour and water, which is then steamed and pounded. Adding tofu softens the flour and binds it so the sweets may be boiled.

The Hello Kitty–pink cookbooks, with appealing illustrations by local artists Kathy Shimizu and Lotus Miyashita, sell for $15. If you missed your chance to buy one at the festival, they're still available through the society's office at 604-683-8240 or check www.powellstreetfestival.com for retail locations .