Curry, Callaloo & Calypso - Macmillan Caribbean

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Our annual Carnival unites our people further; calypsonians even pay homage to both cuisine and country with calypsos such as Denyse Plummer’s ‘Nah Leaving’ and David Rudder’s ‘Trini to d Bone’. What began as the land of calypso, steel band and limbo, has evolved into the land of calypso, soca (a more upbeat calypso music), chutney (a fiery Indian baggan or song), most recently chutney soca (a fusion of Indian and African music), limbo and of course, still, the ever-engaging alwaysmesmerizing steel-band music. Carnival is a festival which pulls many foreign visitors to our shores and gives us a chance to display our warm hospitality. In so doing we are able to ‘show off’ the many foods we as Trinidadians and Tobagonians hold dear to our hearts – bake and shark, crab and dumpling, corn soup, pelau, roti, rum punch, stew, accras, callaloo and coo coo, mauby, sugar cakes and bene balls, to name but a few! Curry, Callaloo & Calypso celebrates this unity by embracing all our cuisines; no more are ethnic-specific foods prepared only at home by the relevant ethnic group. Good cooks abound on our islands, some with modern techniques and some who still hold on to traditional methods. Ours is cooking from the soul, always good, always tasty, gutsy and comforting. Breakfast is offered in sada rotis, sandwiched with a variety of cooked vegetables, and bakes, also with a variety of fillings, fish salads and accras (fritters). Lunch, which used to be the main meal of the day, is now mostly enjoyed while on the job, purchased at many small eateries across our islands and comprising a hot local lunch of a hearty soup or stewed meat or fish, provision, peas, rice and a salad. Dinner is home-cooked: a stew, grilled or curried meat or fish, with a provision or rice, and a vegetable. Dessert is usually cake and ice cream, but not just any ice cream – local flavours here range from coconut to sour sop, passion fruit, guava, and even Guinness. Fresh fruits are enjoyed round the clock. Nothing beats peeling down a starch mango with your teeth and biting into the sweet flesh, while juice runs down to your elbows! Or savouring a sugary ripe sapodilla, rich with aromatics, tender and juicy, or being amazed at the beauty of a Pink Lady paw paw just sliced open. 8 Steel bands Carnival characters 9780230038578.indd 8 25/07/2011 13:08
Lunch menu board Mangrove roots Goats We are an agriculturally rich nation. The foundation of our cuisine is found in the heart of the Paramin Hills, from where we reap the bounty of fresh herbs. These herbs are ground together to form a herb paste which we use to marinate our seafood and meats prior to cooking. Our provisions, vegetables and fruits are grown locally and offered at our outdoor markets and vegetable stands. Coconut is a big ingredient with a seductive flavour. We use the milk in soups and rice dishes, we make candies from grated coconut, and it’s an important ingredient in coconut bake, sweet bread and drops. Stewed with sugar and spices it is used to fill turnovers and fancy sweet bread rolls. The now defunct sugar-cane industry once gave us our sweet cane sugar, which in turn was processed into world-class local rums. Our first-grade granulated and brown sugars, thickest and blackest molasses, were used to prepare local candies and jams. We still enjoy cane sugar but sadly it’s now imported from Guyana and other Caribbean countries. Today it has melted to a small cottage industry with a sprinkling of farmers selling fresh cut cane and sweet cane juice. From our oceans we get our fish and seafood fresh on a daily basis. We fish our rivers for cascadura and other river fish and we catch mud crabs in our mangrove swamps. Meat plays an important part in our cuisine; beef, goat, lamb, chicken and pork are consumed regularly and are either home-grown or imported. Our forests provide the perfect environment for seasonal wild-meat hunting, during which time (October to December) agouti, lappe, iguana and manicou are hunted and cooked. 9780230038578.indd 9 25/07/2011 13:08 9
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Page 3 and 4: Curry, Callaloo & Calypso The real
Page 5 and 6: Contents Introduction 7 A brief cul
Page 7: Introduction We are a nation in lov
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Page 13 and 14: Yams and plantains were other popul
Page 15 and 16: The African slaves also had a great
Page 17 and 18: The Indians made their rotis on a t
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Page 21 and 22: Snacks and Indian delicacies Snacki
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Curry, Callaloo & Calypso - Macmillan Caribbean

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