Geera horse you say??

Geera or “jeera” refers to cumin seeds which are usually patched or roasted before they are used in trini cuisine. To “geera” any meat requires marinating in a spicy patched or roasted geera or cumin seed marinade and then adding more geera when the dish is nearly finished cooking.

But, different people use different seasonings or a different technique in cooking to achieve the same tasty trini dish. Every trini geera meat connoisseur has a recipe that is the best. But, the geera king in Arima is hailed to be David Etienne on Queen Street in Arima according to the Trinidad Daily Express newspaper in April 5^th, 2013.

Cumin seeds or geera on the left; herbs and seasonings used to season the meats

You can also use prepared roasted ground geera instead of grinding your own in a coffee grinder or using a rather ineffective mortar and pestle. But, a traditional East Indian grinding stone combo will do the trick!

The grinding stone or “lohar” as it was called in Hindi which was used for grinding spices or anything else really.

Geera meat is either eaten alone or in hops bread or in coconut bake at a bar usually. Geera meats are served at bars as “cutters” because as one folklore explains, the geera and pepper combo in the meat actually makes you take longer to get intoxicated. Although I haven’t personally tested this, many have attested to its benefits!

 Geera pork in coconut bake

Any kind of meat can be prepared like this, chicken, pork, lamb, shrimp, fish, even horse….according to someone from Grande….where the horse race track was in Wallerfield…hmmm.

And any kind of chicken part can be used from neck to feet to wings to gizzard....

Although it may have started as appetizers in a bar, the humble geera meat can now be served as a main course with dhal and rice at Sails restaurant and pub.

Geera pork

Geera chicken

Geera lamb

Smoked herring - a happy accident?

A riddle, a riddle a-ree: what has fine bones galore, a deeply pungent smokey taste, super peppery, salty and can be eaten with just about any type of carbs? Plus, it’s another Diana power mint classic. Any guesses?

Classic smoked herring

Herring is a small oily fish. Smoked herring is a smoke- and salt-cured preparation of herring fish that is imported into Trinidad. They are often eaten for breakfast in the United Kingdom, Belgium, The Isle of Man, Japan, and a minority of North American regions. Smoking and salting of fish—in particular of spawning salmon and herring which are caught in large numbers in a short time and can be made suitable for edible storage by this practice, predates 19th century Britain. It can be purchased relatively cheaply, prepared simply and does not need refrigeration. Is this another throw-back to our colonial history then?

Dried smoked salted herring fish

It goes with just about any carbohydrate- from dumplings, ground provision, crix, roti, bake, hops bread, green fig, to dhal and rice… To cut the saltiness, several cooks boil the fish first- similar to salt-fish preparation, de-bone, flake the fish, then sautee in oil along with a variety of vegetables to both enhance the flavour and to cut the saltiness e.g. tomatoes, grated carrots, finely sliced onions, minced garlic, chives, chadon beni and hot pepper. Some add a little thinly shredded cabbage too. Serving it with avocado or cucumber slices cools down the taste-buds nicely.

Smoked herring and corneal dumplings

Smoked herring pizza anyone?

http://www.getmecooking.com/recipe/smokedherring-pizza

Dhal and rice and smoked herring

According to Mark Kurlansky, "Smoked foods almost always carry with them legends about their having been created by accident".

Heigh-ho, the derry-o, a-hunting we will go!

I remember all the times my father tried to trick me into eating wild meat. The pale pink, frozen, whole tattoo carcass lying in the sink which he covered with a table cloth and forbade me to look under it. The crying cascadura as he attempted to strip the armour from their little bodies. The stew agouti he brought back from a lime but he told me it was curried beef. The curried deer he prepared but he told me it was curried beef.

Curried deer

But I tasted them all. He grew up eating these exotic meats. His father hunted at night using a home-made, carbide-powered head-lamp that he attached to his head with leather straps (I kid you not, his head), his shotgun in tow (a 20 gauge single barrel shotgun). The lamp not only provided some light in the pitch-black, heavily canopied forest, but it made the eyes of his prey shine bright, exposing its location. It wasn’t for sport. They were poor. It was to survive.

Carbide-powered lamp similar to the one my grandfather used to hunt. He took the reflector part of a car's headlight, shined it to perfection with "silvo" and attached it to the 2 chambers -the lower chamber housed the carbide, the upper chamber housed the water. The entire unit was completely detachable. Credit to the coal miners.

The agouti

There is an authorized list of game species that can be hunted for meat, sport or for sale as pets provided by the GOTT (http://www.biodiversity.gov.tt/home/trinidad-a-tobago-biodiversity/game-species.html). Some of the animals for consumption include agouti, armadillo (tattoo), deer, lappe, wild hog (quenk), alligator, cayman, lizards – matte and iguana. A popular Boxing Day dish usually served curried with paratha or dhalpourie roti, wild meat is highly sought after during hunting season (October 1st to the end of February) with certain animal species costing far more than the now unfashionable poultry depot chicken. Lavish Christmas and New Year’s parties boast of wild meat on the menu.

The lappe

The tattoo

Experts have advised that cooking wild meat is different from cooking domesticated animals. You have to cater for the “gamey" taste of the meat. The meat has to be cut up into much smaller pieces and stronger seasonings must be used. Wild meat can also be tough so cooking smaller pieces and using a natural meat tenderizer like green paw paw (papain enzymes in the green fruit breaks down the protein in the meat) and even coca-cola or pepsi (the acidity of these drinks also helps break down the protein in the meat) will do the trick. Then there's pepper!

The quenk - I imagine so named because of the sound it makes running away from hunters!

The iguana

This animal can get to a magnificent size, enough to stop traffic. Along the route to Santa Cruz one day, I saw 4 young men standing in the middle of the road holding up 3 iguanas in each hand for sale - large enough to be dinosaurs, I swear to you! Traffic extended well into the Croissee. 

Curry iguana - Skin and all....

No, I'm sorry this looks really awful...

The matte

Skinning any animal is part of the preparation but I have seen some not take on this task with the lizards. A big mistake. The skins of some reptiles are tough enough to make shoes for crying out loud!

Pacro water - Pour homme!

Ok so you boil this sea creature while it’s still alive and drinking the broth gives men athletic, if not acrobatic, strength and stamina. Man water! No joke. Trini men do not joke about these things…

Pacro is the local reference to a type of marine mollusc also known as chiton (Placophora) which is abundant in the coastal waters of Trinidad and Tobago. 

Dorsal view of a chiton - clinging to the surface of a rock close to shore

Underside of a chiton

At first I thought my guide was talking about “Paco” which I knew as the men’s cologne “Paco Rabanne” - the manliest perfume in the 80's. He was in fact referring to the purported aphrodisiac, well-known by Tobagonians. How does one look at a chiton and think "Yes, this will be my viagra"?

The animal is also known as “sea cradle” presumably because when you detach it from its rocky support, it curves inward slightly in a protective move I imagine. Apparently, fishermen know about its properties and can fetch a small bucket-full upon special request.

The final product

You boil the animals while they are still alive in water for about 15mins. Strain the broth and retain for use. To the broth, add an alarming amount of chadon beni, big leaf thyme, garlic, hot pepper, lime and salt to taste. You then drink the thin broth basically. I am told that it’s an acquired taste. Hell yeah!

In Store Bay, bottles of the elixir can be bought on the beach.

Drinks are on me!

I would like to draw your attention to just 4 examples of drinks that Trinis enjoy: Carib beer, Sorrel, Mauby and Ponche de crème. Only 2 of these are traditionally non-alcoholic but, not necessarily so today, as there’s now Shandy Carib - Sorrel (1.2% alc.), and I had a Trini friend who made a very delicious red wine and sorrel sangria one Christmas. We Trinis find a way to make it boozy, no problem.

What is there to say about Carib? “A beer is a Carib”. “A real beer is Carib”.

Sorrel is Christmas in Trinidad. Sorrel drink is made with the idea of sharing with anyone and everyone whether at home or work during the Christmas season. The drink is made from heavily steeping the bright, red sepals of the sorrel plant (Hibiscus sabdariffa). Did you ever notice that boiling the sepals also cleans out the stains on your pot! Probably because of the acidity or tartness of the extract. The red color also stains your mother’s good counter-tops too! 

Boiling the sorrel and spice mixture

The brew contains the sorrel sepals, cinnamon, cloves, sugar and water of course. Some even add a little ginger and star anise too.

The final product - tart sorrel drink

Ponche de creme is a Christmas-time delight. It is milk-based and infused with strong rum or ‘Punchin’ (puncheon rum) for that added kick. Some say it’s the Trini version of Bailey’s Irish cream. But it’s highly spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, lime, vanilla, Angostura bitters and ‘punchin’ rum. Doesn’t sound like any Bailey’s to me!

Only a Trini can drink this and still stand up!

The issue now is in using raw eggs in the drink. Salmonella anyone? The alcohol content is said to destroy whatever bacteria may be in the raw eggs, so it’s safe to drink. Alternatively, you can simply omit the eggs, it’s up to you.

One thing is certain, however, the colder the crème, the better it tastes. So, on the rocks please!

Mauby is a delicious sweet drink again, made from a heavily steeped preparation of the tree bark of Colubrina arborescens. It reminds me of a slightly bitter, spiced ice- tea actually. 

On Charlotte Street, Port of Spain, you can find the bark sold in small packs as a “kit” if you like. The kit contains the mauby bark pieces along with the necessary spices to make the drink e.g. clove, aniseed, bay leaf, cinnamon sticks, and star anise. You can add some dried orange peel as well.

Dried mauby bark pieces

Boiling the mauby bark pieces with spices

The final product - a tall glass of cold mauby

Now, mauby is also sold as a concentrate where you just add water to get the intensity of flavour you prefer. Listen, nothing beats a glass of homemade cold, mauby. You cannot drink this slowly. Gulping it down is uncontrollable.

Hold de Lata Mangeshkar, gimme choka ah-ha!

Choka is described as “A dish prepared by mashing or pureeing fire-roasted vegetables, then seasoning heavily with salt, onions, garlic, pepper, cilantro and/or other aromatics. Hot oil is finally poured over the mixture http://wiwords.com/word/choka . 

Aloo (potato) choka

The addition of hot oil over vegetables is referred to as  “chunkay” in local parlance. There is no formal definition of the word “choka” or “chunkay” for that matter. Never mind that, Trinis make up words as a favourite past-time. Though there seems to be a hindi-derivative in there somewhere. In no way shape or form does the Trini choka mean what the urban dictionary has for a word of the same spelling!

Melongene or baigan choka

You must have read the post on roti, now choka is the favoured accompaniment. One version of choka does in fact refer to a vegetable e.g. tomato, melongene, pepper which is traditionally roasted over an open flame to char the outer skin which then makes it easily removable. Oven –roasting is now common. Another version is to simply boil the vegetable e.g. potato, tomato. Some expert cooks do a mixture of both roasted and boiled tomato. 

Tomato choka - note the black specs which are the charred prices of skin left behind after removal, served with sada roti

The addition of thinly sliced onion, minced garlic, hot pepper, chadon beni and salt to the pureed or mashed vegetable closely follows. It is important to heap the seasonings over the vegetable. The last step is the careful addition of smoking hot oil over the seasonings to take the raw taste out. Then the dish is mixed thoroughly and served with roti, rice, bread or bake.

The deadly pepper choka - consumed more as a condiment that an actual main dish unless you are insane

Fruit ninja

Driving through Champs Fleurs early one morning I saw a young lady selling small parcels of fruit, expertly weaving her way through the traffic. The small clear plastic bag contained 1 banana, 1 pear, 1 apple and a peeled orange. That’s breakfast to many Trinis, more so just before carnival. Less and less costume fabric means more and more dieting, running around the Queen's Park savannah for assured carbon monoxide poisoning and grumpiness borne out of hunger - “The Hangry Trini".

The Ministry of Food Production has a lovely poster highlighting some 84 fruits grown in Trinidad, in addition to some of the less well-known more exotic ones. See link below:-

http://www.agriculture.gov.tt/images/tips/Fruits%20grown%20in%20Trinidad%20and%20Tobago.pdf

The younger generation and the more urbanized among us are less familiar with these exotic fruits. This is a shame as these fruits sustained many during times of little. In the country-side, sucking on a borrowed do-dos mango while meandering to school was common back in the day.

Fruit stalls can be found on most corners and by fruit stall, I mean from 4 red bricks upon and a piece of plywood situated on the pavement with the proprietor sitting on a pig tail bucket, to grand establishments along the roadside. I particularly appreciate the neat stacks of pomerac in 3s, mango in 3s, Portugal in 3s, oranges in 3s… 

Slight prompting of how sweet the pawpaw is was required here

Fruit is consumed either as the main meal or as dessert or as a healthy snack during the course of a long workday. One small tip: don’t get into a taxi and start eating portugal unless you want to be cussed out for “smelling up” the car.

Grapefruit, sapodilla, pineapple, bananas, balata, caimite, tipee tamboo, tamarind

Remember the NAR reign in the 80s? The National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) was the governing party in Trinidad and Tobago between 1986 and 1991. Christmas without apples and grapes, but we survived it. Now, these and other foreign fruits abound year-round thanks to an astronomically high food import bill. But I digress…

Peewah

Tableland for aromatic pineapples…Manzanilla for the sweetest watermelon. And mango? The National Mango Festival began in 2009 by the Network of Rural Women Producers, Trinidad and Tobago (NRWPTT). NRWPTT was formed in 1995 and is a national umbrella organization comprising a membership of over 60 small businesses and individuals. The network is committed to membership in the Network of Non-Governmental Organizations for the Advancement of Women, (with UN ECOSOC Status) Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) (with ECOSOC UN Status).

The Tableland Pineapple Farmers’ Association also hosts an annual National Fruit Festival in partnership with iTHINK Global Consulting Services.

People are very much into juicing and superfruits now. I think there are hidden treasures in the exotic fruits grown in Trinidad. I mean look at current status of the once humble acai berry, Euterpe oleracea, which is mostly native to Brazil, Trinidad and other parts of Northern regions of South America. It is the superstar of anti-oxidants!

Acai palm with berries

Although fruits in Trinidad are used to make jellies, jams, preserves, chutneys, chow, punches etc. they are eaten and enjoyed in the natural state, juices running down your arm and splashing you in your eye.

Men make better fish broth than women

Th-fronting refers to the pronunciation of the English "th" as "f" or "v". For example, "three" is pronounced as "free" and "bathe" is pronounced as "bave". Th-fronting is a prominent feature of several dialects of English, notably Cockney, Estuary English, some West Country dialects, as well as many foreign accents (though the details differ among those accents). Given our colonial history, I imagine this is why, to my confusion, Trinis pronounce "Fish Broth" as "Fish Brof".

A tasty bowl of Trini fish broth

Why eat fish broth? It is a cure for what ails you apparently. Fish consumption has repeatedly been shown to slow cognitive decline and improve memory; fish stock is often touted as an excellent source of iodine and healthy fats; the stock is rich in calcium, gelatin and thyroid-supporting nutrients; it's a popular remedy for  a hangover in Trinidad.

Grouper and king fish are the main stays of a good Trini broth but, really, any deep water fish will do. And you should include the head…not just for the shock value.

A grouper caught in Mayaro, Trinidad - that will make one massive pot of fish broth!

A fisherman and his King fish catch in Cocorite fishing facility

The broth is very aromatic thanks to numerous seasonings and vegetables cooked to create the consume and the fish itself. Of course, pepper! Can’t escape it. 

18 Feb 1797: Trinidad occupied by Britain.

27 Mar 1802: Spain formally cedes Trinidad to Britain; Trinidad is a British colony.

Sometimes a walk along St. James will bring the delicious scent of the soup on the fire at a bar. I’ve seen some cooks exclude the macaroni in the fish broth and replace it with a small dumplings. Do men make better fish broth than women? …Blasphemy? Let me know...

All I do know is that you make enough fish broth to feed a crowd and it better have at least half a bar of golden ray in it.

Sweet T&T

Trinidad and Tobago have a fantastic array of local sweets and these are for sale everywhere, from the airport as you land to the gorgeous beaches. They are all homemade with recipes passed down from generation to generation. But, let’s focus on Tobago for the moment.

Tobago has been fought over by numerous nations since it was first sighted by Columbus in 1498. You can read more about the island’s history here:
http://www.mytobago.info/history.php

Despite its tumultuous history of repeated invasion and conquest by competing European powers, Tobago is an island paradise and is associated with many sweet treats. One of which is the bene ball.

Bene balls, squares and sticks on the beach in Tobago

Bene or Benne is an African word for Sesame seed. Thus, the sweet is made out of sesame seeds rolled in simple syrup into a ball shape. The dried product is delicious and typically very, ahem, crunchy - to say the least. I would suggest nibbling your way through these nuggets rather than attempting to bite down. Jaw misalignment, and broken teeth are a real possibility. The nouveau shapes like the flat squares and the bene sticks are easier to bite.

I caution you to divulge any intention to visit Tobago because family and friends will pester you to bring back Bene Balls for them. But that’s ok, you can blackmail them later.

Tambran balls

It was believed that India, the Far East or Africa may be the center of origin of the tamarind (Tamarindus indica), but the consensus is that it is Africa. So how did it find its way here in Trinidad and Tobago? Think about it.

The Tamarind tree

Tamarind balls (aka tambran balls in the Caribbean) was the stuff of dreams during recess and lunchtime at primary school. You race to “Miss lady” under the step to buy the 25cent treat which was sweet, salty, tart and peppery all at the same time. So, you bite into it cautiously again and again, savouring the flavours, until you come upon a seed. The seeds were used to make bean bags – the local toy not the chair. I used to scour the school yard picking up all the seeds I could find to make these bags – good for playing catch, sky, scootch, doing tricks like the footballers do. Couldn’t afford a fancy ball in those days!

Tamarind ball to the left; shelled tamarind in the center; tamarind fruit still in the pod to the right

Oh toolum. I know, I know what it looks like and it truly is an acquired taste. Molasses and coconut gives it a chewy or sticky texture and the orange peel and ginger adds more flavour to an otherwise odd taste. Seriously, but look at that sunset!

Toolum

Pawpaw balls were also an acquired taste. Made out of shredded green papaya fruit, the dried shreds were cooked in a simple syrup and lime solution, then cooled and rolled into a ball shape and allowed to set. The ball is then rolled in granulated sugar to finish. The bright green color was due to food coloring and not the green pawpaw.

Pawpaw balls

Coconut Chip Chip is a sweet and delicious candy for all coconut lovers. Chips of coconut are combined in a simple syrup base and allowed to harden into small nuggets.

Coconut chip chip

Jub Jub is a gelatine-based sugar coated candy that comes in a variety of colors thanks to food coloring and flavours thanks to extracts. It is literally just gelatine and sugar. There’s grape, orange, lime, pineapple, cherry flavours to name a few.

Jub Jub

Sugar cake (in pink) is a shredded coconut tossed in a sugar mixture and moulded and cut into squares. Fudge now comes in a variety of flavours ranging from soursop to pistachio to plain milk fudge.

Sugar cake and fudge -milk and chocolate

Now, Ms. Sylvia Hunt is the reason why I know all of these sweets are a part of Trinidad and Tobago culture. My mother got her book decades ago as it was in limited print. It was a coveted treasure. I also faithfully looked at her cooking show on channel TTT when I was a child and sat mesmerized at how easy she prepared her dishes and how patient she seemed. Ms. Hunt is a big part of Trini cuisine.