Where'd all this foreign food come from??

[ShawtyCat]

On a recent trip back to my little island Barbados I noticed a phenomenon sweeping the island. I took one of the ZR vans (pronounced Zed R...it's a taxi $1.50 to anywhere on their route) into Christ Church and found, much to my surprise, an abundance of foreign food. There were Italian, French and Chinese restaurants abound. Hell, there is a French restaurant with an Asian touch! What the heck is that supposed to mean?! Where did the food of my island go? On my trip back into Bridgetown I saw Kentucky Fried Chicken and a few pizza places. There are places serving Persian, Thai and Nepalenese cuisine for christ's sake! Indian restaurants I can honestly understand due to our Indian population and maybe even the Asian food to an extent but when did the Thai come into the picture.

So I searched and searched. I found that what most of my fellow islanders were doing, since the pseudo-foreign restaurants were above and beyond everyones paycheck, was to buy food from whomever was cooking out of their home, build a jerk hut or hit the fast food joints. Can you imagine paying $2 for a single KFC biscuit or $84 for a single small bucket of chicken when you are only getting paid $175 a week?? The only restaurant I found that still served authentic Bajan cuisine at reasonable prices was Brown Sugar located in Aquatic Gap, Bridgetown. I am sure there are others but this was the one that everyone (my family) said to go to.

I know my island is a tourist location but I don't believe they have to lock our native food in the attic like someone's crazy aunt in order to please the tourist palate. I am sure my cuisine can co-exist on the same level as the others. Until then I will just head into Paterson NJ to Linn's Place on Park Avenue when I am racked with the nostalgia of home cooking but am too depressed to cook.

[Toby]

ShawtyCat, do you have a recipe for stewed chicken? I would so appreciate it -- I eat the Jamaican version as often as I can and cook it sometimes, but I've never been so happy with the way mine comes out.

[Fat Guy]

I've been to Barbados three times (just a couple of days each time, bookending a cruise), and found it pretty much impossible to find anything particularly local and authentic. It's been a few years, but I did find one decent fish shack within walking distance of the Hilton, which a couple of beach bums turned me on to. Can't remember the name; I probably have it written down somewhere. Is Brown Sugar really good? Those places in the Gap seem awfully touristy.

[ShawtyCat]

Toby: I am a very bad bajan right now.....Ive been in the US since I was 11 and make mostly Italian food at home. There is no set recipe for stewed chicken, or for any authentic West Indian food. If we want to learn how to cook a dish from our respective islands we have to stay in the kitchen and watch how its done, write notes on the process or ask for the ingredient list. You then return to your kitchen and hope to recreate what you saw or tasted. It is very similar to the old apprenticeship system I have seen some members talk about. I will post the process for making Bajan Stewed Chicken that my ex-sister-in-law uses. I do warn you, it is NOT what you would find if you conducted a website search on google. When I look at those recipes, I see the recipes of a tourist.

Fat Guy: You are absolutely correct! The majority of restaurants are geared toward the tourists and it is very hard for a native to find his/her own cuisine anywhere in that god awful mess. I spoke to my father a few months ago about my intentions to attend culinary school in New York. I was instructed to study and receive a degree in the techniques of French Cuisine! Mind you, there is a culinary programme in Barbados but obviously my island is embarrassed about OUR cooking. :mad:

All venting aside, there are places to find authentic Bajan food. You just have to avoid the restaurants. Brown Sugar is the best "restaurant" to find our food. Though, if you really want to find our food you have to find a Bajan to show you around.

[ShawtyCat]

Long winded Bajan that I am, I have to talk about making Stewed Chicken to submit the process of making it.

The first step to making Bajan Stewed Chicken is preparation of the chicken. Please take note that Bajans hardly ever accurately measure anything.

Prep Work:

Cut up a whole chicken (no I do not know if it is a Fryer or a Roaster) and put it in a medium sized bowl. Halve 2 limes and squeeze the lime juice over the chicken. Add 1 or 2 palmfulls of salt and then massage the chicken using the lime mixture. Refrigerate while perparing the other ingredients.

Note: Lime and Salt is very important to Bajan cooking. I received a lecture on the benefits of lime and salting meat before cooking to remove the raw chicken taste from an elderly relative. I do not know if it is because freshly killed chicken has more of a raw, bloody taste than the processed and packaged variety.

In another bowl add: sliced onion, diced carrot, chopped celery, largely diced potato and a few sprigs of thyme. Now here is where some of the variations start. To the vegetables add worchestershire sauce, ketchup, black pepper, curry powder and paprika. Some people would add: gravy master, tomato paste etc. It's about what you have on hand sometimes.

Remove the chicken from the refrigerator and rinse to remove the lime and salt. Make slits in the chicken and stuff with a pinch or two of Bajan Seasoning. Add chicken to the 2nd bowl.

In a saucepot add about 2 capfuls of vegetable oil and heat. Add to this a few tablespoons of brown sugar and let carmelize. Do not burn. While heat is still high, add the chicken mixture. Coat and brown chicken, then reduce heat and cover.

Note: It was explained to me that chicken has lots of moisture that is released when cooking. Now, I do not know how true this statement is but I have never seen my ex sister-in-law add any additional water to this. I, on the other hand, tend to keep a can of chicken broth handy.

Check on the pot periodically until the chicken is almost done. Pour contents into a roasting pan, cover with aluminum foil and bake. Remove foil the last few minutes to reduce the cooking liquid.

This is essentially why many Bajans find our cooking embarrassing I believe. For the caramelization of the sugar and the use of ketchup I guess. I noticed many recipes online omit these. There are variations but this is basically it.

[ShawtyCat]

You will need to know how to make Bajan Seasoning in order to prepare most things in Bajan cooking.

Here is the ingredient list:

Green Bell Pepper - hand grated

Onion - hand grated

Bunch of Scallions, green stems also - minced fine

Small piece of scotch bonnet pepper - minced fine

Salt & Pepper to taste

My variation: A few drops of Bajan Hotsauce.

Hmmm..... If you want authenticy (is that even a word ? ) then you can hand grate this stuff. As for me, my blender is calling.

Jodi

[Toby]

Jodi, thanks for the recipe. That's pretty close to how I make it, especially the salt and lime and caramelizing the sugar. Sometimes I use scotch bonnet, but other times I use seasoning peppers -- we grow some from Grenada that have a great flavor but not too much heat. I like to cook rice and peas with a whole green scotch bonnet buried in the rice and peas and pulled out at the end, for the flavor. I never used potato, that sounds good.

Do you make rum cake?

[Fat Guy]

Yes, thanks very much for that recipe. There are a bunch of Caribbean cookbooks out there, but I've not perused many of them and would have no way to judge their quality. Are there any you know of that are any good?

[Brad S]

Hello Jodi,

This is an intersting recipe.

I would be fun to somehow trace back in time what was used instead of things like ketchup and lea & perrins as flavorings in your cuisine.

What I mean by this is,these things have a tracible history of there avalibility in cooking.Before they where used I bet their was a more (honest)wat of preparing certian foods.

It's like using (curry powder) prepared curry powder is a staple of convenience,but somewhere along the line the individual ingredients must have been highlighted in native dishes (i'm assuming)

The very nice recipe you shared seems to be "modern" in it's make up. What would be used instead of gravy master years ago?

I am off to the library tommorow to pick up some books, I will look for a book on the cuisine of your beautiful home to try to answer some of my own questions

[ShawtyCat]

I do not know about the other islands in the west indies but my poor island is losing its culture. Many of the elders of the island will tell you that our island is being "Americanized". Very few of the younger generation (I am somewhat in between the young and the old) cares to learn about our food, our culture or our history. They want the Burger Kings, McDonalds and Pizza Huts. There was a recent protest from small local restaurants regarding a proposal to let McDonalds open a location on the island. The small businesses violently protested stating that McDonalds is a powerhouse and will crowd out the little man and that their businesses would die. So Fat Guy, I believe this should explain the lack of "authentic local fare". There are too many international style restaurants on the island, the tourists flock to what is familiar and the local restaurants suffer. .

Fat Guy: I have flipped through a few west indian and caribbean cookbooks and did not find many recipes that are truly ours. From what I have seen, the author throws in a few "recipes" with their variations as a hook for the buyer and then add other recipes that are uniquely their own. If you want to learn about Caribbean cooking you may have to live in the West Indies for a while. Take Italy for example, different regions of Italy have their own way of preparing a single dish. The Caribbean is the same. Jamacia's Ackee is not the same fruit you will find in Barbados. The pea in Bajan Peas & Rice is either Pigeon Peas or Cow Peas, though we also use Black-Eyed Peas and Yellow Split Peas. Err...not the canned variety either. Jamacians use Kidney Beans I believe. If I were looking for a cookbook on West Indian food....I would hang out with the old women in each of the islands.

Toby: My mom is the rum cake master. Ill have to ask her how she makes hers and get back to you. It wont be for a few days since she goes in for a biopsy tomorrow and wont be an a very good mood afterwards. So Ill wait a few days to ask.

Caped Chef: From what I know, our cuisine (if you would call it that ) evolved almost the same way Southern Cuisine in America did. In fact, some of the slaves from the south that were sold were brought to Barbados and the other islands to work the sugar cane crop. You will be able to find many similarities between our food and southern food. But all our cuisine traces back to African cooking and there you may be able to find the answers to your questions. African cuisine with Native Indian, Indian and Western influences.

Here is my explanation for the substitutions made with the Stewed Chicken:

1. The carmelization of the sugar may have replaced searing chicken in order to give it some color and seal in the juices. My reasoning is that this was much faster and easier to do, plus there weren't many mistakes you can make with the sugar. You stir, it looks brown, add other ingredients.

2. Adding Ketchup - Ketchup is much cheaper and lasts longer than buying tomatoes or a can of tomato paste.

My grandmother speaks about soaking crackers (biscuits in Barbados since we are so very British ) in milk, adding spices and then frying them in a little oil until done and eating them as lunch. I can personally attest to that. Our food was mainly about feeding hungry people in the best,or cheapest, way you could afford.

[anil]

Jodi - They came with the cruises. Frankly the Government wanted it - Why ?

The cruise-type tourists are a bit different than say back-packers. In an attempt to make the cruise types stay a few days, the industry insured that cuisines that they would want are available -

In an era, before your time, Barbados was known to the commenwealth by one name -- Sir Gary Sobers. Guess where my first trip in the islands was ?? You guess it - timed to catch at least a day at the Kensington Oval for a test match.

There were no f****g cruiseships, and you ate what the locals ate - Oh I had such a rum time. That era is now gone for ever.

[ShawtyCat]

Wow! Not many people, outside of Barbados these days, know who Gary Sobers is. You were a tourist after my own heart. I should have known that I'd have the government to blame though.

Do you know that when President Clinton (I think that was him) took a trip to Barbados we were advised not to waste any water....it was punishable by fines and a trip to Glendairy Prison if you couldn't pay. Right before the President's visit the Government ordered the roads to be washed! Very offensive to Bajans. You can be sure the Prime Minister heard about it during Crop Over. Ah..the making of political songs.

[SamanthaF]

Where did the food of my island go? 

Affordable, excellent local shack food can be found at Oistins every night, with Friday night being the big party night where locals congregate to eat freshly marinaded barbecued fish, with rice and peas with Macaroni pie.

(Oh to be there again )