Cookbooks: A Caribbean state of mind

Published at Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 19, 2012
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/147967815.html

"Tastes Like Home" offers taste, memories of Guyana and the islands.

BY CATHERINE DEHDASHTI, Special to the Star Tribune

Cynthia Nelson is the author of "Tastes Like Home: My Caribbean Cookbook."

I've enjoyed countless Caribbean dishes at dinner parties without ever lifting a single Scotch bonnet pepper. My friend Pauline does it so well, why should I bother?

At least that's how I felt before I discovered "Tastes Like Home: My Caribbean Cookbook" (Ian Randle Publishers, 335 pages, $34.95), by Cynthia Nelson.

The diverse Caribbean style of cooking was formed from the melding of cultures: African, Indian, European, Chinese and indigenous cuisines in the Caribbean islands and the coastal South American nation of Guyana.

"Our foreparents who came to these shores, whether as masters, servants or slaves, brought with them their food cultures," writes Nelson, a journalist from Guyana who now lives in Barbados.

One hundred straightforward recipes with photos provide a well-rounded taste of this culinary history. In addition to the recipes, 34 essays reflect on holiday celebrations, Nelson's memories of family gatherings and her favorite dishes.

One of my favorites of hers was polenta with okra, called cou-cou, which originally called for flying fish in a spicy tomato broth. I brought it to one of Pauline's dinner parties, confessing I'd used tilapia in place of the flying fish. I also brought curried bottle gourd to the gathering, using one of the gourds I find at Southeast Asian vendors at local farmers markets.

Fried savories and breads are traditional -- many are festival foods -- so Nelson takes a no-apologies approach in presenting them. Batter-fried cassava balls, with creamy centers of cassava root mashed with savory seasonings, were gone in a hurry at my house. Phulourie, a split-pea fritter made for the Hindu festival of Holi, made a spicy late-night snack served with mango-tamarind chutney.

Several dishes in the book can be prepared quickly, such as yard-long beans and shrimp, easily a new weeknight favorite. Similarly, a pumpkin and shrimp sauté goes well with rice or roti. Other dishes take more time, so I put on some Calypso music and made an afternoon of cooking mettagee (salt cod cooked in fresh-pressed coconut milk with root vegetables and dumplings).

Some dishes require planning ahead, such as a black cake that requires months to soak the fruits in rum. Pauline, always ready with rum-soaked fruit, brought one to my house when I hosted my first Caribbean dinner party. I put it on the dessert table next to the conkies -- puddings made from cornmeal, coconut, pumpkin and rum-soaked raisins, steamed in individual packages made of banana leaves.

What tastes like home to Nelson and my friend Pauline was an adventure for me. But it's one I'll keep going with the help of Nelson's cookbook and her blog at www.tasteslikehome.org.

I've found a source of sun-splashed inspiration, and now I finally understand why Pauline has so many parties.

Catherine Dehdashti, a freelance writer from Eagan, can be reached at cdehdashti@yahoo.com.

WHERE TO BUY

 Many Caribbean ingredients can be found at large grocery stores, farmers markets, and Indian, African and Asian markets.

A local store that specializes in Caribbean foods: Galaxy Food & Video, 7128 Chicago Av. S., Richfield, 612-861-7410, www.galfoods.com.

Recipe
SAUTÉED YARD-LONG BEANS AND SHRIMP
Serves 3.

Note: Yard-long beans are also known as Chinese long beans, or "bora" in the Caribbean. Yard-long beans should have their ends trimmed. Fresh green beans may be substituted, but be sure to remove their strings. Wear rubber gloves when working with Scotch bonnet peppers, which are very hot, to avoid burning your skin. Remove the seeds and start with 1/2 of 1 pepper unless you are accustomed to high heat. Serve with rice or the Caribbean flat bread called roti. From "Tastes Like Home: My Caribbean Cookbook," by Cynthia Nelson.

• 2 tbsp. canola oil

• 1 c. small raw shrimp (use medium size if you cannot find small)

• 1 small onion, diced (1/2 c.)

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed

• 2 sprigs fresh thyme

• 1 Scotch bonnet pepper to taste, finely minced (see Note)

• 1/2 c. diced tomatoes

• Salt to taste

• 4 c. yard-long beans, cut in 1/2-in. pieces (see Note)

Directions

Heat oil in wok or large frying pan until almost smoking. Add shrimp and stir-fry for 1 minute only. Remove shrimp to a bowl and set aside.

Add onions to pan and sauté 1 to 2 minutes (if pan needs more oil, add a drizzle). Add garlic, thyme, Scotch bonnet pepper and tomatoes. Continue to sauté for about 1 minute. Season with salt.

Add yard-long beans and mix all ingredients thoroughly, cover, reduce heat to simmer and let cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until beans are cooked through. (Cook less time if you prefer beans al dente.)

About 2 minutes before the beans are done, stir in shrimp and finish cooking with pan uncovered.

Nutrition information per serving:

Calories 206 Fat 10 g Sodium 460 mg
Carbohydrates 16 g Saturated fat 1 g Calcium 120 mg
Protein 14 g Cholesterol 102 mg Dietary fiber 5 g
Diabetic exchanges per serving: 3 vegetable, 1 lean meat, 1 1/2 fat

Teaching the kids to roll their own

12-year-olds rolling sushi

I’ve always liked to roll things: long loaves of stromboli, Bûche de Noël cakes, stuffed grape leaves. My high school boyfriend counted on me to roll his joints, but that seems like it was a million years ago.

There’s a zen type of pleasure in the act of layering ingredients then rolling them up and slicing to see cross-sections of color and texture. Somehow, in all my years of cooking, I had never rolled my own sushi—until last night.

Some friends wanted to mark the coming-to-an-end of seven years of our girls being in a French Immersion school together. It’s a magnet school in St. Paul, so girls and boys come from far and wide for the elementary years. They form a learning community that transcends neighborhood boundaries.

About half continue on in a middle school French program while others scatter back to their neighborhood schools or other places. The girls have been tight, and it’s hard to think they won’t see each other daily for much longer. There has been a lot of reminiscing.

But these moms wanted to have a chance to look forward as well—to let the girls hang out as we women gathered over glasses of sake and bottles of Japanese Sapporo beer to discuss where each girl will be next year.

My daughter will go to our suburban neighborhood middle school. Her entrance into the teen years is a great source of anxiety for me—probably because I still remember all the bad choices I made during those years (that above-mentioned boyfriend, for example). I jumped at the chance to huddle with the other moms over our bamboo rolling mats.

One host-mother, Dawn (otherwise known as Lily’s Mom) found the sushi chef. Cheiko, Dawn’s neighbor, isn’t actually a chef (she explained to our girls’ that for a long time in Japan women could not be, which our girls could hardly fathom). But she had what it took to teach 16 mother-daughter pairs: experience, ingredients, and patience.

The other host, Lisa (A.K.A., Elise’s Mom) supplied the party house with the kitchen large enough for this big group. She also offered alternatives for those girls who were not quite ready for sushi even though we were starting with California rolls and not raw fish.

Some girls ate the sushi as if they’d been eating it all their lives. Others ate pizza and played around, making walrus faces by hanging a chopstick from each nostril. They then retired to the basement to watch “Hairspray” while the women ended the evening gathered around the kitchen’s center island with green-tea ice cream and sorbets.

There are six weeks left before we mark the end of the school year with the new tradition of elementary school graduation. The girls have been shopping for their dresses for this rite of passage.

Ready or not, my girl’s teen years are coming. But as my friends assure me, she will do great. She’s confident and wise already beyond her years. And if she does run into a few bumps (or bad boys) in the road, she’ll get over them just like I did. She’s ready to roll.