Food of the Caribbean

Caribbean Food!  The food I have eaten all my life, without realizing as a child that not everybody ate the same things.

The Eastern Caribbean, with its British, Dutch and French heritage, because of their common climate, have mostly the same raw materials speaking of food, first and foremost, the fresh seafood from the warm Caribbean waters, then as elsewhere, beef, mutton and pork.

Rice, pasta and white potatoes have to be imported, since on the small islands, only Trinidad has enough water to grow some rice, and Saba and Montserrat must be the only two tropical islands where it is possible to grow some white potatoes. Other things that we have to import are onions and garlic.

But our markets are full of the spices and herbs that give our food its special flavor. Coconut, ginger, curry, achiote, chives, peppers sweet and hot in all degrees, ground and whole peppercorns, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, and so much more they can’t be all remembered in a piece of this length.

Root vegetables are many: yams, sweet potatoes grey and yellow, cassava, tannia, eddoes and dasheens. Then there are the vegetables which grow on trees and vines: breadfruit brought by Captain Bligh and now totally integrated, chayote or christophene, eggplant, all strange looking to one seeing them for the first time. Some ordinary looking vegetables, such as tomatoes also find a place there.

Not to be left out are the beans and peas of all colors and sizes, which are used by themselves, in soups and stew and cooked with rice. They have often been some people’s only source of protein.

Some things deserve special mention, such as bananas and sugar cane. King sugar ruled here for centuries, and is still present on a few remaining islands. Bananas come in all sizes and some are considered to be plain vegetables, since they are not eaten raw. Plantains make wonderful chips. And the tiny ones called figs in the island make good out of hand eating.

Caribbean fruits are in a different class, since while the vegetables seem to have no smell whatever, the fruits are overpowering in their aromas: guavas and mangoes and red plums come to mind. If those three fruits were put together in a room they would take over. Then there are oranges and grapefruits and the green limes that go into making the Caribbean’s famous punches.

The Caribbean’s food biggest differences are most likely in preparation. Like Britain, the English-speaking islands have a sort of “boiled-food” cuisine, while the French speaking ones are heavily marked by their French heritage. Then there are a few outposts, such as St. Martin, which, due to its overdevelopment, grows nothing these days, but takes its food from all over the Caribbean and the world, and has developed its own cuisine.