Cooking Guyanese style....

Guyana always seemed like a good bet for interesting food – masses of tropical fruit and veg as the raw materials, plus the cultural influences of generations of East Indians, Africans, Caribbeans, Chinese and Portugese, not to mention the native Amerindian food.
It hasn’t disappointed us – here are a few of our favourites:

Pepperpot: One night, Shaira, our Islamic friend and Guyanese cuisine guru, said: “a friend of mine is killing a cow tomorrow – you want some?”. And so our first opportunity to cook the most famous Amerindian dish came about.
Early the next morning we collected the still warm meat from Ray’s place. Ray is the dominos champion at the local bar. Grinning from ear to ear with a well-earned shot in his hand, he had butchered every bit of the animal, from head to hoof. And for evidence, there on the table, side by side, was the head and tail. Our bag was the last one hanging under the house.
That evening, Shaira arrived to teach us to make Pepperpot. As it wasn’t Halal, she didn’t have any, but seemed happy to see us tuck in to the thick, delicious dark brown spicy stew.

This is how you make it:
Chop the beef into 1 or 2 inch chunks and dry fry it – we had about 2 kilos of beef bits – so heat the pan and chuck the meat in with no additional oil, it will brown in about ten mins with the steam and oil it creates. Next add your seasoning – 2 onions, 6 cloves garlic, all chopped, a chopped hot sweet pepper, 4 or 5 cloves, a small cinnamon stick, a teaspoon sugar (demerera of course), eight or ten leaves of married man’s poke (local variant of basil), a generous teaspoon of thyme, 2 stock cubes and a pinch of salt. Fry off the liquid and add about 50 mls of casareep.

Ah – casareep. This looks and smells and tastes like thick salty treacle, and is one of the many products of cassava. Its had a very significant role historically in Amerindian culture. Made by grating cassava, squeezing out the liquid and then reducing it for hours until its black and tarry. Adding a rich flavour to stews, it also works as a preservative. So, living without power as the Amerindians did for millennia and largely still do, its a fantastic way to preserve meats – just boil it up once a day, you can keep adding to it as you catch more meat and game. In Georgetown there is an historic pepperpot, more than 40 years old!

As we too have no fridge, it was great for us too. It fed us for a week.

Metthem: Another Amerindian classic. On first hearing the term “ground provision” we suspected Methem might be a bowl of dust. Its actually the local term for root vegetables, which are dear to the heart of all Amerindians. This dish showcases them all in their carb-heavy splendour and may go some way to explain the chunky stature of those who enjoy it.

Its a coconut milk stew containing the big 3 from the world of ground provision – sweet cassava, sweet potatoes and eddo (a potato-like root veg which turns an alarming bluish purple when you cook it). It also contains a generous portion of dough (rhymes with snuff), which tops up the carb count. Delicious – and time for a nap.

Cook-up rice: Unusually for Guyana, everyone has their own way of cooking this – but it will always taste of scotch bonnet peppers.
Its rice and peas cooked with coconut and chilli, often with some chicken or fish, and will be familiar to anyone who has been to south London. It was really nice to get here and order something so familiar – it felt like home away from home. Ah, Peckham.

Eddo Leaf curry with Roti: There’s an initially incomprehensible love of eddo leaf here. Possibly because it grows in such profusion, people seem willing to put in the man hours to make it edible. Unprepared, it will sting your mouth like a jellyfish. Its the above-ground leaf of the underground eddo.

To prepare, you need to strip out the veiny stems, and boil it twice, changing the water. Then use it like spinach to make a curry.

Roti: Dom – if you’re reading this, we have learned to make roti. Oh yes.

Make a dough from self raising flour, water and a little oil. Knead for 10 mins intil firm and springy, then roll out to a flat disc. Roll your disc into a sausage (a bit like making a swiss roll). Cut into 4 or 5 sections. Then take each one, unroll it in your palm, lightly oil it, and reroll it tightly, tucking the end tightly into the centre. Cover and leave for 15 mins – its the oil soaking in which leads to the flakiness of the cooked roti later on.

Heat your roti pan (a large flat aluminium pan which works well for making toast too). Roll out your roti to approx 7” and bake it on the dish unoiled, for about 1 min each side. Then turn and lightly oil one side, bake for 30 secs, turn oil and repeat on the other side, so each side has taken a light golden brown.

Clapping the roti – the most important part – do this as quickly and as hot as you can bear. If you need to put it in a towel. Clap the roti vertically between your hands, straight across the disc so your are (apparently) rupturing it, not flattening it. It will tear a little but basically stay in one piece – resulting in a flaky Indian pancake good for picking up curry.

Roti variant – Puri: We were much mocked in one Georgetwon restaurant for mistaking puri for roti. Puri is roti stuffed with split peas, as any fool know.

Farine and Tasso – a Rupununi special: Farine is yet another product of cassava, much loved in the south of the country. Ground up & dried, it looks a bit like couscous. Evelyn Waugh hated it as dry and tasteless, he may have been eating it uncooked. Sandy, our hostess on Dadanawa ranch made a version similar to a couscous type salad, with oil, garlic and veg, which was great with the tasso (dried preserved beef). The beef here is strangely tough but very tasty – the same goes for the chicken – could it be because they are not mass produced?

Chow Mein: the Chinese influence and emergency supper. If you have noodles and a can of mixed veg in the cupboard, you’ve got dinner.