Agrifest 2012

Agricultural Fair 2012

This is an annual agricultural fair where farmers and small businesses from all over the Caribbean set up their goods and sell anything from handmade local jewelry to Kallaloo to plants and self-written books. As usual, it did not disappoint!
We sampled some "Cane Fruit" or "Sugar Cane Fig" (second photo) which was very interesting. The flesh was stringy like sugar cane, but it was slightly more tart in flavor. Interesting to say the least.

We also saw lots of farm animals that the local farmers brought along, including the fattest rabbit I've EVER seen (photo 4)!
All in all a great day - I bought some really funky Afgan-style pants as well as a bunch of plants to add to our garden including lemon grass and chives.

Trinidadian Chickpea Doubles

I have to share my new favorite local food with you all - the famous Caribbean "Double".It is a sandwich made with two flat fried "breads", called "bara" filled with curried chick peas or garbanzo beans, commonly called channa (from Urdu/Hindi/Bhojpuri "chanaa"). Topped with a variety of spicy chutneys (mango, cucumber, coconut, tamarind - I had the mango) and extra pepper sauce made from Scotch Bonnet peppers (ranging from a dash "slight" to much more), this delicacy is undoubtedly the most popular fast food in Trinidad and Tobago. It is usually eaten for breakfast, and sometimes lunch, but can be a late night snack as well (which it was in my case).

The bread is a quick bread made of flour, baking powder, salt and ground turmeric, which gives the bread its yellow color. It is flattened to a thin round disk about four or five inches in diameter and fried until golden brown. The bara (from Hindi/Bhojpuri "bara") is then filled with the channa ready to be sold. There is no set recipe for the channa, which can be just curried or mixed with curry and dhal (split peas, usually the yellow variety, from Hindi/Bhojpuri "dhal").

Soup de' Cure

On Sunday Geoff got an unexpected day off work (from his crazy hours lately) so we were able to go to one of the 'kick-off to Carnivale' events, called Soup de'Cure. It was an event put on by one of the charity organisations that helps educate youth about making right decisions and teaching them the consequences of drugs, alcohol etc so the money raised went towards that. About 20 restaurants competed and they all cooked up their best soups/stews. You paid 50 c per tasting, but the tasting cups were a decent size. There was no Callaloo (my favorite - traditional Caribbean soup made with saltfish, greens (usually spinach), crab and some sort of starch, like potato or rice)  but I had some various Seafood stews, a Peruvian Corn Chowder and Wahoo (a type of local white fish) Chilli. 

All restaurants that were there as participants were competing for cash prizes - the winner took home $1000. Unfortunately, my favorite on the night (which was a creamy tomato fish stew from a Puerto Rican restaurant) didnt take a place..but they did give me a big take home container for telling them that theirs was the best :-)

The live entertainment - which was a local reggae band and another local singer, Mada Nile was excellent too. I took a little video with my phone, but dont know how to turn it - its on its side right now! Its kind of noisy from all the people there, but try and watch till at least the part where the couple are dancing -  We called them Mr and Mrs Claus for the night :-)

Geoff, Sid (his co-worker) and I

Recipe: Gunpowder Mint Tea

Our landlord's mother is always dipping into our herb garden and cooks up these massive pots of tea.. Since I'm not a big fan of basil or oregano tea (yuk!), I decided to try out some of our spearmint that I havent yet tasted but has been making our garden so fragrant!

I dug out the intense Chinese Gunpowder green tea that we bought in Chinatown Vancouver earlier this year and got to harvesting our mint :-)

I used both stems and leaves for maximum flavor

One teaspoon only of this particular green tea because it can get extremely bitter if too much is used

As for the mint, about 5 leaves does the trick for one cup

Tea is always made best with really hot, but not boiling water

Drop ingredients into pot and let steep for about 10 mins

The result? Tea as black as coffee but super delicious! 

I should make this more often... and surprisingly it has more of a kick than a shot of espresso, whilst the mint leaves a nice, cooling aftertaste.

Experiment: Gooseberry Icecream

Most of my island friends know how much i LOOOOOVE Armstrongs gooseberry icecream...and since its a seasonal flavor, what will I ever do once they run out? So, my last batch of gooseberry icecream I devoured, I saved the seeds from it and decided I will try to grow my own gooseberry bush.. then all we need is an icecream maker (is anyone looking to get rid of one by chance?!?!) and I will have gooseberry icecream ALL YEAR ROUND!!!!

So I planted these little seeds, and watched patiently every day for 3 weeks...nothing. Feeling defeated, I forgot about my little pot of dirt with dried gooseberry seeds buried in it until.... I took a close look yesterday and look what I saw!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh - and the end result? Should look something like this:

Guineps

This morning on our walk, Alpie and I came across a guinep tree! This little fruit with its intense sweet-tangy flavor in native over a wide area of the tropics, including South and Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and parts of Africa and the Pacific.

To eat it is interesting. The skin (rind) is easy to crack open, and then you slide the whole fruit in your mouth (about the size of a big marble) and you just keeping sucking it for a few minutes until all flesh eventually comes off and you're left with a pit. Yes, to eat even five of these is extremely time-consuming... a good weekend fruit :-)

Success!

Our first home-grown watermelon turned out to be a success! It was super seedy, but very juicy, I'm looking forward to the next few that are already growing. Unfortunatly we had another that was ripe - and surprisingly YELLOW inside, but our landlord got it with the weed whacker. :-( 

Watching the new crops grow :-)

A couple of days ago, our landlords planted some new crops in the garden - soon we'll have more eggplant, tomato and bok choy that we'll know what to do with!
A lazy Sunday, with both Geoff and I studying, I let Alpie out to roam a little... when I found her she was in pure bliss, watching the new vegetables grow :-)

More Garden Splendors..

I'm thinking a Caprese salad for lunch today, with fresh mozzarella and homegrown tomato and basil....delizioso!

Peppers, peppers everywhere!

Our peppers are taking off like crazy after this weeks worth of rain! We've been sprouting bell peppers lately, but we were very suprised to see the habanero plant had grown two little peppers during the week!

So what to do with these hot little things now? Chorizo and cream cheese stuffed chicken breasts, wrapped in bacon and served with pasta in a tomato-pepper-habenero sauce....delicious!

If anyone would like the recipe, please email or Facebook me - I can assure you that you wont be let down!

Home grown and healthy!

We picked up some freshly baked roti bread on the way home last night and realised we didnt have any toppings once we got home..

Thank goodness for our little veggie garden! I picked some eggplant, basil and tomato and found some mozzarella in the fridge...voila! One of the yummiest pizzas I've ever had....

A Crucian specialty...

...at Easter!

One of my friends Dale from work brought in a plate of traditional Crucian Easter lunch (typically eaten on Good Friday):

Saltfish: very popular all over the Caribbean, the saltfish is usually made from codfish, green and red bell peppers, onion and vegetable oil. (and salt, of course :-)

Callaloo: I love this stuff! Usually its made from okra (a root vegetable, similar to potato), spinach, oil, onion and spices boiled down into a soupy stew that is often served the main vegetable side in Jamaican cooking.

Ducana : a traditional dumpling made from flour, coconut, cinnamon, butter, salt and sugar and then boiled. I would consider them a desert as they are a little sweet but Dale told me that its eaten as a side to offset the saltfish. Delicious!

Next step... to learn how to cook all these yummies!