Never miss an opportunity to add flavor to a dish! For example, if you juice a citrus fruit and then simply toss the fruit, you are missing a great opportunity to add flavor to your creations. Whenever, I have a recipe that calls for citrus, I always zest it before I juice the fruit. Whether or not the recipe calls for the zest, I add it anyway. It is virtually an invisible mouth-feel, yet it heightens the overall citrus taste factor. Try it!
This is a picture of the Cook House at the Whim Great House Museum located in Estate Whim on St. Croix. The museum is one of the best examples of what life was like on the island during Colonial times. The Virgin Islands is unique in the Caribbean in that it was the only set of islands owned by Denmark. Many of our street names are still written in Danish!
Organic evaporated cane sugar is my go-to sweetener. It has all the sugar cane flavor notes of brown sugar but it behaves exactly like white sugar in most recipes. It is a gently refined sugar made from fresh sugar cane juice. The juice is evaporated to expose the straw-colored, delicate sugar crystals, complete with trace minerals from the fresh cane juice. If you can’t find this sugar, simply make sure that the sugar you choose is made from sugar cane. Avoid sugar made from beets, as it tends to toughen pastries and cakes slightly.
I couldn’t really call this dessert a “Baked Alaska” in good conscience, as it is way too tropical in its flavors. Fresh lime and passion fruit carry this celestial dessert into a truly island scented heaven!
I love baking fresh pies and croissants and other butter-based pastries for my friends and family. But if there is any element that can ruin pastry dough it is heat. I remember speaking with a fellow “kitchen-sister” friend of mine once who declared, it is impossible to make croissants on the island without having an air-conditioned kitchen! She said, “You can do it, but the texture will not be as light as you can find in the colder States or from a cool kitchen.” Read More
I can still remember the quizzical look that would cross my college friends faces on the mainland when I would ask for “Cocoa Tea” in the cafeteria.
“You mean hot chocolate?” They would correct.
No, I meant Cocoa Tea!
Cocoa Tea is a warm delicious chocolate morning drink that is a far distant cousin to the pre-packaged, marshmallow-ed versions I had in the States. It’s made traditionally on chocolate producing islands like St. Lucia and Dominica, but it is also sparingly locally grown and made here on St. Croix. Someone must LOVE you, if they share a cup of cocoa tea with you! Read More
Living on a beautiful tropical island, surrounded by warm, blue-green, ocean waters and constant cooling trade winds pretty much guarantees that our baking ingredients, will be affected by the humidity or moisture in the air. To test the effects that humidity has on some ingredients, I made my favorite pound cake at home on St. Croix, and then made the exact same recipe when I went to visit my sister in Florida in her air-conditioned home. The difference was a much improved textured cake in Florida! The Reason? Less humidity. Read More
On very hot days, the last thing I feel like eating is a plate of steaming hot food. This is a basic recipe for the Mexican side dish pico de gallo. A guaranteed cooling food filled with local green onions and tomatoes. But instead of using the usual cilantro, I substitute the local recaito or culantro. It has a far more robust flavor than the store bought cilantro, and really wakes up the freshness factor in this salad. Much of this recipe is to taste, so if you like more lime juice, more tomatoes, onions, ADD IT! Some people also add a bit of garlic or jalapeno. I am a purist. This is just fine!
Caribbean cooking is as imprecise an art as you can find. Asking for a recipe from a friend or family member is better shown than read, because hardly anyone writes down recipes with exact measurements. You can ask a question like, “How do you make this”? And you will get a response of, “Oh, I will show you!” or “You put in some of this, and some of that!” The oral tradition remains an active part of our cultural landscape.
Recipes are guarded, and handed down from generation to generation with each person adding their own contributions. On this blog you will sometimes see words like add “a bit of” ingredient X, or “some of” ingredient Y, or other unquantified terms as a substitute for the word “Pinch”.
Just following tradition, and encouraging you to add your own creative flair!
