#21 Barbados
- Jen
- Oct 10, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 4, 2022
Bring out the rum!
Finally! Refer back to my Plan of Action from spring 2019 where my excitement for the Caribbean rum has been documented.
The Barbadian Mount Gay is the oldest commercial rum distillery in the world, dating all the way back to 1703.
The well-known Eclipse rum was named in 1910 when there was a total solar eclipse and Halley’s comet flew by in the same year.
It was once in the hands of a chap called John Sober (doubt it).
If it’s good enough for James Bond (in Casino Royale), it’s good enough for me. 007 ordered his with soda; I went for a Bajan rum punch.
Whoa! We're going to Barbados
Barbados is a country in the Commonweath and the majority of Barbadian people are of Afro-Caribbean descent. It’s a wealthy Caribbean country with excellent literacy rates, healthcare and life-expectancy, being second only behind Japan for the rate of centenarians in a country.
Bajan flavours
Bajan is what Barbadians refer to as Barbadian. So, Bajan cuisine is the cuisine of Barbados and it combines elements of African, Indian, British and other European cooking. Barbados is rich in fresh seafood and, like its Caribbean neighbours, the Scotch Bonnet chilli has a domineering presence.
Bajan seasoning is kind of like what garam masala is in a lot of Indian cooking. It’s a fresh, spicy, zesty marinade used a lot in everyday cooking. Each family’s recipe will differ, but it usually consists of onion, garlic, ginger, Scotch Bonnet, fresh herbs, mixed spice, lime and some vinegar.
Bajan favourites
Before I continue, let’s talk about pie. In America “pie” means a sweet pie. In the UK…? If someone says: “would you care for some pie?” I don’t think that has connotations with any particular pie; I think we would respond with “oh what a lovely offer, what sort of pie?”. In Barbados, if you mention “pie”, people think you’re chatting about macaroni pie. This meal is so popular that it’s just called “pie”. From what I can gather, this is essentially mac & cheese, baked into the shape of a pie. That’s it. THAT’S NOT A PIE!!!
Salt cod fritters or fish cakes are enjoyed throughout the Caribbean and the recipe differs between countries. A Bajan fish cake is made with salt cod (I really, really like salt cod), chillies, onions and mash, deep-fried and served with hot sauce. Yum.
Pudding & souse. Not a dessert. The ‘pudding’ is spiced sweet potato mash, stuffed into a pig’s intestine, like a sausage. The ‘souse’ is pickled pig tongue or ears. Whether or not I want to be your friend is based on many factors, but whether or not you think this sounds delicious will be one of them! I would LOVE to try this!
Black cake. This one is actually a cake - a fruit cake sloshed with rum. Wheeey!!
Rotis are classic street food in so many different places around the world and Barbados is one of those places. They were introduced in the 1950s when there was an influx of Indo-Guyanese people to the island. Rotis in India are typically used for scooping up curry but in Barbados, a roti is often served with a meat and potato filling and wrapped for easy hand eating, a bit like a burrito.
Barbequed pig tails. What it says on the tin.
The national dish
I decided to cook the national dish of Barbados: cou-cou & flying fish.
Cou-cou is cornmeal (polenta…that’s a 14% hit rate on blog meals for that bag of polenta I bought for Lesotho last year!), cooked with okra, which is used as a thickening agent, and, if you really want to do things properly, it’s stirred using a cou cou stick, which resembles a miniature cricket bat. I used a regular £1 wooden spoon for the stirring, and also added onion and thyme for flavour.
Flying fish (as in those fish that you see leaping out of the water) is plentiful in Barbados, but not so much over here so I subbed-in some seabass fillets. The fish can be steamed or fried and is usually served with a spicy sauce (they call it gravy but I refuse).
I followed this recipe for my Bajan seasoning and flying fish recipe. The Bajan seasoning includes onion, spring onion, garlic, ginger, chilli, thyme, mixed spice, lime, vinegar and salt whizzed together and it is fabulous! It’s exactly as described above: spicy and zingy. It was also perhaps even more fabulous a couple of days later after it had had time to infuse and I used it with some chicken thighs. Proper taste of spicy summer.
To make the sauce (not gravy), the Bajan seasoning gets mixed with a variety of classic stew/curry ingredients (think tomatoes, onion, butter, etc.) to make the saucy goodness for the fish to cook in.
Using the words that immediately come to mind rather than trying to up my vocab game: this was bloody banging! `
I enjoyed my cou-cou & flying seabass with my rum punch in the garden, bikini on, lounger out on a gloriously hot and sunny August weekend. I was there; I was in actual Barbados 😊
Did you all see this in the news a few weeks ago? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-53385227 WFH could be WFB! With all that rum, sun and fresh seafood, it’s tempting…
...but before I relocate there, I’m off to…FIJI!
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