#23 Trinidad and Tobago
- Jen
- Nov 4, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 4, 2022
Trinidad and Tobago is a country in the Caribbean with two main islands: Trinidad and Tobago, just in case you ever wondered, as I did for many years, why its name is two names.
T&T is the birthplace of the steel drum, Dwight Yorke and 17 different species of hummingbird.
Indo-Trinidadians and Afro-Trinidadian and Tobagonians are the two main demographic groups. Spanish and British colonists brought slaves to the islands from Africa, and when slavery was abolished, workers came from British India to replace them. Trinidadian and Tobagonian (Trinbagonian?) cuisine, like the cuisines of its Caribbean neighbours, is therefore predominantly a mix of African and Indian flavours.
Tasty T&T
Don’t forget to add scotch bonnet…to everything!
Two blogs ago I wrote about Bajan seasoning in Barbados, which is used in everyday cooking. T&T’s answer to that is green seasoning, which, like Bajan seasoning, doesn’t have a set recipe but will make use of fresh herbs, chilli, garlic and spring onions. It can be used to marinate meat, fish, vegetables, or just about anything you want it to.
Doubles sounds like a great breakfast after a few too many rums the night before. Doubles consists of two fried flat breads sandwiching a load of curried chickpeas, served with spicy chutneys and cool cucumber. I can’t think of anything better to perk me up the morning after!
Maracas Beach, is a very popular 1.25 mile long beach lined with palm trees, about an hour outside of the capital, Port of Spain. When beach goers inevitably get peckish from the hard work of basking in the UVs, there are plenty of bake & shark stalls, selling flatbreads stuffed with shark meat marinated in green seasoning, chutneys and vegetables. Some bloke called Richard claims to be the inventor of this seaside snack, but a quick Google Maps search tells me that he has a lot of competition from Patsy, Asha and Uncle Sam to name but a few!
Callaloo is an African-origin dish found throughout the Caribbean. In T&T it is usually a taro leaf side dish cooked with coconut milk and probably green seasoning. It’s often served with cornmeal coo coo (refer back to Barbados).
Another dish with African roots is pelau, which is a very popular special occasion one-pot rice dish, made with pigeon peas, meat, seasoning and coconut milk. One of the first steps of its preparation involves caramelising some sugar and then mixing that into the other ingredients…that’s only every going to be a good thing…I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t make this now actually.
Curry crab & dumplings
This dish is the taste of Tobago. My friend, Rachel’s response to this was “Love a curry, love crab and bloody love a dumpling!”. I echo Rachel’s sentiments entirely.
Ideally, you want a whole fresh crab for this dish, but I used a pot of cooked leg and claw combo. It still felt pretty luxurious! I whizzed up some spring onion, chilli, garlic, fresh thyme and oregano into a paste to make a little green seasoning, mixed it into the crab and left the crab to chill out while I did some work.
My dumplings very plain and very dense. The plainness was fine as they were excellent flavour sponges, but I will certainly make every effort to create a fluffier dumpling next time. Half were cooked in the sauce, which really felt like part of the dish, and half boiled separately. The separately boiled dumplings were a stodgy alien invasion and added nothing good to the meal.
To prepare the sauce:
- Fry onion, garlic and cumin seeds
- Add curry powder
- Add coconut milk and simmer away
- Throw in some diced red pepper and some mini dumplings and simmer until you think the dumplings are done
- Add the dressed crab
- Squeeze of lime and enjoy!
I’ve been suffering from a slightly off sense of smell and taste (covid) recently so it’s a testament to how good this dish is that I thoroughly enjoyed cooking and eating it! It was delicious (alien dumplings aside)! My favourite thing about this curry is that the green seasoning didn’t really get cooked as it was on the already cooked crab that I just stirred through at the end. This meant that there was a vein of freshness and lightness cutting through the curry sauce. My second favourite thing about it was the crab, which is always such a treat! I supposed you could substitute prawns or another fish in place of crab, but the sweetness and delicacy of the crab meat was a perfect match for the spicy, creamy sauce. It tasted of pure happiness.
Yes, I listened to a steel pan compilation album whilst eating.
Let’s hope my good food high continues en route to…GUATEMALA.
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