Eating and Drinking – Guyanese Style

In North America, the current culinary buzz words are local, fresh, organic, 100 mile diet, home grown, and sustainable. All of these attributes apply to the food items available in Guyana except without any of the “bon appétit” stylized hype. What they do have to eat here is fresh, plentiful and defiantly home grown, sustainable, fresh, local etc. etc. even if the range is somewhat limited for my spoiled palate. As bit of a self professed “foodie” I like to rise to the challenge and cook from the local products rather than focus on what they don’t have...like cheese, wine, sushi, tiramisu, chocolate, butter, granola, yogurt, and…sigh…coffee.Food shopping is daily occurrence with most of it done at low rent style street vendors and insanely busy outdoor markets. So what’s for sale here? Well the fruit is all tropical, fresh and plentiful. Mini bananas and water melons (like the ones sold in whole foods for mega bucks) are so cheap they are practically free. They have large long tapered pineapples for well under $2.00 that are sweet and less acidic than the imports we get in Canada, succulent red fleshed papayas as large as house cats hang in mesh bags, plump limes are about 25 cents a bagful. Also plentiful are “gimbits” a kind of a sour lychee nut, fresh passion fruit, coconuts, guavas, star fruit and mangos and avocados in season. You can sometimes also find apples, pears and grapes all imported oddly not from near by Chile but from far away New Zealand. I have broken down and bought a few pricey apples as I really miss them. Vegetable wise they have nice tight crispy little cabbages perfect for one person slaws and stir-frys, herbs or what they call “seasonin” which is large bunches of fresh thyme, chives, and basil (amusingly called married man in a poke) that are combined less than a dollar and smell divine. They sell a lot of what they call “ground provisions” which is cassava, sweet potato, plantains and “alloo” (or what I would say are small yellow potatoes) Ground provisions are eaten cooked up with rice, called not surprisingly “cook up-rice”, as a mash or even cooked into breads. I have gained a strong liking and appreciation for plantains, which are very good for you and here are sold as chips (green or yellow) cooked like wedgie fries and served with fiery pepper sauce or ketchup. Both sauces incidentally are just left out on counters in the blazing sun, but perhaps I have gained immunity to this strain of salmonella bacteria by now. They have fiery cherry bomb peppers that are hot as hades, a relative of the infamous scotch bonnet pepper proven to be the hottest pepper on earth. I accidentally ate half of one these babies whole in a curry...and HELLO!...ok we won’t discuss the aftermath of that incident. They also sell eggplants, nice little vine tomatoes, some woody carrots, cucumbers that are actually fat pickling cukes, absolutely lovely little onions, fragrant garlic, long string beans and I do mean long,….like a yard long, and giant squash the size of microwave ovens that they hack up with machetes and sell in pieces as “pumpkin”. Not much in the way of greens except for some wild spinach they call callaloo, which is kind of a weedy tasting, and better cooked than raw and that’s about it. Any imported vegetable sits insipid and expensive in the coolers of the higher end grocery stores. Fish, eggs and chicken are sold fresh....perhaps even too fresh! You can get...ahem “live and pluck” chicken and duck, and any fish you buy is usually still moving around. None of the names or types are familiar to me, even though I once worked at a fish market on Granville Island names like ”bangamary” “skake” and the so called “trout” which look a lot like mean little catfish which I fear come right from the bottom of the filthy canals, “shark”, which seem to be indeed mini sharks, ferocious brown crabs sold tied together on strings…looking very alive and ready to fight you from their death row perch, “snapper” which look nothing like snappers I’ve known more like pike or pickerel. Mostly I just point hopefully and chose them by size and they will always gut, scale, de head and filet them for you for no extra charge. A whole fish runs about $ 2.50 Cad. Quite a different price than the $50 – $70 you might pay in Canada for a whole salmon! There is a local chicken producer that sells frozen chicken in grocery stores...but all other meats here scare the hell out of me...dog meat, goat, wild monkey, iguana, turtle, paddo or bush meat, cow face, cowheel....are all wa-haay outside of my comfort zone. My vegetarian roots have come back in full swing and thankfully due to the Hindu and Rastafarian cultures here there are lots of good options including good soy proteins and legumes. They grow beautiful sugar, rice and they are disgustingly cheap and very good. Canned goods while plentiful are not that cheap and you will pay though the nose for anything imported. Butter when I finally found it was about $17 for a lb, frozen berries the same, canned olives about $12, a bottle of cheap Chilean wine that might be $8 in Canada is about $50 here...yikes!..on a $200 a month salary that’s rather out of my price range, yet a 40 ounce bottle of Absolut vodka is a mere $22. They produce a local beer called “Banks” and it is widely consumed and available everywhere including on the street, sold semi warm from coolers. The other popular drink is of course rum (it’s considered the Caribbean here even if you are in South America) El Dorado is their local brand which is proudly proclaimed to be “the best rum in the world”. Have you ever noticed all rums seem to lay claim that that title? The 15 yr old rum you can sip like scotch apparently. Sadly not being much of a rum or beer drinker I can’t comment on the merits of either national drink. I’m at a loss in a world without wine, scotch or martinis but I have discovered a nice little Trinidadian drink called lemon lime and bitters which is delicious on it own and just happens to pair very nicely with the reasonably priced Absolut vodka. They produce a nice local mineral water and have lots of fresh juices, punches and iced teas. So you know what I have been drinking…how about what I have been eating and cooking. Well lots of curries, channa (chickpeas) vegetarian stews and fried rices, poached fish, occasionally some chicken, plantains, cabbage salads, roti (homemade) yes I grew a foot as a cook when I mastered this, panneer (a vegetarian cheese) lots of fresh fruit, soy milk smoothies and …sigh..instant coffee. Rumor has it that some real coffee is on its way down to me…yay and thanks! Once or twice a week I do treat myself and go to the only coffee bar in town for a latte and croissant...(ahhh! just like France…ok not so much…but still good) Sadly my wallet won’t allow this to be more than an occasional indulgence. Somehow without trying I appear to be losing weight on this diet as my clothes are all loose. Some attribute this to the constant state of sweating but I think it is due to the lack of butter, chocolate cheese and wine, my four favourite food groups.