Belly Full

Introduction

All my life, I have been surrounded by Caribbean people and our food. I grew up in a half Trinidadian, half Canadian household in Toronto. My mother, born in Princes Town, a small town in the south of Trinidad, was known in the family for her cooking. She had an easy, unfussy way in the kitchen, but everything always came out delicious and it was clear she cooked with love. While my father was not the main cook of the house, he cared very much about food and where it came from, and had a few staples—mostly salads—we could count on him to add to almost every meal. He also had two Trinidadian dishes in his repertoire: curried chicken (which would make my mom’s face twist up every time she ate it, though she never intervened in the process) and souse, a chilled soup made with lots of limes and pig’s feet. My mother refused to have anything to do with this dish—she didn’t eat pork growing up and couldn’t wrap her head around cold, congealed pig’s feet—and would generally leave the kitchen if it was in the works. My dad would stand at the stove looking like a mad scientist, stirring the pig’s feet around in a big bowl, grinning with delight all the while.

As a child, I went to countless Trinidadian family functions and they always featured tables laden with food: dishes I hated as a child (callaloo), things I loved (stewed kingfish), and everything in between. We never talked much about the origins of these dishes, but the pride that went into preparing and serving them was clear.

I visited Trinidad many times in my youth, mostly staying in the house in Princes Town where my mother grew up. There I discovered what fruit was actually supposed to taste like, and that though I hated eggs at home in Toronto, I loved the ones from the chicken there in the yard. I became familiar with the smell of burning sugarcane. I learned to embrace stews that combined unidentifiable ingredients with easily identifiable animal parts, a mix that I would have refused at any other time, but somehow, on the island, was pure delight.

As I got older and became more aware of my cultural identity, I found myself drawn to other people of the Caribbean islands. It was easy to find Trinidadian and Jamaican pockets in Toronto, and when I started coming to New York City in the ’90s, I encountered Puerto Rican and Dominican cultures. Though our languages and cooking spices aren’t the same, I felt comfortable and understood. Later, in Brooklyn, I was introduced to Haitian culture. In many ways their culture is wildly different from that of Trinidad. For instance, Trinidadians always sound like they’re laughing, and Haitians always sound like they’re yelling. And yet I felt at home in their food, their music, and that unmistakable vibe of a person (or the child of one) who grew up with the sun in their face, surrounded by the Caribbean Sea.

As I’ve learned more about the history of my mother’s native island and all the other nations that dot the warm waters around it, I continue to be struck by the layers and complexities of our culture and cuisine. The Caribbean is the original melting pot, and as a result, our food has a rich, though at times harrowing, narrative.

The Atlantic slave trade was one of the most profoundly world-altering events in all of human history. As early as the sixteenth century, boats carried weapons and other commodities from European nations to Africa, where they were exchanged for enslaved Africans. The enslaved were then sent to the Americas—including the islands of the Caribbean—as unpaid laborers to grow sugarcane, coffee, and cotton. These crops were shipped back to Europe and made into goods that would start the cycle all over again. Boats carried people, livestock, and produce not just back and forth across the Atlantic, but around and throughout the entire world in the name of capitalism. Cassava, indigenous to the Americas, was embraced by enslaved Africans as similar to the root vegetables they ate at home, and was eventually taken to Africa, where it now grows as if it were native. Plantains were brought from New Guinea on Portuguese ships and have become not only a staple in the Caribbean but also in West Africa as a result of the trade.

The dishes found in the Caribbean region today come from all those who make up our history. Our food culture started with the Arawak, Carib, and Taíno, who sailed their boats from the mainland to the islands two thousand years before Columbus set foot there. It is rooted in Central and West African culinary traditions and modified for the new world that was forced upon them. It has aspects of all the colonial powers that orchestrated the Atlantic slave trade— England, France, Portugal, and Spain. It was later peppered with food practices from indentured servants pulled from colonies in China and India. Over time, all these influences have created a cuisine that is dynamic, diverse, and unique.

I have spent many years studying the ways in which this motley crew of cultures came together to create my favorite cuisine. While the story of the region is overall the same—Columbus showed up, “discovered” the lands and the people already living there, exploited them to the point of near extinction, then brought in enslaved Africans, kicking off a horrific generations-long practice of using people as free labor to further the expansion and wealth of the colonial powers—each island has a singular version of this history, which translates into their food. For instance, because the Haitian Revolution against the French and subsequent freedom of the enslaved Africans happened so much earlier than any other successful revolt against the colonialists, Haiti has retained more African food practices than some other islands. In countries like Guadeloupe, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad, indentured servants brought from China or India in the nineteenth century, as the answer to the abolition of slavery, have had a huge impact on their cuisine, bringing with them their cooking methods such as stir-frying and seasonings like ginger and star anise.

Unfortunately, as so often happens in the shadow of colonialism, the region is in many ways culturally fractured. Rather than celebrating our differences as Caribbean people, we dig into them, refusing to recognize the beauty in both our diversity as well as what we all share. Jamaicans and Haitians regularly fight about the “correct” way to prepare rice. Trinidadians sneer at Jamaicans’ preparation of roti, saying their hands are too “African,” and therefore are heavy-handed. It’s (problematically) implied that they don’t have the light touch the Indian immigrants, so prolific in Trinidad, are thought to. Dominicans and Puerto Ricans routinely argue about mofongo—who created the dish, and who does it best—ignoring the fact that the dish originated in Africa. All these distinctions are reflected in larger cultural battles, with each country believing it is somehow better than the others.

The truth is, we are all cooking from the same place with many of the same ingredients, and the differences and nuances between us—the ways in which each nation navigated its history—are a thing of beauty. We all eat the soupy stews of our African ancestors and use corn and cassava in place of wheat like the Taíno. We all use ingredients that were introduced by Indigenous peoples, came from Africa on the same ships that brought the enslaved, or traveled from far-off lands in the hands of European colonizers. We are all children of those who had to learn to adapt to new surroundings, trying to hold on to tradition while forging a new path with limited means.

All across the Caribbean, whole foods are essential. In recent years, some processed foods and premade spice blends from companies such as Goya and Grace have made their way into Caribbean kitchens, but many of our mothers and grandmothers continue to exclusively use fresh, whole foods. This is coming back into favor with younger generations. The cuisines of several countries feature many plant-based dishes, because land is at a premium and animals take up a lot of space. Many people are too poor to afford the luxury of meat, which is how my mother grew up. As a result, I grew up eating a multitude of vegan meals, never knowing it was a huge culinary movement or trend. There are several recipes in this book that would traditionally be made with small amounts of salted meat, which is the most many could afford for flavoring. For those recipes, I have chosen to make the meat optional, as my mother and her family rarely—if ever—cooked that way, and while I can’t ignore the depth of flavor some meat can provide, I find most dishes perfectly satisfying without it.