Chile Peppers

by Dave Dewitt

  An old island adage says that the best Caribbean hot sauce is the one that burns a hole in the tablecloth. I’ve never seen that happen in all my trips to the Caribbean, but I’m certain that the earliest hot sauces in the region were made with the crushed chinense varieties. According to some sources, the Carib and Arawak Indians used pepper juice for seasoning, and after the “discovery” of chile peppers by Europeans, slave-ship captains combined pepper juice with palm oil, flour, and water to make a “slabber sauce” that was served over ground beans to the slaves aboard ship. The most basic hot sauces on the islands were made by soaking chopped Scotch bonnets in vinegar and then sprinkling the fiery vinegar on foods. Over the centuries, each island developed its own style of hot sauce by combining the crushed chiles with other ingredients such as mustard, fruits, or tomatoes. Homemade hot sauces are still common on the islands of the Caribbean. The sauces piquante and chien from Martinique and ti-malice from Haiti all combine shallots, lime juice, garlic, and the hottest chinense available. Puerto Rico has two hot sauces of note: one is called pique and is made with acidic Seville oranges and habaneros; the other is sofrito, which combines small piquins (bird peppers) with annatto seeds, cilantro, onions, garlic, and tomatoes. In Jamaica, Scotch bonnets are combined with the pulp and juices of mangoes, papayas, and tamarinds. The Virgin Islands has a concoction known as asher, which is a corruption of “limes ashore.” It combines limes with habaneros, cloves, allspice, salt, vinegar, and garlic. This is one of the earliest cures for scurvy, which develops in humans from a lack of vitamin C.

  The story goes that a poor woman discovered her kitchen was bare of the above ingredients except for chiles, so she decided all she could prepare for dinner was a soup made solely of habaneros and water. Her unsuspecting children ate one spoonful of the soup and then ran to the river to try to douse the heat, where they drank so much water that they drowned. Obviously, the apocryphal children were unaware that water is the least effective cooldown for chile heat—see chapter 8 for the best ones.

  THE CONGO PEPPERS OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

  “Two unspoiled islands, one country—Trinidad and Tobago,” pronounced Brian Kuei Tung, Minister of Trade, Industry, and Tourism. Mary Jane and I were sitting in his spacious high-rise office overlooking the Port of Spain harbor, and I was wearing long pants in honor of meeting a cabinet minister. “We don’t allow logging, so the rain forests are intact. And we don’t allow high-rise hotels to spoil our beaches.”

  Say what? Was I hearing this right? A country that actually was protecting its scenic beauty and not caving in to big business and developers? Unbelievable. And even more unbelievable was the fact that we were in Trinidad. That was the result of Dennis Hayes, who then worked for the Crossing Press in Freedom, California. He had selected me to be the principal author of Callaloo, Calypso & Carnival: The Cuisines of Trinidad & Tobago, so of course Mary Jane and I had to travel there to research what we would soon be writing about.

  After island-hopping to Barbados and Grenada, our B-Wee (BWIA) flight landed at the Piarco International Airport outside of Port of Spain. My mind was asking the four most important questions for a visitor: Where do I sleep? Where do I eat? How do I get around? And where do I buy beer? Fortunately, all of those questions were soon answered. We were staying at the Kapok, a friendly hotel adjacent to the beautiful Queen’s Park Savannah—a 200-acre park in the middle of the city. We were eating out twice a day, every day. Because of the narrow streets and crazed drivers in Port of Spain, we were taking taxis everywhere. And the local favorite beer, Carib, was available at corner markets and it was cheap. That was a good omen, I thought.

  Our first full day there was Emancipation Day in August 1992, and nearly everything was closed for the holiday. But the Botanic Gardens near the Kapok were open, and as we strolled through the lush foliage, I thought, this is my kind of country. It’s summer all year long. The phones work. There are palm trees and pepper plants, the language doesn’t need constant translation, the food is great, and the literacy rate of the people is 97 percent.

  While buying some Carib beer at a street-corner market a block from the Kapok, I spotted some fresh peppers that looked like gigantic red habaneros. “What do you call these?” I asked the clerk, and she said, “Congo peppers.” Back at the hotel, I cut them open to save the seeds, and the pungent fumes were so strong that we were driven out of the room coughing and sneezing. It was the characteristic apricot aroma of the habanero, and the fumes were so powerful that even with the windows open and the air conditioning on high, we couldn’t use the room for over an hour.

  A congo pepper in Mary Jane’s hand. Photograph by Dave DeWitt.

  Later that afternoon in one of the few stores open I bought some locally published cookbooks and brushed up on the culinary history of T&T. I soon learned that the diversity of food on the islands was the result of one wave of immigrants after another. First, the Spanish occupied Trinidad and adopted many of the foods and cooking techniques of the indigenous Arawaks before they disappeared. Then the Spanish invited French immigration, and the French brought with them herbs, spices, and garlic—hallmarks of T&T cookery today. Accompanying the Frenchmen were African slaves who brought their own ingredients and cooking styles.

  The British conquered Trinidad in 1797 and introduced breadfruit to feed the slaves, as well as tamarind from the East Indies. They also brought turnips and cabbage to Trinidad, two common vegetables in T&T markets today. After the abolition of slavery in 1838, more immigrants arrived to work in the sugarcane fields: the Portuguese, East Indians, and Chinese. Over the years, the immigrant foods became very popular in the country, and curries and chop suey were commonly served in homes and restaurants. Today, T&T has the most diverse cuisine of any of the Caribbean islands—and we dove into it right away with a meal of callaloo (an exquisite dasheen or taro-leaf soup) and grilled kingfish at the Café Savannah.

  LIMING ABOUT

  To “lime,” according to a local dictionary of Trini slang, is “to pass the time in idle pleasure.” It describes every possible form of indulgence except Carnival, which is more of a frantic than an idle pleasure. Liming is hangin’ out, goofin’ off, fishin’, drivin’, swimmin’, boatin’, picnickin’, and generally just doing anything one wants to do. We were invited to lime about at a dinner party the next day at the home our host, Marie Permenter, shares with Vernon and Irene Montrichard, which overlooks a lovely bay. These three entrepreneurs founded the Royal Castle chain of spicy chicken and chips restaurants in 1968, then fought off the invasion of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and were currently setting sales records at 12 locations in T&T. Trinidadians love chicken, and they especially love Royal Castle chicken, which is marinated in a special hot sauce of congo peppers and herbs before being fried.

  Congo pepper plants in Trinidad. Notice the plant on the far left loaded with pods. Photograph by Dave DeWitt.

  At the party we met the cast of characters that Marie and Vernon had lined up to be our culinary guides. Mikey and Nancy Ramesar gave us lessons on East Indian cooking West Indian–style. Keith Nexar and Steve Mathura, directors of Advantage Advertising, the agency responsible for much of Royal Castle’s success, set up interviews for us and even arranged our appearance on local television. Michael Coelho, marketing director of the Royal Castle chain, was our main guide and drove us all over Trinidad.

  CONGO PEPPERS AND SHADOW BENNIE

  On our first trip, Marie and Vernon took us to their pepper fields, where the congo peppers are grown for the Royal Castle hot sauce. In Trinidad, congo means anything large and powerful, and these varieties of Capsicum chinense lived up to their name. We found some as large as lemons, and they had thicker walls that most of the habaneros we were familiar with. In 1992, we had never heard of superhot peppers and never saw any in the markets. No matter, though, because the congos were very hot, about 300,000 SHU. We also got a tour of their hot sauce factory.

  Next, Michael located a four-wheel-drive Toyota and took
us on back roads that led seemingly straight up the mountains. We were on our way to see the herb growers of Paramin, who farm Spanish and French thyme, plus other herbs, on the steep slopes. Since it rains nearly every day during the wet season, the herbs love the good drainage of the steep slopes. The herbs, which are sold in markets in Port of Spain, are also an ingredient in the Royal Castle hot sauce.

  Along with Vernon, and Michael’s wife, Danielle, we took a tour of the northern rain forests, with a stop along the way at Maracas Bay. That bay is the prime liming area for Port of Spain, and after a cooling dip in the surf, we descended on the roadside stands for some shark-and-bake. This dish features fried bread stuffed with tender shark, topped with congo-pepper hot sauce and another, dark green sauce they called “shadow bennie.” The taste was strong, flavorful, and vaguely familiar. What herb was in it, we asked. “Shadow bennie” was all they knew.

  The next few days flew by. With Michael as our guide, we dove into the food of T&T. At the Patraj Roti Shop in San Juan, we tasted nine different kinds of curried fillings for the roti bread—fish, beef, chicken, goat, conch, shrimp, liver, duck, and potato. The fillings are wrapped in the bread or are served in bowls accompanied by torn-up bread called Buss-Up-Shut, which is slang for “burst up shirt,” because the bread resembles torn-up cloth. The curry itself was not spicy, but the congo-pepper hot sauce served in squeeze bottles solved that problem.

  Restaurant sign in San Juan, Trinidad. Photograph by Dave DeWitt.

  Then it was time to go native. Michael turned us over to his friend, Johnny Nahous. Johnny, who is of Lebanese descent, owns Johnny’s Food Haven, a restaurant that serves “native” food, or Creole food, as it’s called there. On a typical day he serves stewed oxtail, curried crab and dumplings, callaloo, chicken pelau, Chinese marinated chicken, cow-heel soup, sautéed cassava, and at least four additional entrées. He has to have that many—on Fridays, Johnny sells 500 lunches.

  “Bonney Barbados:

  A Travel Retrospective, 1996”

  “One bellyful don’ fatten de hog,” goes a proverb in Barbados, meaning that it takes a bit of an effort to achieve anything worthwhile. That saying applies to finding true Bajan food if you’re staying at a resort or beach hotel, because they serve mostly American-style fare. So, to experience the wide range of fiery island delights, we had to desert the beach and meet the cooks, chefs, and sauce makers of Barbados.

  Johnny took us on a tour of the bustling Central Market, where if you’re not careful, you can get run over by a wheelbarrow full of cabbages. Vendors raised their prices when they saw the foreigners with him, but Johnny waved them off in disgust and pursued the bargains. The multiple displays of congo peppers were very impressive, being the most habaneros I had ever seen in one place—until I visited Yucatán, Mexico (see chapter 3). I also got a tour from Michael of the nearly vertical herb fields of Paramin. Those herbs were used by Johnny in many of his dishes.

  Before we left T&T, we went down “de” islands again, this time on Vernon’s boat to visit the resort islands between Trinidad and Venezuela. Later, we ate at more restaurants—including Ali Baba where we had a great Middle Eastern meal—and visited the pan yards, where the steel-drum bands were practicing for the upcoming Steelband Music Festival. And speaking of steel bands, even in August, six months before the festivities, much of the talk in T&T was about Carnival and how we hadn’t really seen T&T unless we were there during that extravaganza of fetes, parades, masquerades, and calypso contests. After all, Trinidadian Peter Minshall had just designed the opening ceremony for the Olympics, our hosts reminded us, so imagine what he could do at Carnival!

  Callaloo, Calypso & Carnival: The Cuisines of Trinidad & Tobago was published by the Crossing Press in 1993. We returned to T&T in 1996 after a trip to Barbados.

  Michael Coelho and the author in the herb fields of Paramin. Photograph by Mary Jane Wilan.

  Bonney peppers in the Cheapside Market, Barbados. Photograph by Dave DeWitt.

  GROUND PROVISIONS AND BONNEY PEPPERS

  Our main guide to the culinary delights of this 122-square-mile island was Anne-Marie Whittaker, an energetic go-getter who markets food products under her brand, Native Treasures. With her help and the assistance of the Barbados Tourism Authority, and driver Emerson Clarke, we were able to conduct our whirlwind culinary exploration with maximum efficiency.

  We began with a visit to Cheapside Market, a 100-year-old metal building that housed vendors both inside and outside. This market is a trip into the past, especially in Barbados with its fancy supermarkets. According to Anne-Marie, most of the locals were “too big-up to go to market,” too full of their own self-importance to be seen buying “ground provisions”: yams and sweet potatoes and vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, christophene (chayote squash), and eggplants. This was no tourist market—Mary Jane and I had the only white faces, and the closest thing to souvenirs were the bright red bonney peppers that appeared in nearly all the vendors’ stalls.

  The bonney pepper, a member of the same species as habaneros and Scotch bonnets, Capsicum chinense, closely resembles the congo pepper from nearby Trinidad. Fragrant and powerful, the bonney has a long and celebrated culinary history in Barbados. Richard Ligon, in his A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1647), describes the two varieties of peppers he found on the island: “The one so like a child’s corall, as not to be discerned at the distance of two paces, a crimson and scarlett mixt; the fruit about three inches long and shines more than the best pollisht corall. The other, of the same colour and glistening as much but shaped like a large button of a cloak; both of one and the same quality; both violently strong and growing on a little shrub not bigger than a gooseberry bush.”

  Anne-Marie was shopping for a picnic and she needed more than bonney peppers. We stopped by the stall of the one vendor who had seasoning peppers. Anne-Marie bought every one she had and ordered more, explaining that the vendor had carried the seasoning pepper seeds from St. Lucia and grew them in Barbados. The pods were identical to Trinidad seasoning peppers and Anne-Marie planned to use them in a seasoning paste for roasted pork.

  At the stand of one grizzled elderly gentleman, I spotted a jar of small, thin peppers.

  “Bird peppers?” I asked the vendor.

  “Nigger peppers,” insisted the vendor, who was a black man.

  “Not a very polite term,” I observed. The man just shrugged.

  “They’re bird peppers in Trinidad but nigger peppers here,” explained Anne-Marie. “Nobody thinks anything about the word.” Indeed. Later, I asked our driver, Emerson, and he just laughed. “Nigger peppers is what they are.” I decided to drop the subject.

  Inside the market were the meat vendors offering beef, pork, and what I took to be goat but was really black belly sheep, a common island farm animal and apparently a sheep that’s adapted to 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity. At Nora’s stand, we ate the traditional Saturday souse, which is pickled pork parts with cucumbers, bonney peppers, and other vegetables. I use the term “parts” because the cuts of pork used are generally the less desirable—the feet, facial meat, and other trimmings. Except for being overly fatty, the souse was delicious.

  LIMIN’ WITH THE LOCALS

  There are no hot sauce factories in Barbados that offer an official tour but Anne-Marie was able to arrange visits to two facilities. “Factory” is an extravagant term for what is essentially hands-on manufacturing of the typical Bajan hot sauce that’s bright yellow with dangerous red flecks of bonney pepper. At the Lottie’s facility, about 14 workers sat around tables performing various necessary functions: cleaning bonney peppers, chopping onions, mixing herbs and spices, and applying labels to bottles of the finished products.

  Jackie Heath, the owner of Lottie’s, was in the middle of shipping a 55-gallon drum of hot sauce to the US, where it would be bottled as Spitfire Sauce. She revealed to us that she had switched careers in midstream, giving up selling insurance to become the
producer of one of the island’s best-known brands of hot sauces, seasonings, and fruit juices. Her mustard-based hot sauce is so popular that Jackie has part of each batch packed in 32-ounce bottles! She estimates that there are between six and eight firms manufacturing hot sauces in Barbados right now, and that probably a maximum of 100 acres of bonney peppers are under cultivation in many small plots to supply the hot sauce industry.

  One of Jackie’s competitors is Pat McClean, who runs L. G. Miller Import and Export, which manufactures and sells hot sauces and other products under the Windmill Products brand. Her father started the business in1965 with a homemade hot sauce recipe and soon they were producing 30 gallons of sauce a week. Nowadays, their capacity is about 2,000 gallons per week, and part of each batch is packed for competing brands. They also run special manufacturing for other Bajan food companies; for example, Pat bottles Anne-Marie’s Native Treasures brand.

  When we visited, the plant was down except for workers cleaning tamarind, but Pat showed us the modern, stainless-steel equipment and the stacked products produced from the last batches run: three versions of hot pepper sauce, two ketchups, a number of syrups, jams, and jellies, and the ever-present Bajan herb seasonings. Pat loaded us up with samples, and we staggered out to the car.

  Ever the organizer, Anne-Marie had scheduled two sessions of “limin’.” Now, to lime is essentially to relax and hang out with friends, which is easily done in friendly Barbados. One night, she and her husband, Charlie, took us to the fishing village of Oistins for a seafood feast. Numerous vendors prepared the day’s catch, spiced up with the ubiquitous hot sauces. I opted for mahi-mahi at Bellamy’s stand and received a succulent cut from near the backbone that tasted great with Anne-Marie’s tamarind sauce, not to mention her nutmeg-dusted rum punch. We were joined by Mark and Kim and Noel and Andrea, and soon a spirited discussion resulted, during which we covered all the important subjects: Dole’s chance to beat Clinton, Princess Di’s affairs, the Chicago Bulls, and Mighty Gabby’s calypso song about Lorena Bobbitt.