An Embarrassment of Mangoes

by Ann Vanderhoof

  You put how much in?” Evette asks. I tell her I put about a quarter cup of brown sugar in the lambi sauce. “I burned it, like you said, and added it to the lambi and the other seasonings.”

  She is aghast. “Noooooo.” That captivating singsong voice. “You just want a bit—maybe a spoonful.”

  Great, but what size spoon? She indicates on her finger—probably between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. Hmmm. No wonder the sauce was a little sweet.

  It’s a couple of days later, and we’ve hiked back up to Evette’s, this time with a package of walnut brownies I’ve baked as thanks for the mangoes, which have long since disappeared. (And which, since we know the season won’t last forever, were quickly replaced in town by more.) We haven’t seen brownies—or any chocolate baked goodies—in the island stores and I figure they’ll be a novelty. They are, although Gennel recognizes them instantly. “Dere’s a picture in my schoolbook,” she says shyly, referring to the text she uses in home economics. “But I never ate one.” Though cocoa is an important crop on Grenada, the dried and roasted beans are almost all exported to factories in Europe for further processing. The few that are left behind are ground until they’re soft, and the mushy mixture is rolled by hand into sticks or balls. In this form, the chocolate isn’t suitable for eating or baking—it’s mostly grated to make hot drinks. Real chocolate, the kind we know, is imported and expensive, Evette explains.

  This trip, I’m determined to ask all the questions I should have asked the first time around. When Evette rhymed off the ingredients for the lambi, she had included salt and pepper, as well as seasoning and a seasoning pepper. The seasoning pepper was easy: The bushes they grow on—Evette has one alongside her house—look like they’ve been decorated for Christmas, and the market tables in St. George’s are full of the tiny green, red, and sometimes orange jewels. A Caribbean cross between a sweet pepper and a hot pepper, they add the flavor of a hot pepper when chopped and tossed into the stew pot—without nearly the bite. “But what do you mean by seasoning?” I ask.

  “You know, seasoning salt,” she replies. I picture a jar of a spice blend like Mrs. Dash, and make a note to pick some up next time we’re in town. I had figured out the mystery herb “siveantime” on my own, during our last trip to market, when I spotted some green bunches on the tables: Sive, or cive, is West Indian chives, stronger-flavored than their North American counterpart, closer in size and taste to our green onions. They’re used to season stews and curries, as is thyme, so the two are helpfully sold together—a few stalks of sive tied with string to a couple of branches of fresh thyme—and talked about in one breath, “siveandthyme.”

  Meanwhile, Evette tells us to call her by her “home name,” Dingis—“I was a very small baby, and dingis are little boats”—and lets on that she has a reputation as a very good cook. Since I’ve made it clear by this point that I’m no slouch in this department back home, and that I’m very interested in learning Grenadian cooking, Dingis is keen to help. There’s a strong subtext here, however, a reason she feels she has to help me with my cooking: Like Aunt Keva, Dingis has decided that my husband is very skinny. Too skinny. Dangerously skinny. Couple that with the fact that we are childless—a married woman of my age?—and Dingis smells trouble on the horizon. Whatever my cooking skills, Steve is obviously not being properly fed. Unless I learn how to cook good (read: island) food, I’m not going to be able to hold on to my man: I need to fatten him up to keep him happy. Even with her accent, even with the Creole words, I have no problem understanding this. The message is loud and clear.

  “Do you know coo-coo?” This time Dingis tows me straight into her kitchen, which is under the house and mostly open-air to keep both cook and house cool. It’s pretty basic—a few open wooden shelves with pots and plates, a couple of stools, a low wooden counter, a fridge, and a small four-burner stove hooked up to a propane tank. The most prominent appliance is the large, new chest freezer plugged into an outlet on the house. There’s no water in the kitchen itself: The tap (cold water only) and the wash-up area are outside, overlooking the road. Even though we haven’t been invited inside the house yet, it’s obvious there’s no direct access to the kitchen; you have to go outside, down the steps, and between the cinder-block pillars to stir the stew or get a snack.

  Several blackened pots crowd the stovetop, and I’m hoping Perry and Noel’s aphrodisiacal man-trapping soup, still a mystery to me at this point, will at last be revealed. But no, Dingis cuts several squares from a battered metal pan: This “coo-coo” (that’s indeed the way it’s spelled) is a Caribbean version of polenta. “You boil some coconut milk and then you put in your cornmeal, and you stir it, stir it, stir it,” she sings. When it thickens, pour it out into a pan, allow it to cool, slice, and eat. Some versions include okra; this one is plain. Some are made with water, this one with coconut milk—much richer. “It’s good fried, too, with a cup of hot cocoa tea,” Dingis explains. Nothing like upping the fat quotient.

  She gives us each a piece and then, in a long procession—Steve and I, Dingis, Gennel, the four girls, and Stinky (once again snapping at my backpack, once again being whacked, to no effect, by Dingis with her flip-flop)—all climb the hill behind the house to see the view. Along the way, Dingis identifies the trees we pass: sugar apple and golden apple, their fruits not yet ripe; a tamarind festooned with pods; grapefruit, and more mangoes. “Gennel’s placenta buried dere,” she says, pointing to the bottom of a tall, heavily laden coconut palm. We’re not sure whether Gennel is embarrassed by her mother’s openness, or this is normal island practice. But it must have been good fertilizer, given the size of the tree. Next up are some huge plastic barrels full of oil, which Dingis rendered from a shark caught a few days earlier. The barrels are destined for a pharmacy in town, she tells us, where it will be sold for its health benefits, the local answer to cod liver oil. The tour also takes in the scruffy tethered goats grazing on the scrubby hillside, which are destined for the stew pot; goats are kept solely for meat in this part of the world, not milk or cheese. At the top, Steve makes us pose for pictures. In one direction, we look out on ridge after ridge of mountains, the foliage only interrupted by an occasional white building and orange tiled roof, with the open ocean hazily visible in the farthest distance. On the other side, the hill drops away sharply to a glorious view of the bay, where we can see sailboats at anchor, including our own.

  It’s time to show our hospitality. “Come out to visit us on Receta on Sunday afternoon with the girls,” I tell Dingis. “Steve will pick you up at the jetty.” Because we’re not sure Snack is up to carrying everyone, we ask if Dwight, the young fisherman and lobster diver in her household, can bring half the crew in his heavy wooden boat. Unlike some of the local fishing boats (including my favorite, Mr. Pitiful), Dwight’s doesn’t have a name, but it’s a typical island workhorse: about 20 feet long, brightly painted, completely open except for a small bit of decking at the pointed bow, with a well-used outboard. It could easily carry everyone to Receta, but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun for the kids as a trip in Snack.

  What to serve? I worry about this conundrum for days, more than if I were giving a fancy party in Toronto, and I finally decide to mix up vats of fruit punch and Tang, cut two watermelons into wedges, and bake dozens of chocolate chip cookies, which I’m certain will be as novel as the brownies. I’m pretty sure Pringles—we stocked up in Puerto Rico—and dip (made boat-style, using long-life UHT cream which doesn’t require refrigeration, soured with a bit of vinegar) will be popular with the kids. And I’ve got plenty of the freshly roasted peanuts that are sold from a cart near the perimeter of the market. The peanut vendor has become a regular stop each time we go into St. George’s. His little brown bags, about forty cents each, contain plain or honey-roasted nuts—or the nastily addictive ones that have been caramelized with slivers of fresh ginger. And when you buy a few bags, he’s guaranteed to throw in an extra. Steve, however, has become a favored customer, buying ten or mor
e bags at a time, and now the amiable vendor throws in a handful of extra bags for free.

  The day before the party, Steve makes a special trip to town to purchase crayons and drawing pads so the little girls will have something to do onboard. He also rigs our canvas rain-catcher as a tent on the foredeck, where they can color out of the sun.

  When the boats arrive, I’m glad there are lots of snacks because there are definitely lots of bodies. In addition to Dingis, Gennel, and the girls—I still can’t keep straight who’s who—there is Allan, who’s maybe eleven and from Lower Woburn, and a nephew of Dingis’s who’s maybe fifteen and is visiting from “the country,” the north end of the island where Dingis’s parents live. Dwight also comes aboard briefly, before heading off again to join his friends.

  While the girls take turns “steering” Receta and quietly coloring on the foredeck (green is particularly popular, as the residue in the deck’s nonskid surface later attests), Allan fishes off the side with our handline, putting Steve to shame. This kid has extremely quick reflexes, and in the time it would have taken Steve to catch one or two, Allan has a bucket filled with tiny yellowtail snappers, each one barely four inches long. Steve had been using the ones he caught for bait, to attract grouper that we then eat for dinner. Nope—these little guys are dinner, Dingis tells us. She guts ’em and fries ’em. I can’t imagine how long it would take to clean enough to make a meal. She can’t imagine what I’m getting at—in her eyes, there’s nothing to it. And when she leaves at the end of the afternoon, the tiny snappers go with her in plastic bags.

  It’s difficult returning generosity—we always seem a step behind here. For Dingis has brought us a gift: a large lobster, which Dwight had caught that morning. No doubt remembering my treatment of the lambi, she is leaving nothing to chance this time and has announced she is coming into the galley to show me how to prepare it; no sense having a perfectly good lobster ruined.

  The temperature is in the low nineties, and the sun is baking Receta, as it does every day. I’m used to the heat by now, but I’m not used to cooking in the middle of the afternoon with three bodies (Dingis, Gennel, and myself) squeezed into the tiny galley and a cauldron of water bubbling on the stove. While our guests show no signs of being affected by the steamy heat, sweat is pouring down my face and my shirt is glued to my soaking back. Unsure of the niceties of West Indian entertaining in any case, I’m finding it hard to be a gracious hostess when I feel like I’m in a race with the lobster to see who gets boiled first.

  Once the lobster is cool enough to handle, Dingis authoritatively goes to work, cracking it with a hammer and pulling out the tail meat. Setting the rest of the lobster aside, she chops the tail into bite-size pieces while calling out requests for ingredients. I pull things out of baskets and cupboards and madly scribble notes as she slices onion, chops seasoning pepper, grates garlic, pounds sive, squeezes lime, and shakes curry powder into the bowl with the steamed tail meat. “Do you have seasoning salt?” she asks, and I triumphantly produce my newly acquired Mrs. Dash. Dingis shakes her head sadly—the student has failed again. In truth, I had suspected an error when I saw the price at Foodland: way too much for something used regularly by local cooks. She promises to show me real seasoning salt when we next visit her house, and when I eventually read the ingredients on the label of the little plastic bag, the mystery is solved: The fine white powder is pure, unadulterated MSG.

  She tosses everything together—adding “a tip” of ketchup, another ingredient popular with island cooks—until the tail meat is well coated, then hands me the bowl to refrigerate. “It’s for your dinner tonight, after we go home.” Right before we’re ready to eat, she says, I’m to give the mixture a quick stir-fry in hot oil. Then she turns her attention to the rest of the lobster.

  Caribbean lobsters are different from their northern cold-water cousins. They’re spiny lobsters, genus Panulirus, characterized by prominent hard spines on the body and legs, very long, thick antennae, and—most importantly from an eater’s point of view—the absence of the large, meaty claws of Homarus americanus. Most of the spiny lobster’s meat is in its tail, although the whole lobster is edible and delicious. Pound for pound, it makes just as good and just as much eating as its northern counterpart, because a good-sized spiny lobster also has chunks of tender meat in its body, antennae, and legs.

  Which is why Dingis now shows me how to make what she calls “broth” from the remaining lobster. Break the legs, body, head, and antennae into manageable pieces and boil them up with seasonings, potatoes, carrots, flour dumplings, and “young figs.” I know I haven’t seen figs, young or old, anywhere on the island, and the combo of lobster and fig doesn’t somehow sound right. Having learned my lesson with the seasoning salt, I explain to Dingis what a fig is back home. Again, she looks at me with a combination of amusement and amazement at my ignorance. Here, she explains, a “fig” (I later also see it spelled “figue”) is a small, plump, finger-long banana. Young (green) figs are boiled and eaten like a starchy vegetable. With the potatoes and dumplings, they make the lobster “broth” a substantial dish—more like a hearty seafood stew—and I love the notion of stretching a single lobster to make two meals for two. There’s a wonderful economy here.

  As we discover that night and the next, the two dishes also taste unbelievably good. The curried stir-fried tail becomes our favorite way to eat lobster. The spices set up the flavor of the meat but don’t overpower it, and the meal doesn’t have the overwhelming richness that comes when you dunk each chunk in melted butter. However, I end up making lobster Dingis’s way only when it’s for the two of us. When we start having guests from back home, they invariably expect their lobster straight. Too bad.

  Steve takes everyone but Dingis for a spin in the dinghy and a swim on the beach. Though the kids live at the edge of the sea, they don’t get out on the water very often—never in this sort of inflatable dinghy—and they love it. Clutching Snack’s pontoons and each other, they scream as if they’re on an amusement park ride when the dinghy bounces over its own wake, and reach out to grab the spray. Then when Steve beaches the dinghy on Hog Island, they run back and forth through the shallows, splashing, belly-flopping—and still screaming with delight.

  Like many middle-aged and older island women, Dingis doesn’t swim, hates riding in Dwight’s boat—“he go tooooo fast”—and doesn’t particularly like being out on the water in any case. She and I stay behind and chat, woman to woman. We talk cooking, of course, but she also tells me about her marriage, her parents, and Gennel’s birth.

  It was during the time of the American invasion in 1983. Maurice Bishop’s socialist regime had taken over in a bloodless coup four years earlier and aligned itself with Fidel Castro, causing much concern in the United States. When Bishop was murdered by a hard-line Marxist faction in ’83, the United States had seen enough, and a joint American–Caribbean force invaded to “liberate” the island. Because of the turmoil, few buses were running, and Dingis had to walk all the way from Lower Woburn to the hospital in St. George’s to give birth, 5 hilly miles in the tropical heat. A staggering thought: I’d have trouble doing it not pregnant and in the peak of health. Much to my surprise, I learn she is just forty. She’s had to work hard, and it shows in her face. But although money is always very tight in her household, “No one goes hungry here,” she stresses. Like others we meet, she tells us they live with what the land and sea provide.

  A couple of days later, Dwight whizzes by and plops another lobster on our deck. Again, as with the mangoes, I assume a purchase, and I scurry below for my cruiser’s wallet. But, again, the money is waved off. “It’s a gift,” he says. “It’s thanks for your friendship.”

  I hope the noise didn’t bother you on Sunday,” Steve says apologetically to the guys at the bar on the Hog Island beach. The bar is just a shack, really: four rough walls with a counter outside under an extension of the palm-frond roof, and a couple of picnic coolers; no seating, unless you count the big
rocks that people sometimes perch on. No set opening times, either, but when someone’s here, you can get a cold locally brewed Carib beer or possibly a rum. On Sundays, the guys build a fire on the sand, lay a rack overtop, and barbecue chicken quarters and maybe a lobster or fish or two. It’s an excuse for people in the anchorage to gather for a potluck, bringing salads and desserts to go with the barbecued chicken they buy for $5 EC (about $1.90) apiece. Every once in a great while, a couple of pan players set up their steel drums and the unmistakable sound of the pans drifts across the water, coaxing the remaining stay-at-homes to come to shore for, oh, maybe just one beer.

  Today we rowed Snack to the beach—that is, Steve rowed while I provided encouragement from a comfy spot at the stern—so we can clean the bottom. Evicting sea critters from the underside of both Receta and Snack is a regular item on our chore list. Steve puts on a scuba tank to do Receta’s bottom (I’m responsible for the rest of the hull), but the easiest way to do Snack is to remove the outboard—we hoist it onto Receta using a simple pulley system—then row to shore, flip Snack over on the beach, and tackle the accumulated sea life with paint scrapers and scrub brushes. A fascinating little marine ecosystem develops between cleanings: tenacious barnacles, various shades and textures of evil-smelling green slime, seagrass, and, today, something new: flat, shimmering, jellylike disks that squirt at me when I try to dislodge them with my scraper.