Enjoy Caribbean Dishes, Spare No Bones

Caribbean cuisine is a fusion of African, Creole, Cajun, Amerindian, European (French, Portuguese, British, Dutch, Irish, Spanish/Latin American), East Indian/South Asian, Persian, Arab, Chinese and Javanese/Indonesian cuisine.

These traditions were brought from many different countries when they went to the Caribbean. In addition, the population has created styles that are unique to the region.

Ingredients that are common in most islands' dishes are rice, plantains, beans, cassava, culantro, bell peppers, chickpeas, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, coconut, and any of various meats that are locally available like beef, poultry, pork or fish.

A characteristic seasoning for the region is a green herb and oil based marinade which imparts a flavor profile which is quintessentially Caribbean in character.

Ingredients may include garlic, onions, scotch bonnet peppers, celery, green onions, and herbs like culantro, marjoram, rosemary, tarragon and thyme.

This green seasoning is used for a variety of dishes like curries, stews and roasted meats.

Traditional dishes are so important to regional culture that, for example, the local version of Caribbean goat stew has been chosen as the official national dish of Montserrat and is also one of the signature dishes of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Another popular dish in the Anglophone Caribbean is called Cook-up, or pelau.

Ackee and saltfish is another popular dish that is unique to Jamaica.

Callaloo is a dish containing leafy vegetables spinach and sometimes okra amongst others, widely distributed in the Caribbean, with a distinctively mixed African and indigenous character.

The variety of dessert dishes in the area also reflects the mixed origins of the recipes.

In some areas, Black Cake, a derivative of English Christmas pudding may be served, especially on special occasions.

Over time, food from the Caribbean has evolved into a narrative technique through which their culture has been accentuated and promoted.

However, by studying Caribbean culture through a literary lens there then runs the risk of generalizing exoticist ideas about food practices from the tropical.

Some food theorists argue that this depiction of Caribbean food in various forms of media contributes to the inaccurate conceptions revolving around their culinary practices, which are much more grounded in unpleasant historical events.

Therefore, it can be argued that the connection between the idea of the Caribbean being the ultimate paradise and Caribbean food being exotic is based on inaccurate information.


Tourism Observer

AFRICA: African Cuisine

Traditionally most of Africa cuisines use a combination of locally cereal grains, available fruits and vegetables, as well as meat and milk products. In some parts of the Africa, the traditional diet features a preponderance of curd, fresh and healthy vegetables, whey and products milk.

In much of Tropical Africa areas, cow milk cannot be produced locally because it may be rare .Depending on the region of this continent, there are also sometimes quite significant and a lot of differences in the drinking and eating habits throughout the Africa’s many populations: the Horn of Africa, North Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa each have their own preparation techniques, distinctive dishes and consumption mores.

Central African Cuisine

Central African cuisine includes cooking traditions, practices, ingredients the cuisines, and foods of the Central African Republic. Agriculture in the country includes yellow onion, sorgum, yam, spinach, millet, palm oil, banana, okra, rice and garlic.

Imported ingredients and crops from American origin include sweet potato, chili peppers manioc, peanuts, maize and tomato. In this part of Africa additional foods include, chiles peanuts and onions garlic.

Although in African cuisine fish is used in different dishes, and a lot of other sources of protein include insects such as grasshoppers, crickets’ cicadas or termites.

Meats in Central Africa cuisine include goat and chicken. African staple foods include such as millet, rice, starches, sorghum and sesame.

Different sauces and vegetables are also consumed. Roadside all over Africa stalls sell foods such as Makara (a type of fried bread) and baked goods or barbecued meat and snacks, sandwiches etc. Normally Muslims are prohibited from drinking or eating something that is cooked with alcohol.

In Central Africa the legal drinking age is 18. In Central Africa, K-Cinq area is famous and it is known for its smaller but very beautiful restaurants serving with reasonably priced every traditional dishes served. The capital city of Bangui has hotel restaurants and western foods.

East Africa

East Africa area is home to mainly Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi and Somalia and Somaliland, Rwanda and of course Uganda. Like most African foods, food in this area consists of dishes made from grains, rice, millet, yam, beans and cowpeas, flours for bread, including sorghum, maize, and stews cooked with meat and vegetables.

Fresh butter and fresh milk features in many authentic foods in East Africa. So a variety of spices curry and coconut milk. In those areas variations are plentiful, due to religious influences and ethnic, contacts of these indigenous African populations with Arabs from the Horn of Arabian and Africa world.

Like the typical African food all over the Africa, preparation time for some of these kind of meals can take up one to five hours per meal. For example the Cambuulo, prepared from Azuki beans may take up to five hours to boil to attain the desired tenderness in this area. Barring different regions, a three times a day meal in East Africa will be made up of:

Breakfast cuisine – East African breakfast would consist of specially food with baked bread Ahooh, or Chapati in Kenya and Uganda, in Somali and Somaliland canjeera . Those specialties are usually served with different vegetable stew and sometimes with sour porridge for example the Kenyan uji. Food in African breakfast from ground cereals and sour milk are not uncommon for the nomadic population.

Lunch – In East African lunch is the most important food meal of the day. In African culture lunch would be served in the afternoons. Most of the time is served with a heavy meal. Same like other most African foods all over the Africa, it consists mashed starchy meals made from different tubers and gains.

Dependent upon different regions, and simply boiled white or brownish rice, eaten with a lot of vegetable fish and stews or meat to ground corn meals, mixed with potatoes such as Irio and Githeri or even Ughali in Kenya is actually common.

Dinner – in this part of Africa is often not different from what they eat as lunch. One of the best East Africans specialties is Kuku Paka, it is a delicious food with chicken coconut curry which is served with white rice, or sometimes Cambuulo which is made from cooked beans with butter and sugar and usually is served with rice or bread and is so famous in East African cuisine.

There is a small difference because a meal for lunch today could be cooked but in smaller quantity and can be served as dinner for tomorrow. In east African food all these different meals are often served with a blend of vegetables, salads and fresh fruits or sweets.

Horn Of Africa

The main traditional dishes in Eritrean cuisine and Ethiopian cuisine are something like all other African foods all over the Africa. Some of them are tsebhis or stews which is served with injera which is cooked with flatbread made from sorghum or teff, wheat or hilbet which is paste made with from legumes, mainly lentil, faba beans.

Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine especially in the northern half of those two places are very similar. Injera is typical African food which is made out of a variation and blend of: wheat, barley, teff, sorghum and resembles slightly sour pancake and corn a spongy.

The best known Eritrean cuisine involves various meat or vegetable side entrées and pots and pans, usually thick stew, or possibly a wat. This kind connected with food is served on top of injera, a large sourdough flatbread made from teff flour.

One won’t eat with utensils, but instead uses injera to scoop the entrées and side pots and pans. Tihlo prepared from roasted barley flour is incredibly popular in Amhara, Agame, in addition to Awlaelo (Tigrai). Traditional Ethiopian cuisine has no pork or shellfishof any kind, as they are forbidden inside the Islamic, Jewish, and Ethiopian Orthodox Orlando faiths.

It is also very common to eat from the same dish during the table with a small grouping of people.

Somali cuisine varies through region to region and involves an exotic mixture connected with diverse culinary influences. It is the product of Somalia’s wealthy tradition of trade in addition to commerce.

Despite the assortment, there remains one thing that unites different regional cuisines: all meal is served halal. You’ll find therefore no pork pots and pans, alcohol is not functioned, nothing that died without treatment is eaten, and no blood is incorporated.

Qaddo or lunch is frequently elaborate. Varieties of bariis (rice), the most famous probably being basmati, usually serve since the main dish. Spices including cumin, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon andsage are utilized to aromatize these distinct rice dishes. Somalis work dinner as late since 9 pm. During Ramadan, dinner is frequently served after Tarawih prayers – from time to time as late as 11 pm hours.

African Cuisine: Biltong,Fufu,Injera,Couscous,Ugali,Millet,Cassava,Matooke ,Rice

African cuisine is as diverse as the hundreds of different cultures and groups that inhabit the continent. This diversity is reflected in the many local culinary traditions in terms of choice of ingredients, style of preparation and cooking techniques. Many of the dishes are also affected by the subsistence nature of living in many parts of the continent – you find farmers, herdsmen and fishermen everywhere. The crops they grow or the animals they keep thus affect the popular dishes in their regions.

The dishes have also been influenced by foreign visitors and invaders. The food of North Africa has been heavily influence by the Phoenicians of the 1st century who brought sausages, followed by the Carthaginians who introduced wheat, then the nomadic Berbers adapted the semolina from wheat into couscous – a main staple diet in the region. From the 7th century onwards, the Arabs introduced a variety of spices, like saffron, cinnamon, ginger and cloves and, from the New World, they got chillies, tomatoes and potatoes.

In East Africa the Arab influence on cuisine is evident. Settling on the coast over 1,000 years ago, the Arabs sailed in with rice and spices, particularly noticeable in the Swahili foods of the coastal regions. They also brought lemons, organdies and domestic pigs from China and India. Next came the British Empire and with it Indian workers who brought their foods with them, such as spiced vegetable curries, lentil soups, chapattis and pickles. The British themselves also influence food by bringing in new breeds of sheep, cattle and goats along with high-quality coffee.

As we go more inland, even though cattle, sheep and goats are widespread in eastern Africa, they are often regarded as a form of currency and a store of wealth by pastoralists. So while they may be used for dairy products, they are not often used for their meat. Many people in the eastern region therefore rely heavily on mainly on grains, beans and vegetables, with fish providing protein in lake and river regions. One of the most widespread staples in eastern Africa, and in southern Africa too, is ground maize. Maize flour is cooked with water to form a stiff porridge or dough - called ugali, nsima or sadza, depending where you are.

It may be neighbouring East Africa but the food in the Horn of Africa is very different. Here the Islamic and Christian faiths have greatly impacted the food. There is no pork for starters, and as for Coptic Christians they adapted to the meat-free fast days with an increased use of pulses, lentils and chickpeas. The main traditional dishes in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine are very similar and both are dominated by tsebhis (stews) served with injera - a flatbread made from teff, wheat, or sorghum, also found in Somalia. In Somalia an interesting addition to their cuisine is pasta, which arrived with the Italians in the 1880s, and sweet dishes that came with the Arabs and Yemenis.

Just before the British and the Indians, the Portuguese came to Africa and introduced techniques of roasting and marinating. This is evident in East Africa with the nyama choma (roast meat) culture, but also in Southern Africa.

Southern Africa has the most varied cuisines of any region on the continent, this is a result of the blend of cultures – the indigenous African tribal societies, European and Asian populations. Most of the African ethnic communities have diets that include meat and milk, some vegetables and grains. The Portuguese influence saw the introduction of piri-piri (chilli seasoning) into the region, and the European settlers brought with them curing techniques that produced the infamous cured meat – biltong.

West and Central Africa were far less influenced by the European settlers. Centuries before the Europeans arrived, West African people were trading with the Arab world in spices and thus typically West African food is filled with hot spices. With the least contact with the “outside world”, Central African food remains the closest to traditional ingredients and cooking techniques. The only notable adoption of cassava, peanut, and Chile pepper plants arrived along with the slave trade during the early 16th century.

After careful consideration of the various regions and cross-boundary recipes here are the top 20 most popular dishes on the continent:


Biltong

Cured meat exported all over Africa, originally from South Africa


Fufu

Very popular in West Africa, it is made by boiling starchy food crops like cassava, yams or cooking plantains and then pounding them into a dough-like consistency


Mandazi

A form of fried bread, taken in sweet or savoury form, popular in East Africa

Injera

A sourdough-risen flatbread with a unique, slightly spongy texture, popular in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia


Jollof rice

The most popular rice dish in West Africa, the most common basic ingredients are rice, tomatoes, tomato paste, onion, salt and red pepper


Chermoula

A mixture of herbs, oil, lemon juice, pickled lemons, garlic, cumin, and salt very popular in North Africa


Nyama Choma/ Braaivleis /Mechoui

Many different names and cooking techniques, but meat roast over charcoal is popular all over the continent


Couscous

Made from steamed and dried durum wheat, couscous has become a popular alternative to rice and pasta in North Africa


Garri

A popular West African starchy carbohydrate made from pounded and fermented cassava tubers


Kachumbari

A fresh tomato and onion salad dish popular in the cuisines of Madagascar, East Africa and the African Great Lakes region


Tagine

A historically Berber slow-cooked meat, chicken or fish dish from North Africa, named after the type of earthenware pot in which it is cooked.


Fried Plantain or Dodo

Found anywhere that plantains grow, this is a staple on the continent and served with meats dishes.


Shahan Ful

A vegetarian fava bean dish very common in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan.


Biryanis and Pilaus

With Indian origins, these rice dishes are fragrant and flavourful, mostly popular along the East African coast.


Suya

A spicy shish kebab-like skewered meat delicacy in West Africa.


Wat, We’t or Wot

A highly flavourful and spicy Ethiopian or Eritrean stew that is prepared with meat or a variety of vegetables.


Feijoada

A typically Portuguese stew of beans with beef and pork which is popular in southern Africa.


Mafé

A famous and popular West African stew with meat simmered in a sauce thickened with ground peanuts.


Sadza/Nsima/Ugali

Cooked with water to a porridge or dough-like consistency, this is the most common staple starch in East Africa, the Great Lakes region and southern Africa.


Piri Piri Sauce

A hot and fragrant sauce originally from Portugal but widely adopted in southern African cooking.