Colorful Caribbean Cuisine

Colorful Vegetables
I am never ceased to be dazzled and amazed on a daily basis here in Belize. Dazzled by the extra dose of optic stimulation consisting of stunning contrasts in hues. It occurs in nature all around me at all times, and it occurs by human hands daily as well, perhaps inspired by natures infinite palette. It occurs in the personalities here as well. I can't help think that it becomes cause and effect that is self perpetuating. What ever the reason for this colorful cornucopia here in Belize, and the Caribbean, I love it.
In fact, I was born to participate in a colorful scheme of life, and this of course bleeds into my kitchen and the resulting creations that emerge from my culinary playground. Even a simple medley of vegetables becomes a kaleidoscope of color. I seek out the red, yellows and green peppers from the veggie stand. I prefer the smaller locally grown thin skinned peppers that sometimes come in half green and half red with a bit of purple streaking through them. The larger varieties with thick and often bitter meat are available in perfect colors, the result of grafting for more volume per fruit, but are far less sweet than the un-grafted peppers. Add some zucchini and yellow squash, purple eggplant and white onion and the result is a visually stimulating Caribbean Vegetable Blend that is its own garnish.


Colorful Crabs


Colorful Chairs








Colorful Everything!

And so it goes, surrounded by a
plethera of colors everyday from the
beautiful flowers to the colorful personalities
to the clothes and the food and the flora. It's
like Las Vegas without the electric bill.
Even the uderwater world of the reef is alive with colors.
The fish and the coral all echo the theme:
We are alive! Alive with Caribbean Color.
It says : Have fun. Be happy. Enjoy.
All of the ramifications that I would like to think my food exudes. Enjoy, have fun eating and cooking, be colorful, like the flowers and the birds. Like the Spanish and the Mayan and the Creole and the Garifuna......and like the Chef in Belize ...........You'd better Belize it!

Mediteribbean Cuisine

Well, October is behind us now and we are gearing up for the season which, for us, officially starts now. Lots of hours have been spent in the kitchen, and as I do often, a menu re-design has transformed our menu into a plethora of dishes founded from my roots and my passion for Mediterranean dishes and the availability of fresh Caribbean ingredients. The result is a selection of fresh seafood, pork, beef, lamb, chicken and vegetarian prepared in the simple,but elegant style of Italy, Greece and Spain, which I call Mediteribbean.
The result of the new beachfront smoker and wood grill, now complete with stainless steel lid, has sent my culinary imagination on fire (pun intended) in finding ways to infuse the smokey flavor of Craboo Wood into some of the dishes that come out of my main kitchen. One trip to the veggie market in Dangriga answered my own question. I bought abundant amounts of zucchini, Roma tomatoes, eggplant, white onions and sweet peppers, which I would cut into large enough chunks and grill them over the Craboo wood. First I marinated the veggies in olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar, lots of mashed garlic and a spoonful of Dijon. When the fire was ready, I grill the veggies, closing the lid for a few minutes to dampen the fire and let the wood smoke for a little while.

When the veggies are cooked, I can use them in lots of dishes. I finely dice a little and added to one of our side dishes, a cornmeal polenta and the result was an absolutely sublime creamy polenta with a hint of smoke and sweet peppers. It blended perfectly with the Romano cheese I add to it at the last moment. Now THAT'S Mediteribbean. Another use for these veggies is a great additive to some crispy sauteed vegetables for my vegetarian marinara. I'll add a few of the larger pieces after I've sauteed the other veggies and just when I add the marinara sauce. After a light tossing, the subtle smokey flavors add depth to the marinara that would be impossible to ascertain without the smokey vegetables. The uses for these veggies is endless, to using them actually as a spice blend to centering them on a piece of crostini made from our home made sourdough bread, drizzling olive oil over the top and a little shaved Parmesan. I put into a hot oven, and in a few minutes have a great appetizer or salad accompaniment.
The grill is not just for vegetables, mind you , It's versatility lend to the slow Jerk smoking we do with our pork tenderloins and whole chickens. We serve the slow smoked pork tenderloins, which have been rubbed with my own jerk spice blend, over a bed of spicy Cuban black beans after it has been basted with my homemade honey jerk BBQ sauce, to which I have added ground smoked habenero peppers. The smoked chickens are used as an entree and as a topping for our BBQ chicken pizza. This pizza uses our BBQ sauce as the sauce and is finished in the end with crumbled Gorgonzola cheese. The smokey chicken also in nice in pasta, like sweet Italian sausage and smoked chicken Alfredo. The shining star of the grill will come every Friday night, while we simplify our menu and offer Lobster, Shrimp and Fish as well as steak, cooked to order on the wood grill. We make a fabulous basting sauce by melting butter and adding an equal amount of our BBQ sauce, chopped pineapples and a plethora of ground peppers. The simple flavors of the grill take care of everything, the rib steaks are rubbed and basted with garlic oil. The upper rack of the grill will keep roasted corn on the cob hot and the resulting plate can only be described as....well....Mediteribbean. One thing I am anxious to try, will be a wood grilled pizza, I'll have my camera ready and report on that in my next blog, but I think I can place it on a kamal on the rack, then transfer directly to the rack after a generous basting of olive oil.

As menu planning goes with me, that is just a small sample of the actual new menu. Other items of course feature lots of fresh fish, like pesto baked grouper or Seafood marinara. Fillet Oscar Mediteribbean are medallions of beef tenderloin, pan seared and topped with diced lobster meat, hearts of palm and a Bearnaise sauce, served with pesto potatoes. Shrimp scampi has been a mainstay on my menus for my entire 30 year cooking career, but the availability of the fresh shrimp from the many shrimp farms around make it a must. We also prepare a Lobster Tail Scampi appetizer for two, featuring a butterflied lobster tail sauteed in olive oil, lemon, wine and garlic, the signature scampi sauce of generations. It is also enhanced by a fresh herb lend I chop nightly consisting of herbs from my upstairs container garden which is on the "back" of the building, sheltered from the wind driven salt air that can burn delicate little herbs. I find the oregano does well anywhere, and imagine clumps of it coming out of scraggly rocks overhanging the Mediterranean sea on precarious cliffs. Its tough. The basil, once established does well as does a variety of thyme here. The 3 herbs make for a great blend and add the extra freshness whether added to a dish while cooking or sprinkled over the top of a pizza or pasta.
To round out the Mediteribbean menu, I've selected a center cut of boneless pork loin to star as the main attraction in Pork Loin Picatta. After cutting about three-quarter inch thick medallions, I pound out the cutlets, dredge in a seasoned flour and saute in olive oil with white wine, capers, garlic and lemon. Served with pasta with roasted vegetables and topped with a blend of Parmesan and Romano cheeses. Keeping in mind that this is of course just the base menu and that 3-6 features of the day are usually added at the 11th hour as fishermen return or my ADD personality sees a breadfruit and ..... God forbid..... I go off on a Breadfruit tangent, or some similar such circumstance that pretty much describes my culinary career. Indeed, I can get very excited about a simple edible morsel and my imagination can take just about any ingredient and make it center stage for an evening or 2. "Its what defines a passion," I tell my wife, after waking her at 3am to tell her my latest food preparation fantasy.
"It defines something!" she mumbled as she rolled over and went back to sleep.
Angela too, has been refining recipes for her ever changing dessert menu. Chocolate is always the favorite and she brought lots of specialty items for her desserts back with her from the states. It will be interesting to see what she comes up with in her secret labratory with all those measuring spoons and other items I try never to use.
For now....You'd Better Belize it.... and now you're hungry too!

Basil, Papaya and Mr. Ventura

It has been a whirlwind first 6 weeks in Belize. Aside from the usual paint and nails and re-establishing my contacts for fresh fish filet's, lobster and imported culinary niceties like arborio rice and cous cous, I was re-establishing my sensitive herb garden. The salt air on the coast is hard on the non-native varieties of Italian Basil, dill, sage, marjoram and thyme, so I seek out small micro-climates out of the wind, on the back sides of buildings, offering protection and some partial shade. One such area I had established last season was, happily, right outside the kitchen door. One big basil plant remained upon my return this year and I was able to make a very big batch of pesto before my well meaning do-all maintenance yard man, Machine, fried it with some non-organic fertilizer. I have hauled in some fertile dirt from the Sittee River and changed out the soil and have now re-planted basil, dill and sage there. I'll keep you posted with pictures as they begin to sprout.
High point of my little garden forays is the maturity of 3 papaya trees which I started in March. When they were 3 feet tall by the time I left in late April, I planted them near the driveway and in front of the entry steps. When I came back in late September, they were 15 feet tall and laden with fruit. Guests now enjoy fresh from the tree papaya with yogurt and any other fresh fruit from the local stand in Hopkins village. I was saddened to hear of the death of Mr. Ventura over the summer. He was an elderly, slightly overweight Garifuna man that became my friend by way of me practicing the Garinagu language on him. The Garifuna, of which Hopkins is probably 80%, are descendants of Africans who were on slave ships which crashed into the reef in the 1700's. the surviving Africans mingled and married with the local Carib Indians and settled in groups in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. The language that evolved to these culturally vibrant people is a mix of African and Arawac Indian. Since the staff in my busy little kitchen and restaurant are all young Garifuna who speak the language to each other, I try to learn as much as I can, usually things to do with food and drink, but also saying of life etc. By learning a new sentence each day, I soon began to steer conversations towards words I knew in Garifuna and such was the case with Mr. Ventura and I.
"Abba lebu green peppers, bieme lebu jicama," I said the first time I met him.(1 pound green peppers, 2 pounds jicama).
The startled gentleman asked where I learned to speak Arawac, and I told him I was just learning and my staff taught me.
My other great encounters with Mr. Ventura showcased a skill I developed from my many years buying produce and meats, and that is I am very good at estimating the weight of anything from 1/2 pound to 25 poundsw. I can fill a bag with any vegetable or fruit, weigh it in my hands and come to with-in one ounce every time.
I would walk to the hanging scale in the old vegetable stand and hold up bag after bag of vegetables, proclaiming its weight in Garinagu before placing it on the scale and watch as time after time I got it right. This always prompts me to bet a banana or bag of fresh roasted peanuts(Banana= 10 cents, peanuts 50 cents for a bag) to any new young recruit at the vegetable stand and Mr. Ventura would chuckle each time as he watched as I would eat my banana and tell the new guy that it is the absolute best banana I have ever eaten because I won it from him.
On another occasion, the ve getable stand was very busy, with a lot of locals buying one or 2 -50 cent items. I have learned patience in Belize, and indeed find it entertaining to see the people in big hurries for nothing so I patiently waited my turn when a Belizean working from one of the larger restaurant/resorts on the beach came in wanting a large amount of potatoes right now! An exchange of words in Garifuna took place and Mr. Ventura proceeded to ignore the man completely, even serving others that came in after him first. The last straw was when the old man looked at me, asked me how much of this and that I had, never putting it on the scale and allowing me to just pay for it with-out ever weighing it. That sent the "hurried up" man out the door with steam shooting from his ears. That was my chance to spring a new Garifuna saying I had been practicing.
"Fuda Bah, Chulu Beya Haruga
Beyba-ba-dan, chulu beya Oogaen," I said to Mr. Ventura after the episode.
(Hurry up- and get there tomorrow, take your time and get there today.)
"You got that exactly right my brother, " he said.
And we both had a great laugh.