PreviousSweet & savoury
DINING & ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE - JULY 2007
Sweet & savoury
Guineps, dillies & soursops
Picture yourself in a hammock on a powdery white beach. Coconut trees sway in the tropical breeze. You could be anywhere, but if you are sucking on a guinep, you must be in The Bahamas.
It?s well worth the effort to seek out the best of traditional Bahamian fruit and vegetables. Although you probably won?t find them in the supermarket, they?re usually available at one of the many roadside stalls when the season is right. Guineps, Bahamian oranges and other home-grown fruit are sold by the bagful to drivers waiting in traffic.
Summer delight
If you haven?t experienced the unique taste of guineps, you?re in for an addictive treat. In late summer, they?re a delight.Puncture the leathery green skin of this small, oval fruit with your thumbnail to expose a pale, jelly-like flesh adhering to the large seed. Remove the skin, pop the fruit into your mouth?it?s like nothing you?ve ever tasted.
Arguably, the tastiest small tropical fruit is the hog plum, which signals the beginning of fall. These inch-long bright yellow or orange plums have an intense mango-like flavour much loved throughout the islands.
Another local favourite is the sapodilla, or dilly. It might not look too delicious with its kiwi-like features, but the ugly exterior belies its inner beauty.
Ripe dillies pull apart easily to reveal segments with large black seeds. Discard the seeds and eat the segments as you would an orange. Superior dillies taste sweet, reminiscent of brown sugar. You might even find crystals of sugar in the flesh, and the skin is edible.
Dillies have a long bearing season from March all the way through to early summer.
Sweetness is also the hallmark of the sugar apple, a fruit that is plentiful from late summer through to fall and winter. Pull off each outer segment for a morsel of sugary-white flesh, discarding the coarse skin and oval seeds. You can?t rush the experience, but who would want to?
From late spring to late summer, the mamey sapote is sought out by Bahamians for its somewhat floury, distinctive flavour. It?s one of the few fruits to retain its complete scientific name, which sounds like ?mammy supporter? in Bahamian vernacular. That?s the best way to ask for it.
The brown-skinned fruit is four to six inches long and shaped like an American football. Its flesh is orange-red and there?s usually only one seed to remove.
Veggies with a difference
You can?t spend any amount of time in The Bahamas without encountering the ubiquitous peas ?n rice, made with pigeon peas. If you visit during the early months of the year, you?ll notice a much fuller, fresher taste to the side dish. This is because Bahamians make it with the fresh, green peas of a perennial shrub imported from West Africa hundreds of years ago.
Another vegetable used in rice dishes is okra. But don?t expect anything like the glutinous Louisiana gumbo. Bahamian chefs usually fry down sliced okra, giving the finished product a nutty taste.
Although not normally considered a tropical vegetable, there?s a local variety of pumpkin which Bahamians love to put in soups and rice dishes. The year-round calabaza is drier and more savoury than the northern field pumpkin, and very different in appearance with its elongated pear shape and mottled cream, yellow and green skin.
And for dessert
Strangely enough, considering the climate, The Bahamas? most popular dessert is a steamed pudding, a legacy from British colonial times. Guava duff is made from a dough studded with slices of guava, jelly rolled, wrapped in cloth and steamed for several hours to give a light, fluffy texture. The finishing touch is a sauce made from strained guava pulp flavoured with dark rum.
Hundreds of small, hard seeds embedded in the flesh of the pear-shaped, baseball-sized guava make it difficult to enjoy raw, even though it is absolutely delicious. There isn?t a single seed in a good guava duff, however. Guava is available year-round, but is most plentiful in the summer.
You won?t find the most popular ice cream in The Bahamas in a Baskin-Robbins outlet. Soursop ice-cream is home-made and naturally light and refreshing with a clean sub-acid taste.
Soursop grows on trees and looks like a spiky, three-dimensional comma. The skin?s thorn-like spikes look dangerous but are soft to the touch. It?s amazing that the thin skin of this large fruit can contain such a vast amount of translucent white pulp. If the soursop ripens on the tree and falls, it makes quite a mess. There?s no way of defining the unique taste of the soursop?you just have to try
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