Cultural Links

A Taste of Guyana

by Jack Robertiello

Like the country itself, food in Guyana is a polyglot of cultures and cuisines. The predominant English speaking South American nation, more often identified with the Caribbean than its own continent, today carries the culinary traces of many peoples.

While the country's population comprises five main ethnic groups East Indian, African, Amerindian, Chinese, and Portuguese-there are significant traces of British and Dutch influence as well. It was, after all, the colonial powers' interchange of sugar, rum, and slaves among Guyana and the islands of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Tobago that has led to the multiethnic makeup of those intermingled people. Today, dishes served in Trinidad, Tobago, and Jamaica are often similar, and differences exist primarily in the use of spices and indigenous fruits and vegetables.

Those of East Indian heritage, who make up roughly half the country's population, exert the strongest culinary influence in Guyana. After the abolition of slavery in the early nineteenth century, Indians migrated to Guyana under agreements of five-year indentured servitude to work on the rermaining plantations. The result of this mix of Indian curries and breads, African stews, British pastry, and Amerindian ways with native plants like cassava and chilies can be found in street stalls and corner restaurants in the capital of Georgetown, and increasingly, in urban centers of the U.S. where Caribbean people gather.

Along the streets of Georgetown, for instance, people buy little paper bags of roasted, salted chick-peas, known as channa, to munch as they walk. It is a dish straight from India but absorbed into the Guyanese stewpot. (To make channa, simply drain a can of cooked chick-peas, place them in a bowl and season them with salt and cayenne pepper to taste, blending in the seasoning well. Spread the chick-peas on a cookie sheet, sprinkle with a little more salt and cayenne, and slide the sheet under a broiler, shaking it once or twice while it broils. Cook for about five minutes, watching to make sure the chick-peas don't burn.)

Ask knowledgeable cooks and Caribbean food aficionados where to find the fluffiest meat patties, the tastiest Caribbean breads, and the best roti, and they'll probably send you to someplace where the cooks are Guyanese.

Guyanese pastries differ from those of other Caribbean countries by the fluffy pastry dough, made with vegetable shortening rather than beef suet, says Sybil BernardKerrutt, a Guyanese immigrant to the U.S. who runs a small empire of bakeries and restaurants in New York City. Beef patties are ubiquitous on the British-influenced Caribbean islands, but the Guyanese version tends to have a filling less fiery, more complex, and tastier than the others, with the dough fluffier and more biscuitlike. Guyanese bakers also prepare patties smaller than the paperback-sized patties Jamaicans enjoy. A Guyanese patty is more the size of a cocktail treat.

Bernard-Kerrutt may be the uncrowned queen of Guyanese food in New York. Shoppers leave her stores with arm loads of lemony, puffed-up tennis, or dinner, rolls; sweet pineapple tarts; and dense, gooey cassava pone. And those who sit down to eat at her restaurants favor the three most sought after main courses for expatriate Guyanese: pepperpot, roti, and chow mein. Pepperpot, a hearty restorative meant to soothe body and soul after a night out on the town, is basically a zesty oxtail stew enriched with inexpensive cuts of beef, pork, and chicken, and the distinctive aroma and flavor of cassareep.

Originally made by the Arawaks, cassareep derives from peeled and grated cassava root, which is then boiled, the juice flavored with brown sugar, cloves, and cinnamon, and then reduced further until it is a dark brown, syrupy liquid, looking a bit like caramel. It is considered a meat tenderizer and is now bottled commercially, so cooks can attempt authentic pepperpot without the additional intimidating step of finding and tackling cassava (although it is com- monly found in markets in many cities with substantial South and Central American or Caribbean populations).

Some cooks say the only proper way to make a good pepperpot is to take the leftovers of a really good one and start a new stew with it. The best-tasting pepperpot may have been cooking for months or even years-by the time it is actually served, the pot always bubbling away on the back of the stove. Some recipes are handed down like family heirlooms. A truly unique pepperpot, it is said, takes years to develop its own distinct flavor.

Roti is the thin, Indian-style pancake that gives its name to the many curry dishes Guyanese like to serve. Called roti skins, they are used to dip into the fragrant bowls of beef, chicken, shrimp, lamb, goat, or vegetables. Among aficionados, a good, crepelike roti skin is considered essential. In roti parlors, balls of the dough are rolled up and left to rise a bit before being pounded and patted into flat rounds, much like pizza dough. Cooked atop a hot stove, the thin roti skin can be cooked ahead or prepared just as the curry is ready to serve.

While Trinidadians like to fill their roti skins with a vegetable and chicken curry mix, wrap the skin around the mixture, and eat the resulting handful almost like a burrito, Guyanese serve theirs with a bowl of curry and a plate of roti skins on the side, folded like napkins. Then the thin bread is torn and dipped into the curry.

Transplanted to the New World from India, the mixture of spices known collectively in the West as curry varies from island to island just as it varies among regions in India. All spice, for instance, generally unknown in India, is a central ingredient in some American curries. Guyanese curries can be hot or mild, depending on what spices the cook grinds, although many simply use a premixed canned curry powder like Madras.

Chop suey, chow mein, and lo mein are so popular in Guyana that the country exports its own brand of Chinese style noddles used in the dishes, as well as frozen packages of the two dishes. Other foods, such as the Chinese cabbage known as bok choy, are popular in Guyana, although the Guyanese call it pak choi. Guyana's versions of these dishes owe little to China except for the names, the noodles, and the fast, wok-frying used to prepare the dishes.

Refreshing drinks are another popular street food in Georgetown-for example, mauby, sorrel punch, ginger beer, and peanut punch, a delectable and rich milk drink made with peanut butter. Adults find the drink takes on an entirely different complexion with the addition of Barbadian or Trinidadian rum.