This is yet another leftover special I rock from time to time at lunch. With boiled yam (cooked in salted water) and Smoked Herring Choka (some say stewed smoked herrings) on hand, basically all I did was add cabbage and warmed everything together. You’re free to add more tomato, bell pepper and anything else you…
This is CLASSIC as it gets, when it comes to comfort food in my home growing up in the Caribbean. While my sisters never really cared for ground provisions (yam, dasheen, cassava, eddoes etc), my brother and I were just as our dad or at least tried to copy him in any way we could….
This is one fella you can take out of the Caribbean, but you can never take the “Caribbean” out of him. I’ve had the opportunity to dine in various countries / restaurants and while many of the dishes I’ve experienced we’re definitely tasty, I will always head back ‘home’ to the islands when I need something comforting. Such is the case when I eat dishes containing yam, dasheen, green banana, eddoes, cassava and other ingredients we refer to as being ‘provision’. I’ll always remember weekends when mom would prepare this dish for me, my brother and dad.. my sisters we’re somewhat picky eaters.
One of my favorite soups to look forward to on “Soup Saturdays” was when mom would have a massive pot of saltbeef (salted beef) soup, packed with ground provisions bubbling away on the stove. Due to the price and the fact that sourcing ‘good’ salted beef was difficult, we didn’t have saltbeef soup often. I still get a chuckle when I do thick heavy soups during the summer months here in Canada and people would say “isn’t it too hot for soups?”. For the most part the Caribbean is always hot and it’s tradition throughout the Caribbean that on Saturday’s we enjoy a piping hot bowl of soup.
Did you know that the tuber most people outside the Caribbean call yams are really a milder sweet potato? On the islands we have several varieties of yams and in this recipe I’ll be using Kush Kush, which is probably one of the more harder varieties to source. I recall as a young fella on…
I’ll admit that I have a weakness for all types of ground provisions, but I have a special attachment to yams. In soups, steamed, boiled, mashed, scalloped, roasted.. I’m country to heart and love ground provisions (or “food” as my Jamaican brothers and sisters would say) in all forms. Moving to Canada all those moons…
In this post I’ll attempt to explain what “Ground Provisions” are, the part it plays in Caribbean cuisine and a simple recipe for preparing everyday ground provisions. In previous recipes I’ve shared, I’ve commented on using ground provisions and over time I’ve come to realize that I had left my readers a bit confused when…
For those of you not familiar with the Trinbagonian accent… “pong” simply refers to “pound”. So basically we’ll be pounding or mashing the yam in cooked salted cod and other ingredients to bring out the true essence of this wonderful “country” dish. This dish may have different names such as “yam choka” or “yam talkari”,…
