Cookin in the Caribbean

The first meal I ever cooked for Steve was in St. Maarten right after we both got off of the Sea Dancer. We had a little rent-free apartment that was owned by the Divi Resort. We went out and bought a few items to cook with and dishes to eat on. The first thing he wanted me to cook for him was fried chicken. Since I was female, he assumed I was capable of doing this and that it would be delicious. It was his favorite meal and he had not had it in a while. I knew not a thing about frying chicken or anything else. I knew you had to bread it and put it into oil so that is what I did. I didn’t know that the oil needed to be very hot before you put it in and I had no clue how to season or get the flour to stick to the chicken. It turned out very greasy and a little bloody on the bone but he ate it anyway. He learned that day that he had not married a woman but a girl and this girl did not learn from her older generation how to cook the old fashioned Southern way that so many others had. I learned that day that the man I was with would eat anything!

Steve didn’t ask me to cook too many other specialty dishes after the chicken. I don’t recall how or what we ate after that but I’m sure it was mostly simple. We did enjoy buying from the local markets and using what was available. We weren’t in St. Maarten for very long. From there we went to Norman, Oklahoma for a few months while we prepared to return to the islands and run a B& B on Salt Cay at the salt raker plantation house that Steve had lived in before embarking on the Sea Dancer as a stow away.

We stayed rent free in an apartment in Norman that was rented by the owner of the Brown House, Howard Williams. He and his son, Dale, were neighbors of Steve’s in Tulsa when Steve and Dale were in grade school. Howard called Steve Hunk and liked to put him to work. It was Howard’s suggestion to send him to Salt Cay to fix up the old plantation house for him and Steve was glad to have the offer because it was winter and he was freezing his tail off doing construction near Beaver Lake in Arkansas at the time.

Steve and I were only in Norman for a short while. We went there in the summertime and I thought we would only be there a few weeks but it turned into a few months. I worked on the B & B and marketing but got a part time job waiting tables for a while because we had no cash flow. Howard put Steve to work on things he needed done for his radio station but for the most part we didn’t work except on putting things together for our trip and running the B & B.

We bought a large orange cooking pot just to make popcorn in while we lived in Norman. We ate a lot of popcorn then, while we lived in Salt Cay, and we still do today. That pot was with us for a very long time. We had brought it back with us from all of our travels and sadly had to replace it when the handle fell off several years after we had been in Arkansas. No other pots have been as good. We never washed that orange one and it became difficult to tell it was orange after a while. Our daughter used it many times before it was retired. We threw it out but now I wish we had made a planter out of it or kept it somehow.
Maria from The Dominican Republic came to work for us at the Brown House B & B on salt Cay. She was fantastic! She worked very hard and produced some incredible meals for us and our guests. I found her after one disastrous day when I had hired a very large girl named Manuela to help me. I told Manuela I did not know how to make rice and asked her to get it started before she had to leave but tell me what I needed to know after she was gone. I gave her a large, three gallon size aluminum pot and asked Manuela to get the rice started in this.

In the islands they serve peas and rice with just about every meal and each island did it a little differently. I learned later to do it all myself and do it well and this day with Manuela taught me a lot. She had put so much rice into that huge pot that when the rice swelled, the pot couldn’t hold it! I had no idea what to do other than get some more pots and scoop it into them, add more water and hope for the best. I recall some of it never getting cooked enough and the bottom getting scorched but I think we had plenty of rice to eat for a while from that one pot that Manuela started for me. I think she used an entire bag of rice! I didn’t have enough containers to put it all in the refrigerator and I ended up dumping some of it in the sea, which was just outside the kitchen door.

So, Maria came to the rescue the very next day! I was so thankful to have her even though she laughed at me for not knowing anything about cooking, the kitchen, or preparing meals for our guests. She was sweet to show me how she did things. I especially enjoyed the meats she cooked by steaming. I still use that technique and everyone loves it when I do.

Maria came to work for me again at the Windmills later. She was pregnant and doing housekeeping there rather than cooking but would sometimes do lunches. It was a very small place and we had few guests so the work was easy. The evening menu was preset for each night of the week and would rotate. This simplified shopping and inventory and insured a consistency in the foods and their quality. It was all planned out by the owners of the resort who actually sent the groceries down there on a plane from West Palm Beach, FL. I didn’t have to do any of the cooking for the guests myself. We had Cecelia for lunches and Doreen to cook the dinners when we had guests. I learned a thing or two from them also, especially how to fry chicken! In fact, I became very good at frying conch, fish, and chicken, pork chops, and once a squid. We kept a big pot of oil on the stove for frying. Thank goodness, we had an open air kitchen and the tile countertops were easily cleaned.

We ate a lot of lobster, conch, and fish. It was there for the taking and we did. Our favorite fish is the hog fish. They are white and flaky like grouper or other sea bass but even more tender and tasty. Sadly, the fish themselves were very cute and inquisitive. They swam rather slowly and would almost always come to us rather than us having to hunt them. We always felt like it was no sport at all because they were too easy to kill and were most likely to be over fished because of it. I hope they are still in abundance and protected.

Our other favorite fish was red snapper and grouper. Steve speared grouper but we relied on the local fisherman who would go offshore in their boats for snapper. They would drive out to sell us some and knew we were always good to buy most of what they had. The snapper would be from 4 or 5 lbs to up to 20 lbs. Sometimes we also bought tuna and young shark. There is nothing better than fresh tuna marinated and grilled except maybe fresh shark marinated and grilled. Grouper is delicious no matter how you fixed it. We often enjoyed it pan fried and served with sautéed onions peppers and tomato on top.
I learned many ways to prepare lobster. My favorite was the lobster salad with peppers, onions, pasta and mayo. The lobster is quickly and easily cooked in the microwave or boiled then chopped into pieces. This was also good for using the smaller pieces of meat that are on the body and legs of the bug but usually that was more hassle than it was worth and we only used the tail meat. The baby lobsters, the size of jumbo shrimp or a little bigger, are the most delicious. We often had them sliced in half and grilled. They are delicious with drizzled butter! Yum!

Conch are some strange and nasty muscles that have to be beaten repeatedly before they can be fried. Sometimes we would beat it out until it appeared shredded and in too many small pieces to cook but when you put it in the heat it would pull back together again and could still be tough if you didn’t beat it enough. Frying it after beating it out is, by far, the tastiest way to eat it but we also cooked it in a pressure cooker and I tried ceviche with it a few times but it was still tough. If you over cook it in the pressure cooker it would be squishy and smelled gross, I couldn’t eat it then but it could be mixed into stews and curried dishes. The ceviche required lemon and lime juice and to marinate for days before you could eat it. I had to chop it up into tiny little squares. Once I mixed purple cabbage with it that turned the conch pinkish purple and it was very pretty.

Doreen Bean cooked our dinners at the Windmills when we had guests. We loved all of her cooking. Our favorite was her pork chops. She would brown them with a table spoon of tomato paste and oil. I think she also caramelized a little sugar in the pan too. The chops were a delicious brown color and tender as they can be. She made gravy from the pan and we ate them with mashed potatoes, of course! Yum! I have never been able to make them exactly like she did, but I always try. I learned from the island girls to rub the meat, prior to cooking, with lemon or lime. This they learned to do years ago, most likely, to kill any germs or bacteria but it also has the added benefit of breaking down the proteins in the meats which makes them much more tender and adds a little zest of flavor. I recommend it for all meats.

On the Sea Dancer we didn’t have to cook, we had Stanley. Stan served on that boat for over 15 years as its chef. He made the best food and more money in tips than any of us. His fried conch was a favorite as was his chicken and any fish he prepared. We had to eat the same rotation of meals each week so got used to them but were always so hungry we appreciated how good his island cooking was, especially his conch. He served us a Thanksgiving meal every Thursday. We had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing and vegetables. It was always good. I could not recommend his coffee however. I don’t know why I never bought my own French press to use on the boat. We loved coffee but Stan hated it and didn’t care that it was thick, strong, and sat there all day. We drank it like that all the time.

I really miss some of the foods we ate while in the islands. I wish it was more affordable to enjoy them here. When I get to go visit the tropics I make a point of finding my favorite meals. I was so disappointed when we visited the Cayman Islands in Dec 1995 while I was pregnant. It was strange but at times I could not put food into my mouth. I was hungry and wanted to have a delicious fish dinner. I looked forward to it until it was placed in front of me on the table and I could not put the fork to my mouth. This has never been a problem for me before or since, only while I was pregnant with my first child. So I cried in Cayman because I got car sick and couldn’t dive or eat the foods I wanted to eat, except the avocados.

I got some great avocados in the islands. Large perfectly ripe ones. I would shop on the crude pier in Salt Cay when the Haitians brought their goods over on their handmade boats. This was an experience I wish I had video taped. I don’t think I could relay it here in any way that can represent it as it truly was at the time. Being an outsider, unaccustomed to their ways and not knowing everyone, I was given special opportunities to purchase what I wanted whereas the locals just shouted their way into the melee and seemed to fight for what they wanted but it was all shopping. The island women scared me. They were all large and powerful on Salt Cay but once I got to know them I learned they were not so scary, just conditioned to survive. Of course, the men had to run the show at the pier shopping but the women got things their way. I will never forget seeing the children sucking on mangos. They just bit into them and sucked the juicy meat out, scraping the skin with their teeth and tossing the seed and skin when finished.

One day, I was so excited by the size and quality of the avocados I bought a bushel and invited everyone to come over and eat guacamole. Well, the islanders like to eat avocados on Salt Cay but they didn’t want anything to do with guacamole. No way, uh, uh. I made enough for a party of 20 and had to eat most if it myself. It was like that there. They didn’t enjoy being introduced to new and strange foods and weren’t too sure about me for offering it. Oh well. Do you know what happens when you eat too much guacamole?