A New Recipe - and an observation

Friends have asked me what some of the native foods are here. There is a wide range of cuisines, influenced by French, Jamaican, Indian, West Indian and Cuban immigrants, to name just a few.

The most "native" dish I've eaten out is some yummy jerk chicken, tho I do think of that as a Jamaican dish.

Some of the other native offerings are fungi, a side dish made of okra and cornmeal, and goat water, a type of goat stew. We haven't tried either of these :)

We've seen signs for "roti" outside of several local-looking establishments - the type you wouldn't go into unless you were going with someone who'd been there before. In my research, I learned that roti is actually a flat bread similar to naan, but is served here rolled around a spicy curry mixture.

I was reading some tips to enjoying the Caribbean online this past week and found a link to a recipe for Chicken Roti that looked pretty simple, so I tried it. It did require some specialized shopping, as it called for 2-3 teaspoons of "Blind Betty Original Recipe," which I found out is a hot sauce made on St. John. Otherwise, the ingredients were pretty normal, and it even suggested serving the filling in flour tortillas, so I didn't have to make & fry bread - which would not have happened.

The filling turned out to be a not-too spicy chicken curry stew that was really good in those tortillas, especially when topped with Blind Betty Mango Chutney, as suggested. We probably still won't venture into those local places without an escort, but we also won't be afraid to order roti when we see it on a menu.


And an observation, not meant to get into serious political or social discourse, but just something that has made us giggle:

I was waiting to pick up a package at the mail center recently, before election day, and a man standing at the counter began a fairly one-sided conversation with another man. The subject was the upcoming California ballot issue concerning legalization of marijuana. I can't quote him directly, because it would look mostly like #&$^%#&(@* but he did say that he'd smoked marijuana for 45 years and spent 2 1/2 years in jail because of it. He couldn't understand why it isn't legal in the US and seemed to have a fair amount of knowledge about which European countries have more lenient laws - and about the scrutiny of customs agents when travelers enter the US from those countries.

I saw "Marijuana Man" again today. He is pretty easy to identify, as he carries baskets that he apparently weaves from palm leaves and other materials. He also wears a flip-flop on one foot and a Croc on the other. I'm just thinking that the pro-legalization movement might want to find another spokesman ...