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Guadeloupe and Martinique are renowned for Creole cuisine while Puerto Rican specialties such as lechón asao (roast suckling pig), and locrio (a variation on paella) served in the Dominican Republic, show a distinctive Spanish influence. The Indian influence is unmistakable in Trinidad's curries and rotis (chapati envelopes filled with curried meat, seafood, or vegetables) that have now become a popular snack food in neighboring islands. Jamaican jerk is said to have been invented by runaway slaves who cooked in earth pits covered with branches. The West Indian, or Creole, cuisine of the Caribbean was for many years confined to home kitchens. As they dined on "Continental cuisine" in hotels, tourists could only imagine what those intriguing aromas wafting from Caribbean homes might promise. Now they know, for West Indian food has become easily available as the natives have discovered that tourists not only like it, they gobble it up. Each island has its own style of cooking, which, like the language, shows the influences of Africa, France, Spain, North America, Portugal, India, the Far Eastern ports of the trading ships-sometimes even the Arawaks. As with most cuisines, West Indian cooking is based on what is readily at hand-and what is at hand is bountiful. From the sea come spiny langoustes conch, red snapper, giant grouper, dolphinfish (the fish, not the mammal), and a raft of other fish. From the land come spices, pineapple, coconuts, limes, mangoes, breadfruit, papayas, christophines, eggplants soursops, bananas, bluggoes, and avocados. From under the earth come sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, and taro (also known as dasheen). Nearly every fruit or vegetable has a different name on each island. The differences among the starchy vegetables are so interesting and subtle that West Indians find the foreigner's preoccupation with the potato quite perplexing. The potato is, to them, unchangingly uninteresting. Variations aside, West Indian cuisine itself is pretty basic. Consider the ubiquitous hot sauce, a fiery and unsubtle condiment that adds piquancy when used sparingly and could lead to hospitalization if used injudiciously. Or consider the roti, a distant, curried cousin of the Cornish pasty that looks like a pillowcase stuffed with laundry. Or the fragrant stews made of goat, pig, sheep, or "free-road" chicken; the variations on rice and peas; the stuffed land crabs; and the vegetable fritters. And remember that whatever the name, and whatever its island of origin, the dish will have been prepared with the uninhibited pleasure typical of the Caribbean. Wine a not produced m the Caribbean, so it is expensive. Local breweries, on the other hand, turn out some good lager-type beers. Particularly good are Banks from Barbados, Carib from Trinidad and franchises on several islands, Presidente from the Dominican Republic, and Red Stripe from Jamaica.
The market is the traditional center of Caribbean social and economic life. By bus or on foot, the market women arrive before dawn to set up their displays of fresh fruit and vegetables. Whether in the town square or simply at a rural crossroads, the market and its mostly female workforce display the vibrancy of the region's tropical agriculture. Vast piles of mysterious tubers (widely known as "ground provisions") sit side by side with bunches of green bananas and plantains, the Caribbean's starchy staples. Red-hot peppers, tangy limes, and enormous avocados are some of the other offerings. Beyond the market, most people seem to have a small piece of land, if only enough to grow a few fruit trees. While there is widespread poverty in the Caribbean, few actually go hungry.
The discovery of European sugarbeet, global overproduction, and changing diets have long since undermined the Caribbean sugar industry. Only Cuba is still heavily dependent on sugar exports, while other islands have moved away into other industries. Bananas are the modern-day boom crop especially in Dominica and St. Lucia, where they represent up to 70 percent of export earnings. Bananas grow everywhere in these small volcanic islands: up steep slopes, around every house, by the roadside. They are mostly cultivated on smallholdings by individual farmers, who pack them into boxes and drive them down to the port. After a long period of special access into the British market, Caribbean bananas are now under fire from the big plantation based producers of Latin America who grow cheaper, if not better fruit. If Latin America can out produce and undersell the Caribbean, it will lose another essential market. Worries about the future of the banana industry reveal the vulnerability of Caribbean agriculture. Worse even than hurricanes are unstable world commodity markets, over which small producers have no control. Every crop-sugar, coffee, cocoa, tobacco-has seen its ups and downs, and an uncertain future awaits the new "exotic nontraditional," which farmers are now trying to export to Europe and the U.S. The current generation of export crops includes ginger, mangoes, passion fruit, and cut flowers, much of it destined for supermarkets and gourmet food stores in U.S. cities.
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Rum has been produced in the Caribbean since the 17th century, when sugar
planters first distilled a spirit from molasses. Still made throughout the
region, the best quality rums traditionally come from Barbados, Jamaica,
Guadeloupe, and Martinique. While most islanders prefer their rum neat, visitors
are more attracted to the long: list of rum cocktails available, including piña
coladas (flavor with pineapple and coconut), tuba libre (with cola), fruit
daiquiris, and planter's punch (the original only has lime and cane juice, but
added fruit juices are popular today). There are also delicious nonalcoholic
fruit punches.
Mangoes, soursops, papaya, yams,
breadfruit, callaloo...the list of Caribbean fruit and vegetables is
never-ending. Drop a seed in the soil, and you'll have a tree inside a week, say
local farmers. But despite extraordinary fertility, Caribbean agriculture faces
critical problems: what to do with crops that nobody wants, and what to put in
their place.
The
Caribbean is still a largely agricultural region, but important changes are
taking place in what crops are grown and where they go. From the earliest
colonial days, the region was an exporter of agricultural commodities, most
importantly sugar. In its 18th-century heyday, Saint-Domingue (now Haiti)
exported more raw sugar and created more wealth than the whole of the British
empire. Sugar, the fabled "white gold," made fortunes, caused wars,
and brought millions of Africans across the Atlantic in slave-ships. In 1975 a
pound of sugar fetched 76 cents on the world market: in 1982 it was worth only 5
cents.
Lobster, red snapper and flying fish found on numerous menus
throughout the regions. But despite extensive coastlines, most islands have to
import fish. The lack of a fishing industry, in part a legacy of slavery and
colonialism, has also resulted from inadequate marine nutrients, storage and
marketing, as w ell as a risk of ciguaterra a neurotoxin found in tropical reef
fish. Consequently the islands, depend on salted and canned fish from
Canada and fresh fish flown in the united states. Attempts to upgrade the
fishing industry have peen made. but experts warn that the Caribbean sea cannot
withstand intensive fishing.