Ann's Blog

Trinidad: October 31, 2009

Back on Receta, after four months in Toronto! When I climbed aboard after midnight a couple days ago, I couldn’t stop oohing and ahhing. Steve had preceded me back to Trinidad by about a week, and by the time I arrived, he had her launched and gleaming. It felt so good to be home.

(Beyond catching up with friends and family, we used our Toronto time to search for a new “home on the hard” – a place to live during the part of hurricane season we’re not on the boat – and found a one-bedroom condo with a view of Toronto Harbour, and Lake Ontario beyond, so we don’t have to suffer complete water withdrawal. I also helped shepherd The Spice Necklace through the final stages of production, and Steve continued sorting the thousands of Caribbean photos he had taken last year.)

Today was my first trip to Port of Spain’s fresh market since late last February, when we left Trinidad after Carnival. I bought almost more than I could carry, or we could eat in a week, but I couldn’t resist. There were gorgeous avocadoes – I’ve been using their buttery flesh instead of mayo on our sandwiches – and some early portugals, one of Steve’s favorite fruits. (Similar to mandarin oranges, they take their name from their place of origin.) He had put in a request for portugal chow, with “plenty peppah, and I certainly wasn’t going to say no. It was, after all, his birthday.
And for his birthday dinner, one of the market’s fish vendors had splendid fresh tuna. You don’t see a lot of tuna in the markets here, because it’s not traditionally been a popular eating fish in TnT; you’re much more likely to find kingfish, shark, carite (the local name for Spanish mackerel), dolphin (not the mammal; the fish, also known as mahi-mahi and dorado), snappers, or flying fish on Trini tables. The tuna was a ridiculously low $14 TT (about US$2.30) a pound – I bought half of one slice, thick as the TnT phonebook, a full two pounds – compared with $25 TT (about US$4.15) for the more-popular kingfish.

The fish and meat area of the market is under renovation, so those vendors have been moved into a building at the rear, and the other vendors have been turned topsy-turvy. It took me a while to locate the women who sell fresh-baked bread (white and whole-wheat, still warm when I add a loaf in my bag), and I never did find my favorite pepper vendor – a Rastafarian farmer who sells only hot peppers and the similarly sized and colored pimientos, which pack a lot of flavor and only a bit of heat.

That night, I seared some of the tuna, and served it rare, drizzled with a wasabi-ginger cream sauce. On the side was basmati rice and market spinach, sautéed with a bit of garlic and ginger. (A different species than what we get in North America, this spinach is a somewhat bitter, thick-stemmed green that needs cooking to tame its aggressive personality). The birthday boy was very happy.

On a tip from the owner of Apadoca’s, the wine, spirits and gift store at Crews Inn, where Receta is docked, I bought Steve a copy of Caribbean Seafood Extravaganza, published by the Seafood Industry Development Company of Trinidad and Tobago. It’s part cookbook and part guide to choosing fish, including the cheaper, less-preferred (but still delicious) species. The food photography is lackluster (less-charitable types might call it offputting), but the appendices are fascinating. Shrimp, for instance, are sold in the Port of Spain fresh market with their heads on, and a significant portion of the weight, Steve’s new book tells us, is in the head. Less than 40% of a head-on shrimp remains after it’s been beheaded, peeled and deveined. Still, that beats a lobster: A 1-pound lobster yields only ¼ pound of cooked meat.

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