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I was surprised to find it was in December 2023 that I hosted a pepperpot lime at my home. Seems like it was just last Christmas when my friend Lynette came to teach us how to prepare this national dish of Guyana.
My daughter was working on an article on sustainable cooking and was trying to highlight the ancient ways of food preservation.
Naturally, cassareep, with its gooey, molasses-like texture that is carefully extracted from the bitter cassava, was the foundation.
But the stars are the varieties of meat that are featured. Oxtails, cow heels, trotters, pigtails, beef bones—the cheapest cuts from livestock that were low down on the ladder of well-to-do palates find their footing in these kinds of dishes.
How the working class contrived to make delicious meals from these cast-offs, including offal (even the name for these internal organs is off-putting) is a testimony to the culinary creativity that harvested the land’s bounty to add flavour with herbs, and to fortify the nutrition with ground provisions, and the like.
Perhaps all the great cuisines of the world were founded on the techniques and simplicity of peasant food.
Remember, before refrigeration, people had to make do with what was available in their locales. And they had to learn to preserve what was in season to allow them to be used for as long as they could.
With my abiding interest in the history of food and my desire to write about it in the form of a book, I couldn’t resist this opportunity.
As we shopped for the ingredients for that almighty pepperpot, striving to collect the standard fare, I was scandalised by the price of oxtails.
It was not available at the various markets we tried, but wanting to get it right, I went into a supermarket and bought a small amount at a price that I would never pay otherwise.
When I told Lynette about how exorbitant it was: “They gentrified oxtail!” I said, she replied that there was no set list of meats to be included.
The premise of a pepperpot was that it was based on whatever you had. As far as she was concerned, it just had to be glooby glooby from the gelatinous cuts.
It turned out to be a marvellous potful of gooey goodness. The leftovers stayed on my stovetop for 12 days, no refrigeration, and I am convinced it would have lasted longer if it had not all been consumed by then!
With each passing day, as I tasted it, I was struck by how the flavours had intensified. If I’d had more confidence, I would have kept feeding it to see how far it would go.
Lynette was right; while the essence was a range of meats, none was entirely essential. Just as well, because these traditionally cheap cuts have become formidably expensive.
In response to my last column on the cost of cow heels, someone commented that he had seen oxtails for sale at $60 a pound.
Someone else remarked that the price of ground provisions is so high that a Saturday soup is now an extremely expensive affair.
A Saturday soup was once a staple in many homes because it could be thrown together from remnants like vegetables and provisions fortified with some cheap meats.
It was a way to avoid the food waste that has become a cavalier household practice, and to make room for new purchases.
Many of these practices have been abandoned. I don’t think it is simply a matter of the high cost. There are several other factors. We’ve been colonised all over again by the marketing strategies of the Western world.
Processed foods are high on the list of items that have replaced the unrefined offerings of the land. We crave the delicacies ensconced in colourful packages, branded with all manner of misleading information.
For instance, revelations about the harmful nature of food colourings have exposed just how many “foods” are contaminated with it.
I’ve never understood what would make people attracted to these garish colours. They add nothing to taste, texture, or nutrients. Why did they become such a staple?
A lot of it comes from the ploy to hook children with gaudy packaging. To me, that is the most insidious part of the corruption of eating patterns.
These food giants know that they have to instil these tastes from early childhood. Unsuspecting parents fall prey to the lures.
Your children are deliberately targeted because, from an early age, their taste buds can be trained. They are the ones whose lifestyles can be transformed by the rich masterminds, who don’t give a hoot if they grow up obese, unhealthy and diabetic.
We can help to deflect this by consciously evaluating what fills the grocery shelves.
I know I am often extreme, but I have gone to the supermarkets with my notebook, listing the added sugars in what has to be labelled fruit drinks because the fruit juice is too negligible, if it is at all there.
I’ve looked at yogurt, cereal, soft drinks, and a range of things that are marketed as healthy. It’s a hoax.
But what are we to do when the cost of real food is so high? It’s a challenge to be met by public regulation and personal choice. It’s not just about making policies, but enforcing them, with rigour and purpose.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
