Haitian Cooking Lesson

Earlier this week a fellow teacher and on-campus dweller, Irene, said that one of the ladies who cooks in our snack shop (cafeteria for all intents and purposes) had offered to give a cooking lesson to anyone who was interested. So, this morning, around 9 a.m. 5 of us on-campus ladies met downstairs with Mirlande to begin our schooling. I won’t get too much into the recipe here, mostly because it was exceptionally detailed. I will just walk you through the events of our day.

First we began by going to the mache down the street. Mirlande said the price would be higher with a bunch of blans with her, but it is still much cheaper than the grocery store. I don’t have any photos from the market but imagine a small alley crammed with people. Bright vegetables next to a table with meat, flies buzzing, deals being made, fun, teasing shouts going back and forth from vendor to vendor, lots of activity.

 

Our shopping list.

We got our food and headed back to Tiffany’s apartment to begin cooking. We had planned on starting our lesson around 9 but most of the day we operated on Haitian time and didn’t really get down to cooking until maybe 10:00. Time in Haiti will take a lot of getting used to for me. I will go ahead and say now, in my mind I thought we would be eating by noon, maybe 1 pm at the latest….we actually sat down to eat at 3 pm. But, it was well worth it. Anyway, back to the cooking process.

After setting out the food, Mirlande showed us how to cut the bef and then use a bitter orange to clean it. The meat had been outside with more than a few flies on it, so I was a little hesitant about eating it. After all was said and done the meat was rinsed twice with water, cleaned with a bitter orange, boiled for over an hour and then fried in hot oil. I think we killed any sort of germs that could be on it.

The next few hours were spent chopping, dicing, boiling, and laughing. At one point we walked over to the snack shop to use some of their tools there. We used this to crush some peppers to put in a coleslaw type topping called Pikliz which is exceptionally spicy but has great flavor. 

A couple of ladies who work in the snack shop during the week were there getting stuff ready for the next week. We used this blender type appliance to grind up garlic, green onions, and some shallots.

This green stuff is the Pwawo. It was so great! We used it in almost everything we cooked that day. 

The meal was really great: Taso (beef with the Pwawo - green sauce mixture on it), Diri Kole ak Pwa (rice & beans mix that had some onions and green peppers in it), Pikliz (spicy cole-slaw looking topping that goes on most everything), Carrot & potato salad (you can figure out what that is J), and Banana Peze (fried plantains).

Here are some more pictures of the process...

Removing small rocks and bad beans from the bag before cooking the beans.

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Pikliz!

The beans with their spices. We added rice to this too.

The plantains getting fried up!

After frying, you smash them, adnd then fry them again. mmmmm.

Fried plantains with Pikliz for an appetizer.

Time to eat!

Fabulous neighbors!

It took us a while to cook because we stopped often to chat and get to know each other.

  

We eat this same type of food most days during the week. Sometimes there is a different sauce or a different kind of meat. Usually all I really want after lunch is a good nap and, on this day, unlike a school day, I was able to go home and have one.