Methem (Met Him)

This is a Guyanese dish that I (Sara) fell in love with after my host mom prepared it for me one night. It's full of yummy tubers and coconut, of course I would love it. However, many moons ago, when we first moved to our site and started cooking together I mentioned I wanted to try and make this dish to share with my fellow amigos. The looks on their faces was enough for me to see this did not sound appetizing to them but they were great sports about it and humored me. It was definitely an experiment gone well.
Now, remember it's because of these tubers that hobbit balls were created and therefore the notion of developing this blog.

Ingredients:

Eddo

Cassava

Potato/ Sweet potato

Plantains

(1-2 of each above just depends on how much you want to make)

Coconut milk

Garlic

Onion

Cumin

Salt

Cut Tubers into bit size pieces and boil until a little soft, drain and put back into cooking pot. Grate 1 coconut to get coconut milk or use ½ can coconut milk pour over tubers and add water to make a soup broth. Add in chopped garlic and onion, cumin and salt (to taste) bring to a boil.

Cheers to tubers!

Dahl, Dhal, Daal, or Dal

Before a few months ago I had never heard of dahl, now it’s one of our favorite dishes. It’s simple, cheap, and remarkably tasty. Doing a quick search online I saw that Dahl is an East Indian dish, which makes sense since we had it for the first time with our Indo-Guyanese host families. However, since those first few months of culinary exposure we’ve refined it, got some hints from our Lindenite neighbours, and are slowly mastering this split-pea soup-like substance. (Say that five times fast!)

Dried split peas (1/2 pint or more up to you)

8 Garlic cloves

Onion

5 Sweet peppers (or bell peppers, but not sure how many)

3 hot peppers (or more depending on how spicy you want it. These aren’t necessary, but are a good addition)

Geerah (Ground Cumin)

Curry Powder

Salt

Put the peas into a pressure pot and cover with water and then some (more water = more watery). Place some ground cumin and curry powder in there. I don’t use measurements, but eyeball it; I like equal parts of both. Then, if you choose to use hot peppers, cut them up and place them in the pot as well. Let it boil and then place the lid on the pot. Let it pressure for about 30 minutes or so. (I think you can also use a regular pot, but I am not sure on the time, you want the peas to be mushy, like mushy pea soup.)

While the peas are pressuring, chop up garlic, onion, sweet peppers. When the peas are almost squishible, sauté, with a little more cumin and curry powders, the garlic, onion, and sweet peppers

Whisk, or mash the peas in the pot, pinch some salt in, then put the garlic, onion, and peppers in the pot then boil or pressure for about 5 to 10 more minutes. Stir and serve over rice or with roti. (Some Lindeners just put it in a mug and drink the stuff!)

Note: if it comes out too thick you can simply add more water to thin it out.

*Picture Forthcoming

Nghia's Fried Sweet Potatoes

So our dear friend Nghia, who is an awesome panda, ninja, stockbroker PC volunteer, came to visit us. We like it when people come see us because we are able to share our “cooking” experience with them and they are kind enough to show us a thing or two.
Nghia said he was going to make us a common Vietnamese snack…fried sweet potatoes. OK, so our blog is not just typical Guyanese dishes, it’s the food consumed in our Guyanese house that we think is worthy enough to go on this AWESOME blog.
Anyway, back to my story, so, we said yes to fried sweet potatoes. I mean, anything fried has to be good, right? And sweet potatoes are yummy as is!
These savory, sweet, fried, disks of goodness are pretty tasty, but you can only eat a few at a time.

Make a batter (kind of like pancake batter) with the following:
Flour
Sugar (maybe a teaspoon or two?)
Water
Wash, peel and cut sweet potatoes (1’ thick rounds)
Heat up oil in a pan/Kahari
Coat sweet potatoes in the batter
Place in the hot oil to fry, the batter should puff up

Thanks, Nghia

~S

Little Puffs of Goodness

The finished product

Sara and Ngia Share Culinary Ideas

Drunk...Uumm...Spaghetti

I am sure everyone has had one of those nights…just one to many beers. But with those nights comes two options #1 keep drinking and get sick or #2 cook some amazing food. I like option #2 best. And that’s just what we did one night. When we got home we were starving and looked around for something to eat. Behold, a bag of spaghetti. I know what you are thinking, “spaghetti, please, that’s so easy to make. And hello it’s Italian not Guyanese” Well, watery tomato paste from a small can just doesn’t cut it for us. So we made marinara sauce from “scratch” and it was divine! OK, OK, it might-of just been because of the beers before hand but we felt like we were Christopher Columbus discovering the New World for the first time. He did bring spaghetti off the La Pinta to South America right?

Again, we don't do measurements...just a pinch here and a dash there

Marinara Sauce:
Lots of garlic
Onion
Sweet peppers (known as Bell peppers)
Saute with a little olive oil
Add a can of tomato paste along with many diced fresh tomatoes
Stir and simmer about 10 minutes
Put over your favorite choice of pasta

Thank you Christopher Columbus.
~S

So this isn't from that night. In fact, its a completely different dish we haven't posted yet. But the homemade sauce is on top. (the meat is chicken caked in flour, parm, and some spices and then fried.)

The Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Okay, it’s not exactly original or even Guyanese, heck, I don’t even know what can be more American than a grilled cheese sandwich, well maybe apple pie, but that’s beside the point. Here’s our Guyanese Grilled Cheese Sandwich, nothing special, but it’s a great reminder of home.

Bread
Mayo
Cheese
Garlic
Butter/Margarine

Take bread (freshly baked if possible, a great Guyanese perk) and put mayo on both sides. Chop the garlic and put it on one side of bread. Slice the cheese put atop the garlic. Close the sandwich. Heat pan/tawa and put a little margarine on it and let it melt spreading it around. Put the sandwich in the pan and be sure to get butter both sides. I like to use a spatula to press the sandwich down and the flip it a few times until cheese s melted, garlic a bit cooked and the bread is nice dark golden color.

This one we made with a great find: Turkey Bacon!

Pizza Dough ( I will leave the toppings up to you)

Friday night is pizza night. This tradition gets us through the week. When things get tough, when we’re feeling a little down, pizza is the answer. Prior to Peace Corps, pizza (I love alliterations) wasn’t really a big meal of mine (or Chels and I ordered it out. San Diego had some great pizza joints), but then we met Tony, who used to make pizza for fun back home, and he brought this godly treat to our tantalized taste buds. Do give it a try, I highly recommend it. (It may take a few times to get it perfect, but practice, practice, practice! :) )

1 1/3 cups of water
1 tbs Yeast
3 cups of Flour ( and a little more)
1 tbs Oil
¾ tbs of Salt (added in pinches)
2-3 tbs of Sugar
Your choice of Seasoning (Garlic, Parmesan Cheese, Basil, Organo, Honey, etc) (We usually use Basil and Oregano, but honey is good too.)

1)Heat up the 1 1/3 cups of water to about 105 to 115 degrees F. (we do the touch test; it should feel a little hotter than a hot tub)
2) Take water off the heat, and put in a bowl and add the yeast.
3) Put the flour in the same bowl
4) Then, the oil
5) Then, pinches of salt
6) Then, the Spoons of Sugar
7) And, then add your seasoning. (Basil, Oregano, etc)
8) Mix it up in the bowl to get it consistent and stuck together; should be a little gummy, but not too hard.
9) Put some flour over a flat surface where you’re going the roll the dough in a ball.
10) Roll the dough into a ball and add a little flour now and then to prevent sticking.
11) Then Knead the dough like bread, pulling it (like your massaging it) and then putting it back on itself for about 1-2 min.
12) Put a little oil in an empty bowl, and coat the outside of the smooth dough ball by rolling it around in the oil.
13) Let it sit to rise for about an hour. (if it doesn’t rise, the yeast was killed. It may be more, dense but it will taste just fine, I just did this the other day)

This amount of dough will usually make 2 or 3 pizza’s depending on how thin you want to roll out your dough.

Once you roll it out you can put your toppings on it then stick it in the oven. I am not sure how long you bake it for. We usually leave it on for about 7-10 min, but then again we don’t have an oven but we do have Tawa and Kaharee to make a makeshift convenction oven.

The way Tony makes it is to roll it out, then put it on the Tawa, add cheese and build your toppings. Some favorites of ours are Barbeque Chicken (BBQ sauce, cheese chicken, pineapple and scallions) or Veggie (Sweet (bell) peppers, cheese, scallions, onions, avocado, and any other yummy veggies we have around). Tony recently came up with a lemon, broad leaf thyme (fresh), ginger chicken pizza. With cheese, lemon-thyme chicken, scallions, ginger and maybe we’ll throw some sweet peppers on there if we’re feeling festive. But experiment (we even made Dahl Pizza once, wasn't too bad), have some fun with it. You’ll be amazed at what you come up with.

Our makeshift oven. SCIENCE!

One of the first Pizzas

Pineapple, BBQ Sauce, and Green Onions (we have this one weekly)

This was one of our first attempts, we've gotten much better, now I will have get another pic up soon. Perhaps next Friday?

Crazy Rice

It's been way TOO long...we've still been cooking creatively and have recipes to share!
It's Sara here, and I wanted to post this recipe for my family...my other teammates have not tried this interesting dish but trust me they will. I seem to get a little crazy when I cook for myself...you know, boiled plantains, pumpkin, and coconut! I was indeed quite pleased with the end result. If anyone tries this one I would be interested in knowing how it turned out and if any modifications were used.

Rice

Black Beans

Grated pumpkin (or any squash)

Grated carrot

Green onion

Bora (string or green bean)

Boiled plantains (cut in 1’ rounds, boil until soft and bright yellow)

Garlic

Olive oil

Cumin powder

**Pineapple

Cook beans and rice. *You can cook rice in coconut milk (a Guyanese way known as Shine Rice) instead of water, so how ever much rice you are cooking use the water measurement for the coconut milk.

Sorry I don’t measure!

Sauté garlic in olive oil add veggies mix well then add in beans and rice add little cumin or other spices to taste

**Top with pineapple if you prefer

Happy Cooking!