This meal from Antigua & Barbuda has a little bit of sweet, a little bit of savory, and a little bit of green. The three dishes that are common to this Caribbean country are: ducana, salt fish, and chop up. I've seen references to chop up many times in researching the cuisine of the Caribbean, and knew I had to make it at some point.
I started with the ducana. It starts with sweet potato and shredded coconut. Not knowing how the texture or consistency was supposed to be, I simply shredded the sweet potato in my food processor, but it really should have been blended more finely.
You then mix that with some water, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and flour. This creates almost a "batter" and probably would have been more like a batter had I grated the sweet potato more finely.
A couple scoops of the mixture are placed on a square of foil.
And then wrapped up tightly into a foil packet.
Once they're all ready they get thrown into a big pot of boiling water. I didn't have a pot big enough to hold all of them so I ended up having to shift them around to make sure all of them were being cooked evenly.
Once out of the water, they should be firm and dumpling-like. Mine were a little too loose but you can see the beginnings of what it's supposed to look like. Again, the texture was too large to really hold together the right way. However, after refrigerating they firmed up pretty nicely and were a lot easier and more pleasant to eat.
Next, I made the chop-up. This part was incredibly simple and I don't have many pictures. It's basically just a mash of veggies. It calls for eggplant, shown above.
It also calls for tomatoes, spinach (or calaloo), onion, peppers, thyme, garlic, and a couple other spices.
Everything is sauteed and then steamed until soft and the liquid from the tomato has mostly reduced. Again, it's very simple, but tasty.
The third and final part of this meal is also quite simple. Chop-up and ducana are both often served with salt fish, which is another food that is ubiquitous in the Caribbean. The fish is served in a saute of peppers and onions with a light tomato sauce. I used fresh tomatoes instead of using a tomato paste, so I started by sauteing all the vegetables together.
And since I don't eat fish, I decided to replace it with some seasoned faux chicken strips. It obviously did not taste the same, but the visual effect was similar.
I don't know if I've made a meal with both savory and sweet elements together on the same plate for this project before. I'm not sure exactly if the ducana is supposed to be more of a breakfast food, since it is quite sweet, or if it's just unique as a sweet dinner food.
Recipes Used: Ducana & Salt "Fish" // Chop-Up
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