Hema: Hi, I'm Hema.
Mireille: And I'm Mireille.
Hema: Welcome to The Moreish Podcast, where Caribbean history meets culture and cuisine.
Hi Mireille,
Mireille: Hi Hema,
Hema: How are you today?
Mireille: Doing well. Excited for our very first real episode.
Hema: I know, me too. This is the very first, like you said, real episode where we're going to dive into the core of what we are talking about throughout The Moreish Podcast. And it has been a little bit of a journey for us to get here. Lots of learnings from research, a lot of tech that we had to figure out along the way.
Mireille: A lot.
Hema: So, we're here and we are headed to our very first Caribbean nation. Where are we going today?
Mireille: We're going to Antigua and Barbuda.
Hema: I'm going to start talking a little bit about the history and the culture, and then Mireille's going to hop in and talk about the food and how the history of the people of Antigua and Barbuda really dictate the food and how food is consumed and cooked and all of that. First I'm going to start and say when people talk about this country, Antigua and Barbuda, very often they just say Antigua.
And they actually forget that it is a twin state island. So one of the things, if you ask most North Americans who are not from the Caribbean, what Antigua and Barbuda is known for. First of all, they might say Antigua and where, but they would probably say, it is a spot for vacation and for tourism and for all inclusive resorts and maybe a spot that a cruise ship might dock for a day.
But for almost 95,000 people, Antigua and Barbuda is home.
Mireille: I mean, yes, actually my last visit to the Caribbean was to Antigua. So I have a little bit of a personal perspective now on Antigua, after visiting the land of 365 beaches.
Hema: there's a lot more than just beaches. Although I imagine, I haven't been to Antigua, but I imagine the beaches are gorgeous.
Mireille: They are, and you can find whatever you want. Whether it's like a party beach or a secluded beach, there's a beach for everyone.
Hema: To learn about the culture, the food, and the way of life of Antigua and Barbuda, we really do need to look at where the people came from. Because where the people came from, their ancestors, really has a big influence on the current way of life. The majority of the population can be traced back to an African heritage.
Now that doesn't mean every single person currently living in Antigua, or these twin state islands does come from Africa, but the current population breakdown is approximately 87% African ancestry, 5% mixed heritage, 3% Hispanic, 2% white, and then 4% unspecified.
Mireille: One of the things that people don't always realize is how diverse the Caribbean is. Like, we were just another stop on the boat. Just like... The enslaved people here in the United States, most Black people in the Caribbean are not indigenous to the Caribbean, you know, they came along with everyone else.
So in Antigua, I went to town and there's an ice cream shop there owned by a third generation Syrian, for example, because they also came to the Caribbean as traders.
Hema: There are a lot of people from other nations who are not originally from the Caribbean who have made the different islands and different countries home. Some willingly and some not so willingly. When we talk about the culture of Antigua and Barbuda being shaped by the African heritage, we also have to talk about the fact that it's shaped by British colonialism.
And to understand that we need to take a little bit of a dive into the history. We're going to share a little bit of history and research that we've done. All of our sources will be in the show notes, so please check them out. There are a number of people and groups doing a vast amount of research and sharing of information that we would not have had access to even five or ten years ago.
If we look at a brief history of the country, we can say that, as far as we're aware, currently, going way back, it was thought that the Siboney people were the first to inhabit the islands. Do you know if I'm saying that correct?
Mireille: I'm going to go with your pronunciation.
Hema: Apologies if Siboney is not the correct way, please feel free to leave us a note or a comment and correct, we are very willing to learn.
The first well documented people living in Antigua were the Arawaks. They were indigenous people to the Caribbean who may have come from what is currently known as Venezuela. A little bit that we know about the Arawak people is that they were peaceful people and they were an agricultural population.
Another indigenous population and you'll find these people throughout many of our episodes because the Indigenous population was spread out throughout the Caribbean are the Caribs. Now, I'm going to take a little stop here because some of the things that I'm going to say about the Caribs and about the Arawaks are stories and information and writings that were provided by the people that were raiding, pillaging, colonizing the islands. How did they describe the Caribs versus the Arawaks? The Arawaks were peaceful people. The Caribs were said to be really good warriors and fighters with superior weapons. They were well skilled at traveling by sea, and they raided Antigua, defeated the Arawaks, enslaving some of the people and cannibalizing others.
How true that is, I don't know. This is some of the research that is available to us. What's interesting is that the idea that the Caribs were cannibalistic seems to be based on colonial accounts, and it could be the evidence of the attitudes of the people the settlers that were trying to take over the island and how they saw the Indigenous people and the lens through which they saw the people that were already inhabiting the island.
In the last 20 years or so, there's been new information that's come out, changes in the language to reclaim some of the original names and the original stories, and really gaining understanding of the people and the original people from the islands, instead of the names given by the colonizers.
Carib is the name that's been used for years and apparently was attributed to Christopher Columbus. But in 2015, and I'm going to let you talk about this one, Mireille, because this is a fact that you shared with me.
In 2015, another island nation made a change.
Mireille: Yes, Dominica. So Dominica, just to let everyone know my perspective, my grandmother is from Dominica. So that is my personal connection to them. And they do have the highest intact indigenous population in the Caribbean, and they reclaim the original name of their tribe, which is the Kalinago.
And if you go to the Kalinago territory, yes, they have a protected part of the island. Think of it almost like The reservations of the United States. They kind of have their own government and things of that nature. You can go there and visit. There are guest houses. You can see their model village and Dominica's current president or prime minister.
I'm sorry. I get a little bit confused, but one of them, the first Kalinago president, I believe was just elected to Dominica.
Hema: So good to see it, right? That they are reclaiming some of the history. Let's talk a little bit more about the people who are not Indigenous to the island and what happened to the islands in the time between sort of Christopher Columbus era and now. In 1493, Christopher Columbus apparently landed on Antigua, but found that the Caribs were aggressive and decided not to really settle there.
He did, however, choose to name it Antigua for the church, of Santa Maria de la Antigua in Spain. In 1632. English settlers colonized Antigua, and it stayed in the possession of the British until 1666 when it was raided by the French who occupied for eight months.
And then it was returned back to the British. In 1674, this is the time in history that really directly influenced the current population. Sir Christopher Codrington established the first full scale sugar plantation. So I was on the island of Antigua, and it turned out to be so successful that many others who were growing tobacco, decided that they would switch to sugar, because it was a much more lucrative business to have they realized that The sugar plantations required a lot of work, a lot of hard work, and they couldn't manage it on their own, and hence began the slave trade. This is why I mean it's a time in history that really directly influenced The people in the culture, current that's currently living in Antigua.
I did a lot of research on the website, slavevoyages.org They have a ton of information, really great databases, visual maps. Again, we'll link this in the show notes. But they are a wealth of information. According to slavevoyages. org, between 1676 and 1825, approximately 140,000 enslaved African people embarked on the ships, stolen people, got onto these ships, and approximately 117,000 disembarked in Antigua.
Was it a direct route? Not necessarily. This is what was done to bring people to work on the plantations. Where in Africa, now Africa is a very big continent, where in Africa did these people come from? West Africa mostly, so we have places like the Gold Coast, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and some unspecified ports.
Many of the ports where these voyages began can be traced back to London, Liverpool, Bristol, Whitehaven, Havana, and Annapolis. Now does any of that surprise you, Mireille?
Mireille: Uh, no. You'll find that many. Many of the, descendants of the Caribbean came from West Africa, not to say there aren't others, but, Congo is also kind of not quite West Africa, where there's a big population in the Caribbean, but other than that, that seems to be where majority of people came to the Caribbean from.
Hema: Yeah. Some of these conversations are not... they're difficult, but it is a part of the history. The enslaved people, as we are all well aware, were treated brutally as they were all over the Caribbean.
And there were some reported rebellions, but it wasn't until 1834 that the enslaved people were emancipated. Between 1676 and 1825, enslaved people were brought to Antigua and Barbuda. In 1834, they were emancipated.
Emancipation didn't mean complete freedom because the enslaved people were still dependent on the slave owners to earn a living. They didn't have their own homes. They didn't have their own lives, essentially. And instead of being enslaved, they were free. But they were still doing the same jobs, the same labor, and were being paid poorly for it.
The history of the people of Antigua and Barbuda has African influences, British influences in the architecture, the food, sports. the life, the religion, the culture of today.
That is a very brief history of the people. If we talked about the entire history of the people, this podcast episode would be way too long. But Mireille, let's talk a little bit about food. I'm going to hand it over to you. You're the chef, first of all, you have all of this food knowledge, but also you have some great research that you did. About the food of Antigua and Barbuda.
So take it away.
Mireille: Okay, so as we're starting this podcast series, we're going to be focusing on the national dishes of each nation. So as Hema mentioned, the cuisine of Antigua and Barbuda has African influences, and this is present in the national dish, which is, are you ready? Drumroll. Fungee and pepper pot. I'm going to take one part of it and then discuss the other one. Let's first start with the Fungee. Now, there are variations on Fungi on many Caribbean islands. You may know it as Funchi, Turn Cornmeal, Coo Coo. The names are endless. And it is basically a cornmeal based savory porridge, if you like.
Its main ingredients are cornmeal, okra, and water. Now, if you've ever had fungee or coo coo, it's not hard to see the similarities with African fufu, which has taken the Western world by storm in the last few years.
Hema: I've had a sneak peek into some of the research that you've done for other episodes. And I know that this is going to come up or this type of food is going to come up a number of times.
It is an inexpensive dish to make, but I wanna just talk about the thing that you just said is that it's taken the cooking culinary North American world by storm lately, which can often drive up the costs of the ingredients and drive up the cost of getting this dish in a restaurant,
Mireille: I think cornmeal though has been such a staple ingredient, at least I could, I could speak here in the United States. I don't know about Canada. We make cornbread and people make cornmeal all the time. For example, something that We make in the Caribbean, often for breakfast, cornmeal porridge, you know, because I'm a food blogger I'm always doing research and I only recently found out that there's a version that they make in the Midwest and they call it cornmeal mush, except it's sweetened with maple syrup. So I think it's, it was a staple that, it's not going to, suddenly, get more expensive because of this. Goat meat on the other hand, that's a totally different issue.
Hema: I'm hoping it doesn't go the way of cassava, but that's another story.
Mireille: While West African fufu is made with cassava, yam, or plantain, which is why the cost of cassava has gone up, fungee is made with cornmeal. So just like the East African version of, fufu, where it's known as ugali, is made from cornmeal. So is Fungee. Now in Africa, Ugali is usually made with white cornmeal because it's just more common there, where in the Americas, both North America as well as the Caribbean, yellow cornmeal is far more common.
We'll go into a lot more detail in the next episode because like Hema had mentioned, variations of Funchi, Fungee, coo coo is gonna come up in other episodes, so I want to focus a little bit on Pepper Pot, which is the other second part of the national dish. Many of you may have heard of Guyanese Pepper Pot, which is Also, their national dish. It's probably one of the most popular Guyanese dishes. Antiguan pepper pot is totally different.
While Guyanese pepper pot is a hearty meat stew. Antiguan pepper pot is more of a vegetable soup with some meat added to it. Okay? So the base of Antiguan pepper pot is a variety of mashed cooked vegetables. The usual cast of characters usually include spinach, okra, eggplant, green squash, and pumpkin. Now this is also known as chop up, and it's a really popular side dish, especially with Antigua's Easter meal of ducana, but that will lead to another episode in the future.
When I was in Antigua, I had ducana. It's, most restaurants really only make it once a week it was so good and it's served with salt fish.
You have to have this combination. Okay, anyway, back to the pepper pot. You can make the pepper pot with any kind of meat, but some kind of pickled or salt meat is generally included. And that also has its roots back to The Caribbean didn't get refrigeration as soon as other people, and preserved meat is often found in many Caribbean islands.
Hema: Mireille, is there a specific meat?
Mireille: Most common is Pickles, Pigs Feet. and tails or salt beef, but really even sometimes in modern versions, they'll even just include smoked sausage. You know, it needs that salty smoky flavor that you get from either pickled or salted meat.
Hema: I want to ask a question about that because you mentioned, pickled or salted pig's feet, which I think may be sort of the parts of the animal that the landowners and the slave owners would not use. Is that correct?
Mireille: Exactly. In many countries throughout the Caribbean, you will find that they make use of the parts that the slave owners didn't want to use. And people were ingenious and found delicious ways of using it. Even the way we season our meat. Think of it. In every part of the Caribbean, whether it's sofrito, Green seasoning, Haitian Epis.
Those were probably leftover veggies starting to go bad and some herbs that they put together and be like, okay, we can't eat it anymore, so what can we do with it? And that's how things like that got start, get started.
Hema: good point.
In addition to that chicken or smoked turkey can be used. But chicken is really something that was added in more recent times.
Mireille: Obviously, now that we no longer have to use pickled pig's feet, and all of these parts that people, some people won't care for, you know, modern versions, people will pretty much add whatever meat they feel like adding. Because the enslaved people at that time were given the cheapest ingredients and the cheapest cuts of meat and they would transform these simple ingredients that were considered inedible to many into something rich flavorful and delicious let's go a little bit into how it's made Basically, the vegetables are simply boiled along with the meat in separate pots, then aromatics like onions, peppers, garlic, green seasoning, are all sautéed.
Then the meat and vegetables are added along with all of the water, and finally to this fragrant soup. You have to have dumplings. What is soup in the Caribbean without dumplings? They're known as droppers in Antigua. And then, that's it. These recipes are delicious. It's a hearty, soup that's a It is the national dish, but it's often also made for things like Sunday dinner, etc.
There will be links to these recipes in the show notes, so you can make it yourself.
Hema: I have a question about droppers and I've never heard dumplings called droppers, so it's a new thing for me. Do you know what they use to make it? Is it a flour dumpling?
Mireille: Yes.
Although sometimes, coconut versions are, like, the base dumpling per se, or droppers, is, a flour base. However, it's not to say they also sometimes will make it with coconut. You know, everyone will make them a little bit different. Sometimes breadfruit is also used to make the dumplings. There are variations, but At its simplest form, flour is, I would say, the most common form of dumplings or droppers in Antigua.
I don't want to get too far ahead and talk about other episodes, but it sounds to me like the influences of this dish is an African influence. The enslaved people probably took whatever was available to them to create delicious meals.
Mireille: If you think about it, you know what I find so fascinating too is I think this version of Pepper Pot is probably an adaptation of African okra soup too, which is very common, which is often eaten with fufu. When writing up my notes for this episode, I didn't think about that, but that is basically what it is.
Being half Haitian, I have a personal reference to Haiti. In Haiti, we have that combination as well, which we call TomTom, but we make it with breadfruit, and kalalou, which in Haiti, that is the word for okra.
Hema: I know the callaloo is going to come back later on in another episode. We've had this discussion about callaloo being very different, depending on what nation, what Island, what country we're talking about, but that's for another, another time. So Mireille, thanks for sharing a little bit about the national dish of Antigua.
It sounds delicious. It's almost winter. It sounds super hearty. So I think I'm going to have to learn how to make this at home myself.
Mireille: Definitely. I actually just made the Ducana, dinner a few weeks ago. I just have to edit it and it's going to be going up on my website soon. I already actually just had at least the vegetable part of it recently and it was so good. It was just as good as I remembered it in Antigua when I had it.
Hema: We will link to all of the recipes, including Mireille's recipe, for ducana in the show notes. So you can go check that out.
Mireille: This has been so great!
Hema: so excited to get this first one. Done. It was good. The history, I will tell you, I feel like I'm back in school researching history, but it is really worth it because a lot of the information that I'm learning is new to me and I want to know as much as I can about the Caribbean not only Trinidad and the country that I come from, but neighboring islands.
Mireille: think it is important as Caribbean people, we definitely have an identity with the countries we come from. With me, it's about four countries, so because of my diverse family, but even people who come from one, but at the same time, there is also a sense of community of Caribbean people. Being cognizant of each other's history is just an even greater way to show our unity as a community as much as we want to be also recognized for our uniqueness and diversity because we are not a monolith.
Thanks for joining us this week as we explored Antigua and Barbuda on The Moreish Podcast. You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at The Moreish Podcast.
Hema: Come back next week when we'll be talking about the Caribbean nation that removed Great Britain as their head of state and became an independent republic in November. 2021. Head over to Instagram and leave a comment to tell us where you think we are venturing next.
We will see you next week. Bye!
Mireille: Bye!