Ishon Makes Oildown

"I have to go gather the ingredients," says Ishon, the chef for the day.  We were staying at a small hillside resort, the Caribbean Cottage Club above the chichi Port Louis Marina on the island of Grenada, West Indies.  The half acre property has seven humble wooden cottages; the grounds lush with the growth of Coconut Palms, Banana trees, Citrus and flowering shrubs such as the Plumeria, all awash in the regular misty showers that waft down the mountainside to the sea.  I asked Ishon if I could watch or help prepare the Oildown for the evenings communal dinner. "I will let you know when I am ready" as he lumbered out the gate to find provisions. 'Provisions' is the term for the mostly ground crops such as sweet potatoes, dasheen ( aka Taro), Yam and breadfruit, a starchy tree fruit.

Hours later, with all the ingredients laying out on his outdoor concrete table Ishon called me to help and said, " I should have told you to bring a knife" only to have me pull out my Chicago Cutlery, freshly sharpened for the trip to the Caribbean.  Oftentimes the utensils in these short term vacation rentals are so inferior or completely lacking that I often travel with a few basics such as the knife and a micro grater. Ishon gave me two whole heads of garlic and two onions to peel. Wow, that's quite a lot of garlic.  "How many people are you preparing to serve", I asked. "About ten" he said. Ishon, like many West Indies islanders speaks with a strong island accent that at times can be difficult to decipher, but so far so good. "Not all that garlic! he warned as I begain to crush the second head of garlic. Phew that was close!  That really would have been a lot of garlic. Next came cutting up the little peppers. "What do you call these?, I asked. "Seasoning peppers" he informs. I de-capped these, not-so-spicy hot peppers and and threw them in the seasoning mix with a couple stalks of celery, the onions and garlic, tumeric and curry powder. Ishon blended this and poured it over the dark meat chicken parts to marinade while we prepared the provisions.  An hour later we were ready to layer the 20 liter covered pot for the fire. First the breadfruit slices, then the green bananas, dasheen and yams. He then poured the chicken with marinate, into a well, in the provisions. Adding the pickled pork; snout, ears, tail, he then layered the vegetables; green beans, carrots, okra and pumpkin for a carnival of color. Sprinkling the half-filled pot with assorted spices he set it over the fire sandwiched between two concrete cinder blocks.

While the Oildown, known as the national dish of Grenada, started to heat up Ishon began what he called, "the hardest part", preparing the coconut milk, from the actual coconuts!  I was really curious about this process since I don't really understand all the particular phases of a coconut. How do you get the water for drinking? When it's quite green and large, as it turns out.  At what point do you take the coconut flesh for grating or flaking? And at when is it best for making coconut milk and how to do that? The answers are that the flesh and the milk both come from the coconut with the outside husk having turned a nice dry looking brown.  Ishon took a heft machete, whacking the husk in a few parallet lengthwise places around the husk allowing him to pull the hard 'kernel' of the nut out of the husk. He then took the dull edge of the machete and thwacked the whiskery dark brown shell until it cracked open.  Inside the mostly hollow shell was a wall of about a half inch of snowy white sweet coconut meat, great for snacking. But for the Oildown he had me cut the meat of five coconuts into long chunks, then blending the chunks with abundant water and fresh tumeric root, in batches until he had almost two gallons of semi-liquid mash.  He filtered the solids and poured about a gallon of the liquid over the fire-warmed pot.  

Ishon wasn't finished yet with this laborious culinary enterprise. Next he prepared a simple dumpling of flour, salt and water; rolled this into cigar shaped dumpling and set those over the vegetables.  The next step used the leaves and stems of the Dasheen, known in the Caribbean as Callaloo. Nearly two pounds of sliced Callaloo topped off the pot and not-to-be finished without the final Caribbean staple, the salt fish crowned the top. 

The lid was placed and the smoking fire -due to wet wood as a result of the recent rains- simmered the pot for about two hours. 

I wondered if the smoke would have the mosquito repelling effect and sure enough it did! As the ten guests congregated around the concrete dinner table later, the pests were  mostly a no-show. The guests though were a lively group of global citizens. We had Frank and Barel (sp?) from Dresden, East Germany, Malin and Peter from Sweden, Glen, Atkin and Molly from Canada, Eric from Austria and of course Ishon.  He started by separating the various layers into separate bowls for serving. The Callaloo, looked like well cooked spinach, was in one dish, the dumplings in another, the meat and vegetables in a third and the provisions in a final. Passing the bowls, Ishon said, "Take as much as you like, there's more". 

We sat around the table slowly sampling and sifting out the bones savoring the textures and flavors of this island favorite while we shared travel tips and experiences, laughing at many of our communication challenges at the table and throughout the world.  Yata wrote some funny extemporaneous songs about Ishon and Grenada as the rum bottle emptied (altough neither of us imbibed).

So again, this isn't the luxury resort but it sure isn't boring...the rooster crows in confirmation!