Humans,
How's everyone holding up? It's all good here with your favorite Bear family. We're taking this time to really slow down, find our bearings and focus on each other and our passions. Osa has been tending to the garden and pickling her little bear heart out (everything from eggs to octopus), Lil' Osito is back in school, and I've been trying my paws at crochet between bouts of writer's block with the cookbook.
Before the world changed we were prepping our next menu for the Food by Bear series. We'd planned on sharing with you a taste of Haiti, a magical - though often misunderstood - place. Haiti is where the value of culture and of community really connected for me. After the massive earthquake of 2010, I arrived in Port-au-Prince at the request of an old friend, Max Beauvoir, the "Supreme Master" of Vodou. Max and I had met decades earlier when he was a biochemist and I was studying the scientific aspects of my cooking.
Max introduced me to various houngans (priest) and mambos (priestess) and gave me one very clear job: I was to cook up the sacrificial remains of Vodou ceremonies and serve these meals throughout the suffering communities. I was nervous at first. Certain exotic words are charged with evocative power. Vodou is one. It usually conjures up visions of mysterious deaths, secret rites - or dark saturnalia celebrated by "blood-maddened, god-maddened" humans. But very quickly I learned that Vodou is a beautiful and vital tradition completely intertwined with the Haitian culture. A combination of Catholicism and African rituals, its devotees ask of it what humans have always asked of religion: remedy for ills, satisfaction for needs and the hope of survival.
What I witnessed during these ceremonies and spending time with my new Haitian friends was more powerful than I can properly put into words, but the experience has been a spiritual guide for everything I've tried to do since. I hope you enjoy a taste of Haiti, and if you ever have the chance, GO!
LEGBA THE TRICKSTER
Papa Legba is a loa, or spirit, thought to stand between human and the spirit world. He's usually the first to appear in a ceremony, often appearing as an old man with a cane wearing a straw hat and smoking a pipe (pretty much the look I strive for in old age). He can help to remove obstacles that lay in a person's way, but he has also been portrayed as a trickster and one to be wary of. In culinary affairs, he can be hard to please. Legba demands food be grilled, so make sure that butternut squash goes on the BBQ.
serves 8
1.5 large yellow onions, small dice
8 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 c butter
2 c arborio rice
5 ripe plantains, small or medium dice
6 cups stock
1 bay leaf
2 tsp celery seed
2 tsp thyme
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
2 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded & cut into 1/2 inch slices
12 oz sliced prosciutto
4 slices pumpernickel bread
salt and pepper
melted butter
olive oil
for the risotto:
1. In a large pan on medium heat, sweat onions and garlic in butter until translucent.
2. Add rice, and toast for two minutes.
3. Add plantains, bay and spices. Stir.
4. Reduce heat to medium/low. Add stock slowly, 1 cup at a time. Before adding the next cup of liquid, be sure that the rice has absorbed the liquid it is already cooking in. Risotto will be rich & creamy when finished. If you can still see the nucleus of the rice grain and it is crunchy, more liquid is needed. If rice looks/tastes done at 5 cups, do not add the 6th. This can vary depending on the altitude of which you are cooking.
for the grilled butternut squash:
1. Heat your grill to medium heat.
2. Brush olive oil on each side of squash, and season with salt and pepper.
3. Place directly on hot grill. Cook on both sides - a couple minutes each - until tender. Remove and allow to cool before cutting.
for the crispy prosciutto:
1. Preheat oven to 325.
2. Lay prosciutto flat on a sheet tray with a rack.
3. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until prosciutto looks leathery. Remove from oven.
4. Meat may still look bendable while hot. Once cooled, it should break if you try to bend it. If it doesn’t snap, cook again for another 10 minutes or so until crispness is achieved.
for the pumpernickel crumbs:
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Lay bread on a sheet pan and toast in the oven until 100% dried, about 10 minutes.
3. Once cooled, pulse crumbs in a food processor until it is the texture of sand.
4. Place crumbs in a bowl. Stir in melted butter until evenly distributed. Season with salt and pepper.
to plate:
Shingle 1/4 inch sliced butternut squash in a circular motion. Divide risotto among plates, scooping into the center so that it is partially on top of the grilled squash. Gently stick crispy prosciutto into the risotto, opposite of the squash. Garnish with herbs (parsley/chives), and sprinkle pumpernickel crumbs on top.
OLOFFSON RHUM PUNCH
Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince is one of my favorite places in the world. From Graham Greene's 1966 classic novel The Comedians: "We entered the steep drive lined with palm trees and bougainvillea. With its towers and balconies and wooden fretwork decorations it had the air at night of a Charles Addams house in a number of the New Yorker. You expected a witch to open the door to you or a maniac butler, with a bat dangling from the chandelier behind him. But in the sunlight, it seemed fragile and period and pretty and absurd, an illustration from a book of fairy-tales."
The Oloffson has been serving its famous rhum punch since at least the 1940's, but the recipe is "a world of secrets" according to current proprietor, Richard Morse (also the frontman of RAM, quite possibly the most fun live band I've ever seen and which plays at the hotel most Thursday evenings).
Here's my best stab at reconstructing the drink. One sip and I'm immediately whisked back to a place I hold near and dear.
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon sugar
2.5 oz rhum barbancourt (five star)
1/4 oz maraschino liqueur
1.5 oz fresh orange juice
1/2 oz myers's dark rum (to float)
In a cocktail shaker, stir together the sugar and lime juice until the sugar dissolves. Add ice, rhum, maraschino liqueur and orange juice. Shake well and strain into a tall glass filled with fresh (crushed, if possible) ice. Pour Myers’s gently over the back of a spoon to float it on top.