You Gonna Eat That? Part 3

So now that we've touched on shopping and cooking in Belize let's talk about my favorite subject:  eating in Belize.  While admittedly, Belize isn't exactly the culinary mecca that it's northern neighbor, Mexico is, that doesn't detract from the fact that Belize has some really amazing dishes all its own.

     Latin American in location, yet Caribbean in much of its influence, Belize has put together its own meal time staples that rarely leave a stomach wanting for more.  It's almost as if its plates are a marriage of Latino and Caribbean, yet intermingled with some Indian influence (brought on by the Indians who arrived as indentured servants some 150 years ago).

     The absolute number one most popular dish in Belize, one that can be found available at nearly every party gathering, every restaurant, every market food stall, and on many weekly dinner/lunch tables is stewed chicken and rice and beans or sometimes beans and rice--the latter different than the former (and cole slaw on the side if you really want to get technical).  And if you're lucky, you'll find it served with one or two slices of fried plantain, yum yum.  There's just something about this dish that our family loves and whenever we feel like we need some true comfort food, we almost always cook up a batch of it.  In fact, when we returned back to the states, stewed chicken was the very first meal that I cooked our family.

     Chicken, being the most popular meat served in Belize, is also excellent served as curry chicken, BBQ chicken, chicken terkari, escabeche and fried chicken.  The best part about these dishes is that they can be found at any number of local restaurants for anywhere between $2.50 and $5 for a full meal, except for BBQ chicken which can usually be picked up by any number of roadside vendors on Saturdays for no more than $3 a plate.  

     But while chicken is the most popular dish, there are also many other great culinary delights that we enjoyed common to Belize.  Over the months we had opportunities to try fish such as jewfish & snook, gibnut (a delicious large rodent), armadillo, iguana (known locally as bamboo chicken), crab stew (made with the local crabs that run around the streets during rainy season), hudut (a garifuna stew with fish and a coconut milk broth and mashed plantains on the side) and one of my all time favorite dishes in the world--cohune cabbage (no cabbage involved).  

Crab stew made from local land crabs

Panades w/cabbage relish,
cohune cabbage & tortillas

     Every so often a local Mayan will come by, selling bags of cut cohune or even an entire "log" of cohune for about $5.  Cohune is a type of palm tree common to the area and by cutting down the tree and removing the heart you've got the basis for cohune cabbage--think hearts of palm but in large quantities.  The main spices are tumeric (locally known as yellow ginger) along with salt and pepper.  The cohune gets chopped up and boiled with a sauteed onion and spiced.  It's often cooked with chicken pieces and always served over rice.  Surprisingly simple, I find the dish to be nothing short of spectacular and I made it whenever I could get my hands on some cohune.

     One of my absolute favorite things about living in Belize are the umpteen different adults and kids who walk or ride around selling different goodies door to door:  ice cream cones, bread buns, creole bread (similar in flavor to Hawaiian bread), johnny cakes, meat pies, coconut tarts, "fudge" (a gooey conglomeration of sesame seeds, chocolate and who knows what else), sticky buns, tamales (complete with whole chicken parts as filling), panades (fish, beans, or chicken style empanada), corn tortillas, and our absolute favorite--corn fritters.  All averaging about 50 cents a piece or less.  A lot of times moms would send their children out to sell their homemade goodies.  As much as possible, we would try to buy whatever the kids were selling because I knew that most times, the children could not come home until all of their items were sold.  It's no fun seeing a 10 year old out in the dark begging people to buy his last 4 buns so he could go home.  Consequently, kids loved coming up to our door to sell us mom's baked goods and we loved trying the new things they had to offer.  

     Belizeans use a handful of common spices, at least one of which can be found as a basis for nearly every dish cooked there. Recardo (what you may know as adobo) is a very common seasoning added to dishes along with curry powder, tumeric, chicken bouillon, ginger and coconut milk, all of which I learned to appreciate and administer accordingly to the appropriate dishes.  Oregano is used often in whole dried leaf form along with cilantro and culatnro (cilantro's flavorful and easy to cook with cousin).  Surprisingly, most Belizean dishes are not spicy--though habaneros are extremely common here and hot sauce is more common than ketchup--it's served on pretty much everything.  

Custard apple (tastes like a plum)

one of the many varieties of bananas

   Living so close to the tropical rain forest, fruits abound here.  Between the 7 of us, I would say we've tried more new fruits (and veggies) here than varieties we'd previously tasted in our past years combined.  Some were delicious additions to our palate such as custard apples, cacao pods, breadfuit (a starchy fruit similar in flavor to a potato), bilimbi (made into juice) and the multitude of banana varieties.  Many others, well, let's just say, we're happy to leave those in Belize.  I think that what I found to be most surprising is that there are so many local fruits available that not even all Belizeans are familiar with every variety, plus, our children could always be seen munching on a new fruit that a friend grabbed for them from a tree in their yard.

cashew fruit (the nut is seen encased
on top left fruit) this was one fruit we
did not care for

 

cacao pod:  you can eat the
white membrane around the
 cocoa beans

  Being that there are so many different cultures here in Belize, the foods reflect that.  The Mayans may offer cacao drink to a guest while the Garifuna people would probably serve cassava bread.  Each ethnic group has a few foods that are unique to them.  But, the different cultures serve up a lot of the same foods as well, with just slight variations in the spicing.  While the Belizean menu isn't as extensive as a foodie such as myself might hope for, there never seemed to be a loss of opportunities to try something new.  I could probably write an entire blog on each food group and the foods available in Belize. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed learning about a few of the different foods available in our host country and find yourself encouraged to both want to try perhaps something new and appreciate some of the amazing varieties that we do have available in the US.