I had the pleasure of attending this year’s West Indian Parade in Brooklyn this past Labor Day. While scoping out the island fare I came across a man laboriously juicing sugar cane stalks. I inquired about this supposed refreshing chilled juice and was given a bit of a sample. One swig later and I was left with a not so pleasant taste in my mouth. It wasn’t sweet as I had expected and as for refreshing, I think I’ll stick with lemonade on a hot day.
I got to thinking, all that work has got to amount to something worthy of a drinker’s palate and then it hit me — sugar cane juice cocktails. Alone this drink may be less than desirable but use it as a base or even garnish to a refreshing cocktail and they may just have something here. Chewingcane.com, a north Florida based company that sells ornamental sugar cane plants for the home, offers this list of sugar cane cocktail recipes. more…
Salted cod. Some call it a humble staple, but I’d say it’s a fantastically tasty treat. What I can’t understand is why it hasn’t caught on in America. It’s portable, cheap and practically never goes bad. Everyone else in the world has figured out how awesome it is. The Europeans love it. West Indians dig it. And a whole lot of Catholics have incorporated the fish into their treasured Easter recipes. Lucky for me, I live in New York–the ultimate city for finding hard-to-find foods.
Stewed goat and potatoes
On a recent dreary, rainy day (in a stream of never-ending rainy days) I got a hankering for salted cod, so I decided to check out a place my friend had recommended. Fritz International Jamaican Restaurant in Bed-Stuy doesn’t look like much from outside. Well, it doesn’t look like much from inside either, but my stomach didn’t seem to care. more…
A&J Wholesalers is one of 30 vendors at the Brooklyn Terminal Market in Canarsie. Despite the name, A&J operates both wholesale and retail businesses. Once an Italian specialty market, A&J has adapted with the immigration changes in the neighborhood. Now they offer a combination of West Indian, African and Italian products. Though the Italian products are diminished to one little corner of the shop.
Jay Nespoli has been working at the market for a quarter century and for A&J the past 10 years. He says that many of his Haitian customers buy palettes of products such as flour, rice, dried beans, even bottled water and paper towels to send home to Haiti. The food prices are so outrageous in Haiti that it is actually cheaper to ship food from New York. Check out this article from last year on NPR about the problem of food prices in Haiti: Spiraling Food Prices Buffet Poverty-Stricken Haiti
Mangoes and cod fish are among A&J’s best selling products. Check out this photo collage of some of A&J’s offerings…
