Gomier's, Belize

I had a feeling veg food in Central America might be mostly about beans, rice and plantains (these I love, so no real problem).  Our first few meals in Belize seemed to confirm this hunch.

So I was excited to go to Gomier's in Punta Gorda (PG).  Gomier is a characterful, slender Rasta, who runs an all-veg place (used to be pure veg, now includes seafood to appeal to more travellers) and makes his own tofu.  We wandered along Front Street looking at sea and pelicans and trying to find it - it's not hard to find really: on the outskirts of the town centre, by the main road going North, with a view to the Caribbean.  We sat at one of his outside tables, drinking fresh fruit juice (starfruit or orange that day), waiting for the food (it takes a while), watching the world and the sea, and felt at home in Belize.  I had his fried tofu with curry sauce, S had the same with barbecue sauce.  BBQ sauce is usually nasty, but Gomier's was incredibly good - sweet and spicy.  The fried tofu was different from any I'd had before - large pieces, with a very firm texture, and some kind of crispy breadcrumb-like coating - also very good.  Both came with vegetable rice and salad.  It was so good we went back, and the second time I tried his tofu balls - the same tofu but in balls the size of king marbles.  Similarly great, and this was the only place we found in Belize really focused on making veg food (although I heard about a Chinese place in Belmopan).

Not to say we didn't eat well basically all the time - also in PG we had an awesome Belizean breakfast at our guesthouse Nature's Way - prepared by the mother of the family that ran the place - hot ginger tea for me / first real coffee in Belize for Seb, and a plate piled with scrambled eggs, fried plantain, beans, toast, and fresh fruit (papaya, banana and pineapple) - home cooked and tasty as anything.  And Marian's Bayview was good too: faster food and more space than Gomier's; canteen style, good choice, servers behind smoked glass - green beans, some kind of veg, ubiquitous rice, killer hot sauce.

Other highlights were coconut curry (at Habanero's) in Caye Caulker; all kinds of Marie Sharp's hot sauce everywhere; fry jacks; new fruits - Belizean pear (red, pear-shaped but with a stone, tart-sweet and slightly pear-like taste) and Belizean plum (green or yellow and plum shaped; very tart and juicy, with fibrous parts towards the middle - served on the bus in a plastic bag with chili sugar mixed in) and old ones (wonderful pineapple, papaya, watermelon; orange plantations and banana trees everywhere); spicy palm hearts freshly foraged from the rainforest and prepared by a Mayan mama; cacao; tacos from ladies by the lake in Flores...

Pupusa ladies, San Ignacio market, Cayo

We had an especially good food time in San Ignacio: Flayva's, Sweet Ting and Hannah's were good (the first a great spot to hang out).  A place called Martha's was lauded by all the guidebooks, and rightfully so, as we ate dinner and breakfast there and had nothing but great, simple food.  S had a chaya burrito and it blew my mind: chaya (a Mayan green a bit like spinach) cooked with onions, wrapped in a thick flour tortilla and served with a scoop of coconut rice and a plantain.  Also, in San Ignacio market I at last managed to get my paws on a pupusa: they were being rolled by an older lady who didn't speak English, so a younger woman in a long dress and bonnet (her granddaughter?) translated for me.  Beans stuffed in a thick flour bread-pancake, griddled and served piping hot, with hot sauce and pickled cabbage to go on top: finger-scorchingly magnificent.

pupusa!

San Ignacio is very close to the Guatemalan border, so the food there was relatively Hispanic-influenced (as in Flores, obv), whereas PG was kinda Rasta/Caribbean/Garifuna, with lots of Mayans around there too (although not running restaurants, sadly). And Caye Caulker felt like pure Caribbean, with the coconut and curries reminding me of Jamaican food.

Making boiled veg interesting

Boiling veg seems to be a basic part of British cookery, but I've never understood it.  Why take crunchy, sweet, flavour-filled carrots and turn them into dull-coloured mush?  Why boil tatties when you can bake them, mash them, roast them or fry them?  I think I am getting it now though: the cooking time has to be spot on or it all goes wrong.  Although I still find plain boiled veg a little dull.

Over Christmas, Bella, Seb and I stayed in a wee cabana on a Caribbean island, Caye Caulker.  For the only time during our Belize trip we had a basic kitchen.  Especially since Bells and I decided that a key Christmas Day tradition we must preserve was a big home-cooked feast, we really put it through its paces.  Produce available on the island / condiments etc in our kitchen were limited, but there were a few Chinese supermarkets and a couple of decent fruit and veg stands.

We ate jicama, radish and hibiscus petal salad (similar to this one), green beans, tomato and cucumber salad, refried beans, rice, tomato-garlic sauce, hot sauce, and boiled carrots.  We made the carrots interesting:


Boiled carrots with honey, ginger and coriander

Peel and chop 4 large carrots and boil until just done / still with some crunch (10-15 min, taste to check).  Finely chop a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, and 2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves.  When the carrots are done, drain them, transfer to a bowl and add 2 tbsp honey, plus the ginger and coriander.  Mix and serve warm.


Yesterday I boiled some little russet potatoes, primarily because I wanted the potato water for an experiment (more on that soon, if it works).  That meant I had a clutch of perfectly boiled little potatoes waiting in the fridge for me to do something with them.  I decided to fry:

Fried boiled potatoes with garlic, rosemary and thyme

Slice the cold boiled potatoes (about 8 fairly small ones; skin on if poss) into discs about 2 in across and 1/2 in deep.  Finely chop 2 cloves garlic.  Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan and add the garlic.  Fry for a minute or two until starting to soften and brown.  Add the potatoes and a good pinch of rosemary and another of thyme, and season well.  Fry on medium heat until the cut sides of the potatoes are nicely crisped and browned (I managed to burn them a little - watch it), taste for seasoning, and eat with a dollop of something saucey and good (baba ghanoush, in this case, since I made some at the weekend).

Cacao

young cacao pod

Our first stop in Belize, and something I was definitely excited about, was Punta Gorda, in the cacao-growing area of Toledo.  There is a considerable Mayan population there now (probably the biggest proportion of the population of any region of Belize), but of course there were many more back in the day.  Cacao was incredibly important to the Ancient Maya - they used it as currency.  After the mysterious Mayan collapse it seems like cacao in the region went a bit underground, with Mayan communities continuing to grow it and to drink hot cacao on special occasions, but little or no trade.

nearly-mature cacao pod

 Then Hershey's came along and imported their hybrid cacao plants and grew them in Belize during the American years (I was surprised they actually put cacao in their sick-flavoured 'chocolate').  And now there are three or four small-scale producers, placing an emphasis on maintaining the connections between farmers, chocolate manufacturers and consumers.  Near PG there is Cotton Tree Lodge (owned by Americans), and Cyrila's (owned by an entrepreneurial, local, Mayan family).  We took a tour of Cyrila's farm and they showed us the process of making chocolate, as well as letting us taste everything from the raw pods through roasted beans to hot cacao, cacao wine and finally chocolate.  The roasted beans were especially wonderful, and watching them turn into chocolate as you worked the grinder somewhat magical.

I started thinking about the idea that things that grow together taste good together.  I guess chocolate tastes good with about anything, but the flavours they were selling - chili chocolate, coffee chocolate, orange chocolate - seemed like such hard-and-fast, classic combinations...  I brought home some roasted cacao beans / nibs, and wanted to make something good with them.  Inspired by this recipe, I decided to combine the cacao with another crop important in Central America / the Caribbean: lime (where would guacamole or Cuba Libre be without lime?).


Cacao-Lime Cookies

Makes about 16.

1/2 cup fake butter
3/8 cup brown sugar
3/8 cup white sugar
1/2 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 1 1/2 tbsp hot water
1 1/4 tsp fake milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
7/8 cup flour
3/8 cup cocoa
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/8 cup cacao nibs
zest of half a lime


Heat the oven to 350F. Beat the butter and sugars until well mixed and light. Mix in the linseed mix, fake milk and vanilla.

Mix with a fork the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder. Add this to the butter mix gradually. Finally, mix in the cocoa nibs and lime zest.

Take small spoonfuls of the dough and roll into one inch sized balls and place onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 12 minutes. Let cool on the pan for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.


These have gone down a bit too well with S already - I intended to take them to Ladies' Drawing Club tomorrow, since the whole cacao aspect of the trip was partly catalysed by meeting Sam (who is currently working at Cotton Tree Lodge) through Andrea - but S has been making good inroads into the cookie pile: maybe I should have made double after all...