Happy Spring.
It's the first day of spring.  Here in Toronto, Spring has been welcomed in with a few days of cold temperatures and off and on snow flurries.  I hear in Montreal they still have about 30 cm of snow so I'll keep my complaining at a minimum.  The imminence of Easter though seems to bring with it the expectation of warmer temperatures.  In that we've been very disappointed, frustrated and even cranky.
I remember one of my first couple of Easter's in Montreal a friend invited me to the Easter 'Sunrise' Service on easter morning.  It sounded interesting and there was a pancake breakfast afterwards.  Either way my friend T and I found ourselves standing on Mount Royal in Montreal at 6 a.m. that particular Easter morning.
We were freezing our asses off because it must have been about -10C at the time and while we were standing (for the entire service!) to add insult to injury... it started to snow.  We were both miserable although T is much better natured than I am about those things and he put on a brave face and faked his way to friendliness.  Neither one of us knew liturgy very well back then.  So when one of the lay-leaders (someone who doesn't get paid for their work) shouted 'Christ is Risen!' at him he didn't know what to do and she was standing there watching, waiting, anticipating a response.  We both looked at each other confused and finally he blurted out 'Hallelujah'.  Not missing a beat, our fearless lay-leader shot both of us a frustrated and angry look and snapped 'No - It's He is Risen Indeed'.  She taught us.  That was it though.  I had stopped even attempting to hide my crankiness and poor T snapped once he got that response.  Pancake breakfast or no, we left.  Bolted.  Found warmth at the closest spot that we could find and then made our way home to make better pancakes than we would have had in the church basement.  Not my best Easter but we made lemonade out of them lemons.


We've all been so sick of winter - the cold, the snow, the damp, the cloudy - that we made our way to the west indian store last week and picked up some much needed ingredients.  We made it a family trip and got a lot of pleasure out of walking the isles looking at foods that reminded us of a warmer, sunnier place.  West Indian curry powder, salt fish, dasheen leaf (recipe to follow in the next post), Apple J, coconut milk and pigeon peas... yup we got it all.
Then we made our way home and I started making some stewed pork.  In Trinidad it's much more common to make stewed chicken.  A typical Sunday lunch is stewed chicken, callalloo (recipe coming with the dasheen leaf) and macaroni pie.  This time around I went for cubed pork instead of the chicken and we opted for plain rice instead of the macaroni pie.  It was fantastic and brought a little bit of sunshine to our cold, cranky, almost-easter-and-disappointed selves.  If you don't want to use that much meat please feel free to halve the quantity but you could easily use the same amounts for everything else just add less water to the marinade.


Trini Stewed Pork adapted from Naparima Girls School Cookbook
serves 8 - 10

Marinade
4 tbsp mixed herbs
5 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
4 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
4 tbsp Soy Sauce
3 tbsp sugar
3 tsp salt
2 tsp pepper sauce (or 1/2 tsp cayenne)
1 boullion cube
water

3 - 5 lbs pork (any cut, including the cheaper cuts like shoulder), cubed

1 med onion, sliced
5 - 6 carrots, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp butter or lard
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and whole
2/3 cup ketchup
1/2 cup coconut milk (optional)
2 scotch bonnet peppers, whole - do not cut
salt to taste

Combine the herbs, garlic, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, sugar, salt, pepper sauce and boullion cube together in a large bowl.  Add in the cubed meat and enough water to just barely cover the meat.  Stir and marinade together for anywhere from 1 - 8 hours (even overnight if you wish)
Heat a large, heavy bottomed dutch oven (big enough to hold all of the meat) over med or slightly higher heat until the pot is quite hot.  Add the brown sugar and the butter or lard to the pot.  Cook together until the brown sugar begins to melt.  Add in the whole garlic cloves.  You can remove the garlic cloves now if you wish or keep them in - up to you.   Once the sugar begins to get dark (chocolate coloured dark) then turn the heat down a bit and add in the carrots and the meat - you might want to add in stages so that the pot doesn't cool down too much.  Once everything is added in and the meat has browned a bit add in the marinade liquid.  Bring to a low simmer.  Add in the ketchup and the coconut milk (I did not add it to mine).  Mix well.
Before covering the pot add the set the scotch bonnet peppers on top of meat but don't stir in.  Cover and lower the heat to just barely keep things simmering.  Cook for about 1 1/2 hrs.  The meat should be quite tender.  Check the tastes and add salt if necessary.
Serve with a big bowl of callalloo and some rice or macaroni pie.