Recipe for Trinidadian Pepper Sauce / Recent Titles by other Faculty, Alumnae, Alumni / Table of Contents / Home
Friends and fellow cooks and authors Avakian, left, and Ire.
ssociate professor of women's studies Arlene Voski ("Don't-Call-Her-Methuselette") Avakian '75G, '85G has "been here from the beginning," says women's studies staffer Karen Lederer '81, of second-wave feminist activism at UMass. Avakian is also a fierce, funny character who can both dish it out and take it when it comes it comes to the fervid infighting that goes with any academic turf and goes double for politically charged "studies" fields. She's a regular paragon of the committed, in-it-for-the-long-haul feminist scholar.
Then there's the long, complicated, undeniably iconic connection between women and food. Irresistible, then, to treat Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking, an anthology edited by Avakian, in our women's issue. Reprinted here is an essay by Jennifer Ire '95G, lecturer in women's studies, doctoral student in counseling psychology, and, her recipes suggest, wicked good cook.
The Power of the Pepper: from Slave Food to Spirit Food by Jennifer Ire
WHEN I WAS GROWING UP ON TRINIDAD, West Indies, I never questioned why, in a land surrounded by water and abounding with fish, we ate saltfish. Saltfish was a staple, cooked in so many different ways. We ate in buljol, a Trinidad and Tobago heritage dish made from a mixture of shredded de-salted codfish, oil, onions, tomatoes, and green pepper, which was delicious especially when it was accompanied by roasted coconut bake. We ate it in stew. We ate in in accra, a variation of West African fritters, accompanied by floats. I never questioned why "salt meat," which is pig parts, mostly tails and feet, flavored almost everything - soups, stews, peas, beans. Why we used condensed milk. I just knew these were some of the foods I ate and loved. Our women made magic with them.
It was only when I began to teach myself about the history of slavery in the West Indies that I found out some of the favorite foods of my people came from the creation of the "slave diet" by Europeans, and are therefore an artifact of slavery. The people who needed and deserved nourishment, the people who performed the backbreaking labor on the slave plantations, were forced to subsist on the tail, feet, and ribs of animals, the parts Europeans didn't want. My ancestors were fed denatured food, salted meat and fish and condensed sweetened milk, and we came to treasure these foods as our heritage.
Hot peppers (about a dozen) 2 medium tart/acid or semisweet fruit in season, like green mangoes or sour green apples approximately 1/4 small green pawpaw (papaya), optional 2 cloves garlic 1 small onion 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar salt to taste Wash, seed, and cut up peppers and fruit. (Remember the peppers are hot, so use a knife and fork. If it gets on your hands, then wash your hands with sugar to cut the pepper. You may want to wear rubber gloves. Be very careful not to rub your eyes with hands.) 2. Cut up onion and garlic. 3. Mix peppers, onion, garlic, and fruit with 1/4 to 1/2 cup water. Add salt to taste and bottle. 4. Hot sauce can be used sparingly on any dish that needs spicing, and lasts indefinitely if refrigerated. Experiment with the taste of different fruits that you like, using tart fruits more than semisweet. For variation chop ingredients into about half-inch bits, add vinegar and salt, and bottle sauce ensuring that the vinegar covers ingredients in the bottle. Store in the sun for about two weeks before using. Think of the creativity of the slave women and create your own sauce in their honor. |
On first learning this history of the foods I loved, I was angry and for months I could not look at, far less eat, those foods. I was sickened to my stomach at the thought that even the food I loved was shaped by Europeans and by slavery. I thought of the women having to cook for these colonials and then for their own families, knowing the vast difference in the fare they were forced to serve each group, and I cried for them. I cried for myself and the generations who lived before me.
I had a dilemma. I could not stomach the food and yet I craved the food. After all, I was raised on the stuff; it is part of my heritage, part of who I am, part of my ancestry. What to do? I read more of the history and thought more of what it took for those women to bear, birth, and raise children who survived to produce the generations that allowed me to come forth. Through deeply imbibing the stories of the lives of slave women I began to see the wisdom, skill, knowledge, and love that took the leavings of the Europeans and the denatured food mandated for them and created the foods that are so good and so nutritious. I imagined the women knowing that the green leaves of root crops were spirit food, that would nourish the body. I imagined the collaboration among women, slave and native who survived, to use the roots that looked and tasted like the foods of Africa, the foods used to produce meals that kept hem alive, like the hot pepper. I came to understand that they had to have a relationship with all the ingredients in order to take the little that was given and produce nourishment for abused bodies.
]I thought about my food in this new way, rejoicing and feeling profound respect and gratitude for the women's ability to ensure survival. Food was a part of slavery and I was raised on slave food. I had to accept that fact. i had to be able to acknowledge my African ancestors and their relationship with plants. I imagined them making a relationship with the hot, hot pepper which I have always loved. In Trinidad, like in the other islands, we have hot peppers. In cooking with our pepper, the proper, respectful and loving handling of the pepper gives food flavor that is exquisite. But you must be mindful in your relationship with this pepper to be rewarded with its sweetness. In Trinidad our women are sometimes described as being "hot like a pepper." A proper respectful and loving relationship with us provided life a flavor that is exquisite. On the other hand, improper, disrespectful, or loveless relating produces the sharp hot edge, just as with the pepper. I formed a relationship with the pepper and she infused flavor and spared the sting. Hot pepper helped me to recover my relationship to slave food. I began to use more hot pepper, making pepper sauce to baptize the food before eating it, to infuse the food with the love that flows from the generation who began in the West as slave women. As I drink the pepper, I honor the women, the strong women who endured, who created, whose knowledge has kept us alive.
