Ann's Blog

Hog Island, Grenada:
January 21, 2012
Pineapple and pan:
Tying up loose ends from Trinidad

Continued from home page

Chow doesn’t require precise quantities – you make it “to your taste.” Here are the ingredients:
• a slightly underripe pineapple
• a few cloves of garlic
• salt
• a lime or two
• a handful of chadon bene or cilantro
• a Scotch bonnet or other hot pepper

Here’s what you do:
Peel the pineapple and cut out the eyes. Cut the fruit into rings and then cut each ring into pieces (about 1”–1½” wide). Add a clove or two of finely chopped garlic, a good sprinkle of salt, the juice of a lime, and some chopped chadon bene and hot pepper. Stir to combine thoroughly. (A master of KISS, Jesse combined everything in a plastic container, snapped on the lid, and gave it a good shaking. No spoon necessary.)

Taste and add more garlic, salt, lime, chadon bene, and/or hot pepper as necessary. The chow should have a nice balance between hot, sweet, salty, and acidic, with noticeable punch from the garlic and the chadon bene.

Eat immediately, or let stand briefly for the flavours to develop fully.

***

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that Steve loves steel pan music. So much so, that he’s been lobbying for the last few years for a pan of his own, so he can learn to play. I know he’s not really serious. He just likes to see my reaction when he brings it up. (“A FULL-SIZE TENOR PAN ON ALREADY CROWDED-TO-THE-GILLS RECETA????!!??”)

Just before Christmas, I paid a Secret Santa visit to the offices of Pan Trinbago (the world governing body for steel pan) in downtown Port of Spain. Steve had expressed interest in a book, which I discovered was sold only there: If Yuh Iron Good, You Is King: Pan Pioneers of Trinidad and Tobago. Maureen, the helpful woman at the front desk, sold me the book (and a tee-shirt, listing the past winners of Panorama from 1963 to 2008; “we’ll be adding deh other winners jus’ now,” she said). But she also told me about a new app called “Digital Pan,” which allows you to play the pan of your choice on your iPad or iPhone. Could I resist? I gifted it to Steve’s iPad on Christmas Eve, so it was ready for downloading on Christmas morning.

No “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for my Stevie. He wanted to start with his all-time favourite pan piece, the classic, complicated only-experts-need-apply “Woman on de Bass.” Uh-huh.

So far, I’ve heard only tuneless plinking from the forepeak. But on the upside, his request for a real pan has been – at least for now – effectively silenced.

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