Barbados

Menu: Saltfish fritters & guava juice | Recipe Source: bajanbite.com and earthfoodandfire.com

From time to time, these cooking around the world recipes are so good that they make me laugh out loud when I try them. I don’t know why my culinary amazement manifests as laughter, but I’ve come to realize that the undeniable sign of a homerun recipe is me standing alone* in my kitchen, clothes splattered in wayward sauce/oil/spices/flour, and giggling with a fork in my hand. It’s impossible to predict which dishes are going elicit this sort of reaction, but I’m happy to report that Bajan saltfish fritters met the mysterious criteria and can officially be certified as laugh-out-loud good.

I’ve never worked with saltfish before (also known as bacalao or salted cod), and it was really hard to source. My local grocery stores and my favorite butcher both didn’t have any in stock, and because saltfish needs to stay at or below 40 degrees, ordering it online would have involved $40+ shipping fees. But as luck would have it, I was saved once again by Tom’s Seafood in Lakewood.** The rest of the fritter ingredients were much easier to snag- flour, limes, hot sauce, chives, baking powder, an egg- and the recipe itself came together in a snap. The recipes I read through all varied when it came to spicing the fritter batter, so in the spirit of kitchen magic (and also wanting to use up the haul of spices I bought for Jamaica), I decided to also go a little rogue (see Ready to Cook? section below the photos for specifics). The result was a surprisingly large batch of crispy, golden, allium-scented fish fritters that got a little extra oomph from a generous squeeze of lime and a side of Marie Rose sauce.

I was lucky enough to grow up with a Caribbean grandmother who refused to abandon the foods and fruits of her childhood. As a result, “exotic” produce like papaya, dragonfruit, guava, mango, soursop, and kenep were all as normal to me as pears and apples, and while my brothers were never quite as fruit-obsessed as I was, my sweet tooth and I couldn’t get enough. One of my grandma’s favorite ways to eat her tropical fruits was to turn them into juice by mixing their pulp with cold water, honey, and a good splash of citrus, and I used her juice-making method to whip up the guava-lime juice in the pictures below. While guava is consumed regularly in Barbados (and even turned into guava cheese!), it isn’t the country’s most popular fruit. That honor goes to the mango, but since I just made mangonadas for Mexico, I wanted to play around with a different (and equally delicious) island fruit.

*Standing alone, a phrase which in this instance means “being eyed judgmentally by a cat as he lurks six feet away on the dining table”

**If you live in the Denver area, have a hankering for a seafood dinner, and are willing to wander over to Lakewood to buy your fish/scallops/prawns/etc., I cannot recommend Tom’s highly enough.

Ready to cook?

Saltfish fritters (link 1 and link 2): Since the recipes I came across varied significantly in their flourishes, I used a combination of the two linked recipes and then went somewhat rogue with my spicing. I used 1lb of saltfish, soaked it in cold water in the fridge for two hours, and then went ahead with the double-boil that both recipes called for. The recipes were in agreement about the amount of flour (1 cup), baking powder (1 tsp), egg, and water (1 cup), but that was where the similarities ended. For my fritter spicing, I went with 2 tbsp chopped chives, 1 tbsp chopped parsley, zest from one lime, 4 grated garlic cloves, 2 tsp granulated garlic powder, 1 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp white pepper, 1/2 tsp dried thyme, 5 whole allspice berries (I ground them up in my coffee grinder), 1/4 tsp dark brown sugar, and 1/2 tsp Jamaican curry powder. Instead of doing 1 cup of plain water, I did half a cup of chicken broth (skip this to keep things pescatarian), all the juice from the lime that I zested, about 1/2 tbsp Stuzzi hot sauce (the general idea here is that you want something with good heat but minimal additional flavors; Tabasco or Louisiana would both work perfectly), and then added cold tap water until I hit the 1 cup mark. For the Marie Rose sauce, I followed the measurements for mayo, ketchup, and lime juice in the Bajan Bite recipe, but skipped the additional sugar and added 1/2 tbsp Worchestershire sauce instead.

Guava juice (link): I shared the full recipe in my Instagram post, but the gist of it is a carton of guavas (white or pink both work), four limes, cold water, agave, and a blender!