Look How We Ate That! Did You Know We Share These Holiday Dishes Across The Diaspora? – Essence

Our people have all kinds of variations of rice and peas throughout the diaspora, from hoppin’ john in the south to arroz con gandules in Puerto Rico. For the latter, ingredients include chicken broth, tomato paste, various seasonings and sofrito, an aromatic mix of onion, garlic, sweet chili peppers and cilantro. The English counterpart to sofrito is green seasoning but spicier and is also a key ingredient in peas and rice, as it’s called in Trinidad.

Hoppin’ John is flavored with pork and thought to bring good luck and prosperity in the New Year. As such, it’s usually paired with collard greens (whose green color represents U.S. money) and corn bread, which is the color of gold.

While pork wasn’t widely consumed in West and Central Africa, once enslaved Africans landed in the Americas, they were given pork to eat. As a result, pork is a common part of holiday meals throughout the diaspora.

Baked ham is popular in the United States and in various Caribbean countries. Christmas ham in Jamaica is garnished with cloves, pineapples and cherries. In Cuba, people feast on “vieja ropa” (which translates to old clothes) which is shredded pork (or beef) with tomatoes, olive oil, saffron and red wine, served with rice. In Haiti, griot or griyo is a savory fried pork dish that graces the table during the holidays.

Souse is made from pickled meat, typically the parts of the pig, cow or chicken that aren’t fleshy, for example pig feet, ears and tail are commonly used in souse as are cow or chicken feet.

It’s a Caribbean spin on head cheese (a loaf made from cold cuts or jellied meats of a calf or pig’s head) which originated in Europe. The meat in souse is first tenderized through boiling and then marinated in lime, cucumbers, peppers and seasonings to pickled perfection. It’s served cold and enjoyed throughout the Caribbean including Trinidad, Antigua, Guyana and Barbados.

A Trinidadian staple, this sweet and savory dish is typically made with minced meat (although it can also be made with chicken or soy) cornmeal and raisins, wrapped up tight in a banana leaf and then steamed. There’s also an exclusively sweet version called Paime made with cornmeal, coconut and raisins.

Pastelle was brought to the Americas by the Spaniards and is popular in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean as well, including Puerto Rico where it’s called pastele. It is so popular there it has its own annual celebration: Festival Nacional del Pastel Puertorriqueno. Variations are also found in Latin America, for example in Colombia where it’s called pastel de arroz.

Ponche crema (cream punch) is a Venezuelan beverage that was brought to nearby Trinidad and Tobago which has made it its own. Like American eggnog, it’s made with milk, eggs, sugar, rum and nutmeg but the Trinidadian version includes citrus from Angostura bitters and lime zest, it also jazzes things up a bit with sweetened condensed milk.

Puerto Rico has its own version called Coquito which swaps out eggs for cream of coconut and coconut milk. Kremas or Cremasse, as it’s called in Haiti, takes the best of these varieties by combining the ingredients of American eggnog (sans eggs) with citrus from the Trinidadian version and coconut from the Puerto Rican version.

Derived from British plum pudding (pictured below), black cake can be found throughout the English-speaking Caribbean and owes its Black color to browning, a black syrup with a sweet caramel flavor made from burnt sugar.

While Black cake is similar to American fruit cake, it has a key difference: fruit cake contains chunks of fruit, but black cake has fruit that’s been soaked in rum and either ground or blended together. The result is denser and moister than fruit cake. British plum pudding contains dried fruits and brandy to preserve it for up to a year. During the slave trade, brandy was replaced with rum which was readily available in the Caribbean. Black cake goes nicely with a tall glass of sorrel.

Pen patat is a Haitian sweet potato pudding whose ingredients include bananas, white sweet potatoes, raisins, sugar and coconut cream and is a popular dessert during the holidays. Variations of this pudding abound, for example Jamaica has a sweet potato pudding which replaces bananas with yam.

In Trinidad, Christmas isn’t complete without cassava pone, similar in appearance to sweet potato pudding, it’s made with grated cassava, coconut, raisins, brown sugar and cinnamon. It can also be made with sweet potatoes and pumpkin.