Haiti Day!

Second lesson learned of 2010…always do proper research before you take on a project! Or in other words, eat Haitian food before you attempt to reproduce/cook it.

C and I recently kicked off our Global Culinary Challenge 2010 by launching a Cooking for a Cause^* series. And given our cause, the Haitian relief effort, we thought it would make most sense to start of with…Haitian cuisine! Never mind that neither of us had ever tried Haitian, we figured it would be easy enough to pick up. Um...as you might have guessed - we were sort of wrong. We did manage to produce some dishes that tasted vaguely Haitian (plantains, rice & beans). Others that were good, but just seemed to miss the ethnic-mark (snapper, lamb stew). But others (read: griots) just left me scratching my head in confusion. Either way, it was a very fun night – and thanks to the lovelies who came!

We started our day with a nice charity run for Haiti (I finished in 6,208 place haha) with marathoner, J.S., and Terry-Foxer, M.Y. It was a crisp Feb day, filled to the brim with high energy runners and supporters!

Now – specific pieces of advice for any other clueless cooks out there who wants to attempt Haitian.

Plantains – not as easy to find as you might think in NYC! We scored diff local D’Agostinos, Whole Foods & Trader Joes – to no avail. How did we end up picking these suckers up then? We had to beg for scraps from the nice waitstaff at Havana Alma de Cuba. I think they gave us the older plantains, but either way – we had three nice long blackened bananas to work with.

Griots – described by various websites as ‘fried chunks of seasoned pork’…after hours of marinating (overnight), simmering (hours), deep frying (long enough) – we were left with small chunks of dry pork…fried. Theories abound over what went ‘wrong’. Perhaps we cut the pork cubes too small? Perhaps we shouldn’t have simmered for so long? And finally perhaps we should have deep-fried it in a shallower (therefore, hotter/faster) pan of oil. ??

Rice & Beans – before you try this, you might want to get a mortar & pestle to properly ground up the herb/spice mixture. Lacking this device, I was left crushing via spoon for WAY too long.

Snapper & Spicy Lamb Stew – in my opinion, the preparation for these dishes was actually pretty standard and well-known! Besides for okra (which is really easy to prepare despite it's inherent stickiness) everything was by-the-book-Amy-style. :) But then again, it tasted pretty “normal” to me (meaning…non-ethnic)

*Cooking for a Cause Details – A culinary series where we shall endeavor to cook new and different ethnic cuisines every month and feature the results at a dinner party. Dinner party guests are encouraged to “donate” a small amount of $$ to our cause. At the end of our series, we will donate the total lump sum to Haitian relief charities.

Mike, excited to dig in to stew? Haha

Well still – Cooking For a Cause Dinner #1 - Haiti COMPLETE! Suggestions welcome for the next course.