Recipes By Ramin Ganeshram
5 recipes found
Ponche Crème
A twist on eggnog, Trinidad’s ponche crème uses sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk instead of whole milk, cream and sugar. The name of this libation is a combination of Spanish and French, harkening to the island’s history of colonization: Ponche is Spanish for “punch” and crème means “cream” in French. (Despite different variations on the name, including poncha creme and poncha de crème, ponche crème is most common in spoken vernacular.) The condensed and evaporated milks create a thick, aromatic drink with a warm, spicy flavor provided by rum and Angostura bitters. Native to South America, tonka bean imparts a unique Caribbean flavor that is warm and spicy, with notes of vanilla, but it should be used sparingly, since it is a natural source of coumarin, a blood-thinner. If you don’t want to use tonka, mixed essence approximates its flavor. Normally added raw, the eggs in this adaptation are cooked into a light custard with food safety in mind. Ponche crème lasts, refrigerated, for up to three days.
Prasad
Popular during Diwali, prasad or parsad embodies the evolution of religious food in Indo-Caribbean communities. Sweetened clumps of farina with the texture of very moist pound cake are garnished with a combination of coconut, raisins, fruits and nuts. Served in small paper bags that turn translucent with ghee, prasad is punctuated with the crunch of almonds, cashews and roasted chickpeas. The addition of mixed essence, a flavoring in Caribbean desserts that is available at Caribbean markets or online, and evaporated milk makes this an Indo-Caribbean version of the confection.
Lychee Cake
Chinese Jamaican bakers might closely guard the secrets to their lychee cake recipes, but typical components include fluffy sponge cake, sweetened cream filling and decorative fruits, for garnish. Lychee cake was originally created by Selena Wong, a professional baker, about 40 years ago to celebrate the Lunar New Year, and home bakers also sell the confection. Lychee is delicately flavored and watery, so producing a strong lychee flavor can be tricky. This recipe infuses the cake with lychee flavor by reducing lychee into a glaze, sauce and filling, thus introducing it into the batter, glaze, filling and garnish. Rose water, common in Jamaican baking, intensifies lychee’s floral notes. This cake uses canned lychees, because fresh ones are hard to find (and too watery for baking), but if you can find fresh lychees at Asian markets in the summertime, they make a wonderful garnish, along with other fresh fruits of your choice.
Hoecakes
Justin Cherry, a foodways historian, chef and resident baker at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, developed this recipe for hoecakes (cornmeal pancakes) using archival sources that describe the first president’s fondness for the dish. Corn was a cash crop at Mount Vernon, and the estate had a successful mill that could process up to 8,000 pounds of flour and cornmeal in one day. Hoecakes were so esteemed by Washington that Hercules Posey and the other enslaved chefs likely made them daily. Given the president’s dental issues and wealth, the cornmeal used for his hoecakes was probably a finer, higher-quality grind than the coarser meal given to his enslaved community as weekly rations. This recipe, created by Mr. Cherry, uses stone-ground cornmeal, and produces a pronounced corn flavor. It’s important to make sure your butter is hot so the hoecakes crisp nicely while their interiors remain moist, retaining an almost creamy texture. George Washington ate these cornmeal cakes “swimming” in butter and honey, but maple syrup works well, too.
Caribbean Black Cake
Marva Adams-Miller has been perfecting her Caribbean black cake recipe for three decades and sells the cakes from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y. She adapts them based on customer preferences. Some years she has used Baileys Irish Cream or other liqueurs, but this version with rum is most common throughout the Caribbean islands. The cake is an evolution of the Christmas fruitcakes that English colonizers and Irish indentured servants brought to the Caribbean in the 17th century. The recipe was adapted to local ingredients, using grated tonka beans, a flavoring that tastes like a mix of pear, vanilla and almond instead of vanilla extract. Later the tonka was replaced with commercially made mixed essence, a flavoring that has a similar aroma and flavor. Rum was substituted for whisky or brandy. Burnt sugar syrup (also called browning) is integral to enhancing the deep, plummy flavor and appearance of this cake. The candied and dried fruits are traditionally soaked months in advance of baking — the longer the better, even up to one year — but, in a pinch, they can be heated with the alcohol and left to steep overnight before using.