Food

On the whole, I’m liking Haitian food. Octavie, the housekeeper at the rectory, keeps us all well fed, and the office has a cook who makes lunch for all of us every day. Most dishes are a variation on the rice + sauce formula, which is not all that different from Senegal. Whereas the Senegalese often changed up the rice with couscous, millet, vermicelli, and even French fries, Haitians tend to stick with the rice, but add in beans in most cases. The one deviation I’ve seen is a kind of corn mush, though this is far less popular. Sauces are usually oily and tomato-y, with onions, potatoes and small bits of meat, including chicken, beef, goat, or fish. Soups and stews are also common, containing most of the same meat-and-root veggie ingredients along with a prodigious quantity of thyme.

Haiti is also known for its fritay and pate, fried street foods, but I almost never get an opportunity to eat them (street food requires a bustling street full of customers, which we don’t really have here). Now and then Octavie will make fried plantains, which are starchy and potato-y when new, and sweeter and softer when fully ripe (fried sweet plantains are extra tasty). I also liked lam veritab, or breadfruit, which is a pulpy white tree fruit that is mashed up and made in to bready fried dumplings.

Like Senegal, Haiti grows a lot of peanuts. Unlike Senegal, they know how to make good peanut butter with it. While thinner than your standard Jiff or Skippy, it’s ground to a more appealing smoothness than your grind-in-store natural Whole Foods nut butters. Haitians eat it as a spread on bread, like Americans. I’ve yet to come across a dish like Senegalese mafe, with sticky too-rich peanut sauce, which I can’t say I find disappointing.

One thing I’ve never had before is lambi, or conch, a large mollusk with those impressive curly pinkish seashells (great for household decorations and ruling islands of increasing barbaric English schoolboys). It’s a delicious Haitian specialty, meaty and lobstery-tasting. I had assumed I wouldn’t get to try it, since lambi are nearly endangered, having been pretty well devastated by overfishing. Knowing that, I would be unlikely to order it at a restaurant, but there it was for lunch one Sunday, cooked in oil, damage done. I’m glad I got to try it, since it was delicious and opportunities are rare (as they probably should be).

The only thing I have deeply not enjoyed so far is boiled cows feet. I would happily never eat that again in my life. Also okra, though that was a known commodity and it’s sort of more tolerable if you mash it into the rice and do your best to pretend it’s not there. It’s a bit harder to fool yourself as you’re spitting out unidentifiable cow foot bone chunks.

Cows feet aside, it’s been an enjoyable culinary landscape so far, though I will admit the day-in-day-out rice-and-beans routine is becoming a little redundant. An important saving grace is that Haitians eat off individual plates. Guys in particular will help themselves to gut-bustingly large portions, but they won’t push a heaping rice mound on you they way the Senegalese are fond of doing when you’re all sharing one dish together. Still, despite the ability to control my own rice intake, there are a few American foods that I find myself missing.

Like pasta, which only ever appears here in spaghetti form with the faintest hint of tomato not-really-a-sauce. On one miraculous occasion, Fr Gaby managed to produce one or two ounces of grated Parmesan, the only cheese I’ve seen here (not counting the Bongú brand “fromage fondue,” packaged in a wheel of individually wrapped wedges, no refrigeration necessary. I suspect that this is a “cheese product” rather than actual cheese.)

And hamburgers, which are conspicuously absent while their usual all-American cookout sidekick, hot dogs, are ubiquitous. Marchands sell hot dogs on skewers as street food, and they often appear at meals at the rectory with their ends sliced in to little fleurs-de-lys. Served with ketchup and frequently mayo as well. But yeah, no hamburgers. C’est dommage—Senegal had killer hamburgers.

And salad. Travelers with delicate blan constitutions are advised not to eat uncooked vegetables, but this has turned out not to be such an onerous limitation, since they are hardly ever served. Every now and then Octavie will garnish a serving dish with a few leaves of iceberg lettuce, but that’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a leafy green. The only other whole vegetables are roots, and tomatoes and peppers occasionally appear in sauces.

And fruits from temperate zones. In my inevitable reckoning with tropical fruits, I have actually fared pretty well. We had excellent bananas, picked right in the back yard of the rectory, but they all ripened at the same time and the season was over in the blink of an eye. Such is life when you get your food from nature and not from Chiquita. Watermelon is fairly common (did you know watermelon actually has big black seeds in it, you guys??), and I’ve had a come-to-Jesus moment with pineapple (it’s not so bad after all!). I’ve learned to appreciate the flavor of papaya while tolerating its texture. Octavie makes this weird papaya milkshake/smoothie thing that is actually really good.

But then there are the mangoes. Haiti is the largest exporter of mangoes to the US (a drop in the bucket compared to the food the US exports to Haiti), and over 200 different varieties grow here. There are six varieties at the parish compound alone. It’s also the peak of the season right now. Thousands of perfectly ripe, beautiful mangoes are falling to the ground like manna. Even with people basically chain-eating them all day, it is impossible to keep up with what seems like an endless supply.

  I regret to say that I am not doing my part. I tried, but it seems that mangoes and me are destined to be forever at odds. If they can’t win me over at the peak of the season in the mango capital of the world, then I don’t think there’s much hope. All I can do while my co-workers bury their faces in yet another mango is think wistfully about how I am missing the peak of strawberry season back home. Le sigh.

And lastly, I miss added sugar. Haitians know how to add salt and fat, as evidenced by the significant quantity of fried food, but no one has perfected the art of added sugar like the American agro-industrial complex. Despite the abundance of sugar cane still grown here in the north, nearly all of it is processed into klerin, (raw rum). Haiti imports nearly all of its granulated sugar. Candy, cookies and sodas are easily available in cities and towns here, but not so much out in the boonies where I am. Haitians don’t do much baking, and dessert is not really a thing here. Ice cream is a fantasy. The one thing they do add a killer amount of sugar to is coffee, and so far I’m not that desperate.

Though I may be getting close. We did have a birthday celebration for a couple of people in the office the other day, complete with cake. No idea where they managed to find full-on bakery cake, complete with frosting florets, around here, but then again, I was not thinking much beyond “CAKEOMGCAKE!!” The time between when I realized there was cake and when it was time to actually eat it was agonizing. They actually cut the cake and gave everyone their piece before serving lunch, though we were clearly still expected to observe the dominant dessert-last paradigm. I am not sure where I got the strength, but I managed to eat my rice and chicken with an admirable amount of composure, and when it was finally cake time, I kept myself from shoving the whole piece in my mouth at once. Self-control FTW.

Heads up to friends and family, though: upon my return, I expect to eat only the worst the American food system has to offer. Plan accordingly.