Callaloo

Ingredients

• Taro leaves or spinach600 g
• Okra250 g
• Coconut milk400 ml
• Onion1
• Garlic5 clove
• Pumpkin300 g
• Scotch bonnet1
• Thyme4 sprig
• Butter40 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Wash the leaves, strip the tough stems and chop them coarsely.

   15 min

2. 2

   Fry the onion and garlic in butter until soft.

   7 min

3. 3

   Add the leaves, okra, pumpkin, thyme and the whole scotch bonnet, and cover with water two fingers above.

   6 min

4. 4

   Simmer forty minutes covered. No less: raw taro leaves burn the mouth.

   42 min

5. 5

   Remove the chilli and thyme, add the coconut milk and warm it five minutes without boiling.

   7 min

6. 6

   Break the soup down with a swizzle stick or a masher to a thick but not perfectly smooth purée.

   6 min

About the dish

Raw taro leaves burn the mouth with oxalate crystals. Long cooking — forty minutes at least — destroys them entirely and the soup becomes safe. Undercooked callaloo must not be eaten.

Okra works as the thickener here: its mucilage gives the soup the velvet body Trinidadians take as the sign of a proper callaloo.

It is blended the old way, with a wooden swizzle stick spun between the palms in the pot. A blender gives too smooth a texture.

Worth knowing

• — Take the chilli out whole. A burst scotch bonnet makes the pot inedible for most people within seconds.
• — Do not boil the coconut milk. Boiling splits it and the velvet body disappears.
• — Callaloo belongs to Sunday lunch, with macaroni pie and stewed chicken. Trinidadians rarely eat it apart from them.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

260 kcal

Protein

7 g

Fat

18 g

Carbs

20 g

More from Trinidad and Tobago

• Doubles — Two soft fried breads called bara with spiced chickpea channa between them. Trinidad's street breakfast.
• Trinidad roti — A layered flatbread beaten into rags on the pan, served with chicken or goat curry.
• Pelau — Rice with chicken, pigeon peas and coconut milk, browned in burnt sugar.