pumpkin

I've never liked pumpkin!

we all know pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie - I admit, a pumpkin soup can be a lovely change and there are many different ways to prepare a tasty soup.
there was a time in the mid nineties when pumpkin became fashionable in Switzerland and by all the invitations I've got in those years I had to eat a pumpkin soup and everybody I had invited had to eat a pumpkin soup and then with the 0-years came a time I couldn't see pumpkin soup any more...
the good thing about pumpkin is that pumpkin itself hasn't got much taste, so whatever taste we want to add to it, it will take it! it reminds me of Pygmalion, the Greek guy who formed himself a woman out of clay, he formed her how he wanted her to be and to look like, but then had to find out that the admirable woman he had created hadn't and would never have any life in her!

I'm trying to put some life into the pumpkin! I want it to be part of a dish which evokes a passionate love of savour, I want it to be something I can't wait to devour - I want to use up all the pumpkins growing in our garden in the most delicious of all possible ways!

here's my trilogy of pumpkin - the best so far I've done with pumpkin:

pumpkin swirl brownie, pumpkin ice cream and pumpkin caramel

I've found all the recipes on piterest. a great source of mouthwatering pictures and a interesting way to spend more time than I initially wanted!

the pumpkin swirl brownies are absolutley luscious - they will be repeted soon!

lots of dark chocolate and cream cheese with pumpkin

the ice cream is phantastic in taste but quite rich. I'll try it with lighter ingredients, maybe more sour cream or yogurth next time.

the caramel is... caramel! with a hint of pumpkin... not quite sure what to do with it yet except using it as a decoration. it would surely be nice on vanilla ice cream. or spread on a piece of bread for those who like continental breakfast. or maybe cook it a little bit longer until it thickens, pour it on a tray to cool, cut it in squares and enjoy it as pumpkin-caramel-fudge?

I'll let you know :-)

pure and delicious

Mango

mango heaven

living in mango heaven

the first mango I've seen in my live was when I came to Grenada for the first time, at the age of seven. I was born in Switzerland and was more familiar with apples and cherries: this terribly sweet and sticky fruit with no way to eat it decently was not my taste at all.
It took me almost 20 more years and many trips to Grenada to appreciate and to start loving the mango passionately!

from left to right: Peach - Ceylon - Julie - Palvi - Imperial

although... there is not THE mango, as much as there is not THE apple. I don't know how many different varieties of mangos are existing in Grenada or in the whole world... we are lucky to have a few of the best sorts of mangos on our land: Graham, Peach, Julie, Imperial, Palvi, Ceylon, ... and of course we have mango long and mango thin, two of the old sorts, the ones where you'll need a whole role of dental floss after eating them to get your teeths ready for the next smile again.


One of the best mangoes I've ever eaten was the "mango bouff": it is very juicy, light, a little bit on the sour side, and it's huge! You wouldn't find this mango in a shop here in Grenada and certainly not in the supermarkets in Switzerland, it's the kind of forgotten species that tastes perfectly but would not fit into any scheme of standardized fruits. The mango bouff is growing on my cousin's lands, the tree is shading the young cocoa trees and the fruits are quenching the workmens thurst.
I was wondering if the mango bouff's name is coming from the French who owned the island between 1674 and 1763? "bouffer" is a french word for eating, or eating a lot:

I could certainly eat a lot of the mango bouff, of any kind of mango, they are so pure and delicious!

We use mangoes in many different ways in our kitchen. We cook them into jam, sirup, chutney, we use them in desserts or we add an exotic taste to a fish with mangoes.

we mix mango with passion fruits or citrus for our jams

pavlova with mango and passion fruit

semi frozen mango mousse on meringue

chocolate ganache cake with mango topping

tuna steak on a spicy mango sauce, cooked in a banana leaf

pure and delicious

Lobster

The Slipper Lobster

Over fifty species of this warm-water lobster live in the sea, some of them right in front of our door step.
They were offered by us from a young trying to make a living with fishing. Nothing about big fish trawlers, some of these fishermen own small wooden boats with an outboard engine that they always have to take home when they are not by the boat. Strangers like to come up in the night and steal the engines to sell them over to Trinidad. An outboard engine allows some criminal subjects a living as a drug smuggler.
We prefer to support the young man in a more traditional occupation and buy the seafood from him.

Although we see ourselves confronted with animals we've never seen before...
... like this Calico lobster!


We've asked the young man if he would hold some Octopus, known in Grenada as Sea cats, for us. He explained us that he would need some fins to be able to dive deep enough to catch sea cats. So we made a deal: we lent him the money for the fins and he is paying it back to us by bringing us seafood, we pay him a fair price and from each pound he brings we hold back a small amount of the money to reduce his debts. It seems as he wants to get rid of his debts as soon as possible, we are getting a few pounds now almost every day, the deep freezer is getting full rapidly and our guests are happy!

The Balmain bug
is it one or is it not? In Grenada known us "bug" it looks very similar to what we have found in books and on the internet named by "the Balmain bug". It is another species of the Slipper lobster and it is delicous as well!
 - not so pretty though :-)


pure and delicious