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As you may have guessed, this is a post about dressing.

Salad dressing, that is.  (insert drumroll here)

These crabs come from the sea to be dressed in the delicious flavors of Old Bay.

You may get the impression that here at Bengfort.com we eat all Guyanese, all the time.  In fact, we have a growing collection of recipes from around the world, and we enjoy a great variety of foods.

Preliminaries out of the way, I wanted to share two recipes, one new, one old.

I came up with the first the other day when I had bought a can of crab from the grocery store.  (This can be purchased in the tuna section and is surprisingly good.)  There was a mini crabcake recipe on the inside of the can label, but I didn’t have all the ingredients called for, so I decided to serve the crab on a bed of greens instead.  Using the recipe for crabcakes as a rough guide, I came up with the following deconstructed version:

Crabcake ala Jacquelyn

a salad

Note: all measures are approximate–when I’m making something up, I do a dump-and-taste method.  Which, I guess, means all ingredients are approximate as well…

• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
• 1 1/2 teaspoon mustard (I used a very liquid gourmet Champagne mustard)
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seed
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• dash Worcestershire sauce
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil (enough to give the dressing a dressing consistency)
• mixed greens
• 1 small can lump crabmeat
• Old Bay seasoning

Mix together the mayo, mustard, cumin seed, onion, W-sauce, salt, and pepper; add in the oil and stir, adjusting the amount for the desired consistency.  Use this to dress the greens (this will be enough dressing for two medium/large salads–you’ll have to eyeball it).  Dish up the dressed greens and split the crabmeat between the two salads; sprinkle with Old Bay, to taste.

The second recipe is an old favorite of my Grandma Dorothy’s.  The name alone nearly put Ben off of it, so you can call it Catalina or French if you like–but to me, it will always be…

Grandma Dorothy’s Tomato Catsup Salad Dressing

• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup vinegar (I used white rice vinegar–any kind will do)
• 1/2 cup “catsup” (ketchup to you non-North Dakotans)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons dry mustard
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Blend all ingredients together.  This recipe will make a lot of dressing, but it keeps well for a few weeks.

With these two recipes at your side, not only can you dress your salads, but you can begin to discover the joys of making your own small-batch salad dressing instead of filling your fridge with giant bottles of the stuff–no more race to see whether or not it will go bad before you’re sick of same flavor on salad after salad.  Think of it as couture for your naked greens.  Enjoy!

Guyanese food is very difficult to make if you are a newbie. It takes years and years of practice and acquired intuition to get a dish perfect on a consistent basis, and even then, one person’s way of doing things may be completely different than another person’s.  As the recipes on the Guyana cookbook are more guidelines than instructions, I’d like to offer some cooking tips that can help put you on the straight and narrow when it comes to Guyanese food.

Don't let your roti turn out like this!

Top Ten Tips for Making Roti

1. Use WARM to HOT water when making the dough. I don’t understand the physics of it, but it makes the dough turn out better than using cold water.

2. ALWAYS keep dough covered while you are working with individual pieces to keep it from drying out. I like using a damp paper towel. Nothing is worse than working with dried out dough.

3. WOODEN rolling pins are better than marble. Something about the grainy texture provides the right amount of traction but no stick. (Beer bottles can be used in a pinch if you find that someone has stolen your rolling pin for unknown purposes, or if your significant other/children/ayi put it in the wrong cupboard and you just didn’t find it in time)

4. TIE UP YOUR HAIR (if you’re a girl with long hair)- stray hairs in the dough just isn’t appetizing

5. Use ONE hand to mix the dough, that way you’ll have a clean hand to turn on  faucet to refill your water cup without getting flour all over the sink

6. Instead of rolling and oiling and refolding individual rotis, save time by rolling just-made dough into a LARGE RECTANGLE, about twice as long as it is wide. Spread oil and sprinkle flour across the surface like you would in the recipe instructions for individual rotis, and then starting from the long-end, roll the dough up like you would a yoga mat. Then pinch off into balls, twisting the ends closed and pressing them in.

7. Individual roti balls should be about the size of a TANGERINE

8. DON’T roll roti too thin, or else it won’t rise and separate. Optimal thickness is 1/10 of an inch, the thickness of a 5 cent coin.

9. Make sure the Tawa is HOT HOT HOT before you cook. Water should sizzle and evaporate immediately when sprinkled on the surface.

10. Only flip 3 times! Any more and the roti will become tough.

I hope these tips help!

For Ben’s birthday, I decided to make him a special meal of the Indian food of his choice.  Armed with a few cookbooks from the library, he chose what he liked.  These were the undeniable hits of the evening.  I’ve adapted the recipes to reflect how I cooked them and any specific problems I had with the recipe have been addressed.

Pumpkin Dahl

1/3 c. torn basil leaves (1 package of fresh basil should be more than sufficient)
1 star anise
1 cup dried yellow dahl (split peas)
pinch turmeric
3 bay leaves
1 small chopped onion
water, as directed
1 peeled and chopped pumpkin (butternut squash)
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons unchrushed salt
2 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter (I used the spreadable butter that has oil mixed in)
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 tablespoon ginger
3 serrano chilis, cut into matchsticks (you can use other peppers as you like)

Shred the basil and set aside.  In a stockpot, combine split peas, 2 cups water, turmeric, bay leaves, onion, and star anise; bring to a boil and cook partially covered for twenty minutes.  Add the pumpkin pieces, 1 cup water, sugar and salt.  Return to boil; cook for another twenty minutes, or until the pumpkin is at your desired consistency (I left mine somewhere between mush and soft chunks; note that this did required the addition of more water during this second cooking time).  Remove from heat.  In a small frying pan over high heat, heat the oil and butter together.  When hot, add cumin seeds; when the cumin seeds are dark brown, add the ginger and hot pepper.  Reduce to low heat and continue cooking for half a minute; and the basil and cook for another thirty seconds.  This mixture is poured over the pumpkin dahl and gently spread into the mixture (you needn’t and shouldn’t mix thoroughly!).  This will make a lot; it fed Ben and I once and me two more times.  It’s good with both rice and flatbread.

Chapati

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
salt as desired
2/3 cup warm-to-hot water

Combine the flour, oil, and salt and rub together.  Add the water, mixing to form a mass.  Knead for 10 minutes, cover, and let rest 30 minutes.  Knead a few more times, then divide evenly into two portions.  Roll each portion into a cylinder and cut each cylinder into eight pieces.  Roll each piece into a ball and then roll out flat on a floured surface (do not stack the rolled dough; it’s best if you have one person roll and have the tawa already hot and manned with a second person).  Heat the tawa (you could also use a frying pan) very hot, and turn on a second burner to high flame or, for an electric stove, place a cooling rack on top of a burner on high.  One at a time, cook the flat circles of bread, starting on the tawa (both sides, until brown spots begin to appear) and then moving it to the second burner/cooling rack (both sides), where the bread should temporarily puff up and darken a little more.  I used the cooling rack method to a degree of success I had not expected.  This is supposed to feed about four people, but Ben and I demolished the whole stack in one sitting, so plan to make a lot if you have company that likes to eat with their hands!

Ben's Easter Quiche with Wine

This morning I made the most amazing Easter Quiche for our Easter brunch. For our Easter lunch, we had our usual Sunday Lunch fare- Roasted Lamb with Garlic, Sage, and Thyme; Green Bean Casserole; Mashed Red Potatoes with the skin on; Grilled Garlic and Coriander Asparagus; and Strawberries with Angel Food Cake and Heavy Whipped Cream for dessert, only the Yorkshire Puddings were missing! But as you can see from this menu, Jaci does lack a main dish- and to that end I decided to make a vegetarian- tomato, chives, and cheese quiche.

Now, normally when you make quiche you might imagine labors including using lard and flour and a refrigerated pastry- however, with some help from some very suggestive recipes, I came up with a recipe that was fast, easy, and incredibly delicious. In fact, the quiche was ready in 50 minutes or so, from start to finish, including baking. The secret- using Pilsbury Crescent Roll dough for the crust, rather than making your own pastry crust. This recipe was so fast- it is perfect for an Easter Sunday morning on the way to church- when you want something memorable, but fast enough to get you out the door for the sunrise service. And thus- Ben’s Easter Sunday Quiche was born! I can fully imagine that this will soon become an Easter tradition in our household.

Ingredients:

• One can Pillsbury’s Refrigerated Crescent Rolls
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• Four chopped Green Onions
• 1/2 cup chopped chives
• 1 medium tomato, chopped
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup cream (heavy or light)
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Pop the can of the Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough and roll the dough into a ball. Roll out on a flat surface with a little flour into a circle. Press the dough into a deep dish, 9 inch pie plate, making sure that the dough reaches over the top of the edges. Beware- the dough can be tricky to roll, and you want to use as little flour as possible, since the butter in the dough gives enough grease that you don’t have to add additional to the pie plate.Also note- don’t use baking beans at the bottom of the plate like you might do with a normal quiche- the crescent roll dough doesn’t need them!

Sprinkle a half cup of the cheddar over the bottom, then layer the chives, green onions, and tomatoes over them. Note: here you can use ham or cooked bacon if you wish as well, but this dish is better vegetarian in my opinion. Mix the cream and the eggs in a separate bowl until well blended (try not to beat too much air into the mixture), then add over the top of the ingredients in the pie crust. Sprinkle the top with the remaining cheese.

Bake for 40 minutes, or until firm. I recommend leaving the quiche sit for 5 minutes after removing from the oven, then serving with fruit- grapes and melon! Enjoy!

The Guyana Cookbook

The Guyana Cookbook- Recipes from the Bengfort Family

The fame and fortune of this website (in terms of folks who aren’t family) is based soley on the content of the Guyana cookbook. I understand that this site is one of the number one hits when you search for Guyana cooking and I have disapointed a lot of people by taking it down (not to mention destroying a lot of links to our site). Therefore I am going to attempt to place the content back on the website for all the fans.

I have been debating on how to do this- you may think this is just as simple as adding the webpages to the site, and of course it could be. However, the new software installed on the site gives us the potential for a more dynamic solution- adding each recipe as its own blog post. By doing this, and categorizing them and tagging them, it would give folks the oppertunity to search the recipes, comment on them, and allow all of us to edit them using the software. This means the cookbook could be better.

However, this method has its drawbacks- folks couldn’t link to one webpage for the entire cookbook- they would have to link to individual recipes, which would be treated like any other posts by the software. This might make the recipes harder to find, and maybe decrease our page rank on Google. I am determined to come up with a solution for this, however, even if I take both methods- a static web page and add recipes as posts. Needless to say, recipes as posts is one key feature so…

Expect to see recipes for our favorite foods posted over the next couple days so that we have a database of Guyana recipes!

The Cosmo- the drink of choice for the ladies of Sex and the City, has as a result become the ladies drink of choice for feminists everywhere. And although my wife would prefer a champagne cocktail (thankfully trying to embody Audrey Hepburn rather than Sarah Jessica Parker), during her girls nights, it is often cheaper and a lot more fun to have a Cosmo night with the girls! Several variations follow- try them at your own risk- these tasty treats can really sneak up on you!

Recipe Summary

Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 5 minutes
Servings: 4

Cosmopolitan

New York Cosmo:

• 1 cup Vodka
• ½ cup triple sec
• ½ cup cranberry juice
• ¼ cup freshly squeezed lime juice

Preparation

Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well and pour through a strainer into four martini glasses.

High Ball Cosmo:

• 6 ounces lemon vodka
• 4 ounces Cointreau
• 4 ounces cranberry juice
• 8 tsp freshly squeezed lime juice
• Long thin piece orange zest

Preparation

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the vodka, Cointreau, and cranberry and lime juices. Cover and shake vigorously to combine and chill. Strain the cosmopolitan into a chilled martini glass. Twist the orange zest over the drink and serve.

Also try stirring in a pitcher.

Champagne Cosmo:

• 4 ounces vodka
• 2 ounces Cointreau
• 4 ounces cranberry juice
• Champagne

Preparation

Mix vodka, Cointreau, and cranberry juice in a cocktail shaker with ice to combine and chill. Fill a champagne flute about a quarter of the way  with the Cosmo mixture, then add Champagne to fill.

The big (Sour) Apple:

• 4 ounces vodka
• 2 ounces Melon liqueur
• 2 ounces Southern Comfort
• 4 ounces lime cordial

Preparation

Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well and pour through a strainer into four martini glasses and garnish with a sour gummy worm or lemon twist.

I didn’t know if I should include this recipe in the China section, the England section, or the World section but since I found this particular recipe on the back of a corn flour box in England, I am going to place it in World, labeled as Oxford! The sweet and sour sauce can be used for any meats, or without meat for a sweet and sour fried rice. For the meat, we use chicken and shrimp, but I am sure this method applies to any meats you might want to use (but be warned, tastes may vary!) Generally the sherry can be cooking sherry or Harvey’s Bristol Cream (if you want to spend for that) and we haven’t had any problems using whatever was in our decanter. Enjoy!

Recipe Summary

Difficulty: Medium
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Servings: 4-6

Ingredients:

Sweet and Sour Chicken

For the meat:

• ¾ tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sherry
• 1 egg- beaten
• 4 tbsp corn flour
• ~ 1 lbs meat (chicken or shrimp is best)
• oil for deep frying

For the sweet and sour sauce:

• 3 tbsp demrarra sugar (pure cane)
• 8 oz. can of pineapple cubes, drained (save juice)
• 3 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tomato, skinned and chopped
• ½ green pepper, deseeded and chopped
• ½ red pepper, deseeded and chopped
• 2 tbsp corn flour
• 2 tbsp water

Directions:
Mix soy sauce, sherry, egg, and flour together in a bowl. Add meat and marinade for at least 30 minutes.

Put sugar and vinegar in a pan and heat until the sugar dissolves. Add in the peeled and chopped tomatoes (less the seeds if you can manage it) and boil it into the sauce- the tomatoes are what makes the sauce red! But before the tomatoes are full sauced add the pineapple pieces, and peppers and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Make pineapple juice to 150 ml (5 oz) by adding water. Then add juice to the pan. Blend the corn flour with 2 tbsp of water, and then add the mixture to the pan. Bring the sauce to a boil, and simmer until the sauce thickens and clears. Set the sauce aside to rest.

Heat oil in a wok and then deep-fry the meat, a couple pieces at a time, until golden brown. Make sure the meat stays warm while it is all cooking. Then reheat the sauce over low heat.

Serve meat pieces over rice with the sauce poured on top. Use extra sauce to serve on the side.

At the Bengfort House in England (2006-2008), Jaci and Ben received a “vegbox” every Tuesday afternoon from Riverside Farm, a local organic farm north of Oxford. It supplied us with a good bit of food that usually lasted us the entire week. The box always included potatoes, onions, carrots, etc- so called “useful food” by Jaci and Ben; but also came with a surprise vegetable from Black Kale to Crown Squash to Swiss Chard. One week we received a strange looking cabbage, and not knowing what else to do with it, we used this recipe from the Farm to make curried cabbage, and it was actually quite good!

Recipe Summary

Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 20-25 Minutes
Servings: ~4

Ingredients:

• 1 medium cabbage
• ½ cups water
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 large onions, coarsely chopped
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp hot madras curry powder
• ½ cups milk

Directions:
Cut cabbage into 1-inch slices, and separate the leaves into pieces. Place the cabbage in a heavy skillet with the water and cook, covered over medium heat for 20 minutes or until cabbage is fork-tender.

While the cabbage is cooking, melt the butter in a second skillet and sauté onions until they are translucent. Add the flour and the curry powder, stirring to make sure they are well-mixed. Cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add the milk and continue to cook until the sauce is smooth.

When the cabbage is cooked, drain it and place it in a serving dish. Pour the curry sauce over it and serve hot.

I discovered borshch while traveling to Tver as part of a language study abroad program with the Naval Academy in the summer before my Firstie year. Being a vegetarian in Russia seems like it would be easy, especially because most Russians don’t eat a lot of meat- they can’t afford it. However, in an effort to be a good host, and thanks to communication difficulties, the babushka I stayed with tended to serve a lot of meat and needless to say, vegetarian borshch was a welcome relief. The secret of good borshch is to brown the vegetables separately in a frying pan before adding them to the soup.  And don’t skip the lemon juice–it may seem unneccessary, but the acidity of the juice ensures a deep crimson colour!

Recipe Summary

Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30-35 Minutes
Servings: 6 dinner-sized bowels

Borshch

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 beets, grated
• 3 carrots, grated
• 1 potato, cubed
• 1  turnip or parsnip, chopped
• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 4 cups water
• 1 head cabbage, chopped
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ tsp pepper
• 1 cup tomato juice
• ½ cup sour cream, for garnish
• dill, for garnish

Directions:
In a large skillet, brown the onions, beets, carrots, potato, and turnip/parsnip separately in oil with one tbsp of lemon juice. Stirring occasionally, sauté for about 10 to 12 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large pot bring the water to a boil.

When water is boiling, add the cabbage, 1 tbsp of lemon juice, and celery; the vegetables will cool the water, so bring it back to a boil. When boiling again, add the browned vegetables from the skillet, salt, and pepper; simmer until the vegetables are soft, but not mushy; about 20 minutes. Finally add the tomato juice.

Serve hot OR cold, depending on the season; topped with a generous dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of dill.