With the immigration of Surinamese (especially from 1975) the Netherlands became acquainted with one of the most important parts of Surinamese culture: the famous Surinamese cuisine. It is a mix of the best from the culinary worlds of India, Indonesia, Africa, China, the Netherlands, Lebanon, and a handful of countries. How hard is it to get such a titillating Caribbean meal on the table? For the answer, we dive into the world of garter and Madame Jeanet!
The rules
Rule 1 of Surinamese cooking is: there are no rules. Surinamese do not work with instructions such as ?? take a teaspoon of olive oil ?? ?? but rather with clues like: “Throw in some salt and some chillies”. Cooking is an Act of Love in Suriname, and you make love with feeling. So also cooking: you do that with and on your gut.
Ingredients
The most important ingredients for a Surinamese meal, which will therefore occur in most dishes, are:
- Maggi cubes. And preferably those small, hard, square, not those big soft blocks. In the past, it was even spoken of slightly shameful when a woman put salt in her food instead of “block”. The experts spoke of that shame (Didn’t you taste that she didn’t put a block in that food? She just put salt in that food! I don’t know what kind of man she’s got to take that!)
- Soy sauce. Made from fermented soy. Comes in two types: sweet (manis) and salty (asin). You can also use salty soy sauce instead of table salt, but very in moderation: one or two teaspoons of soy sauce asin are usually more than enough to flavor a pot. You can be a bit more generous with soy sauce manis. Note: Contrary to popular belief kasripo no soy sauce and made from bitter cassava.
- Chinese powder. Surinamese for 5 Spice Powder. In combination with the ketjaps it gives that typical taste to Surinamese food.
And then of course the more ordinary ?? ingredients like nutmeg, cloves (nagri), black pepper (for some reason Surinamese don’t use white pepper), soup vegetables (parsley), trasi (fermented shrimp, stinks in the wind for four hours), wick ?? ai (?? round eyes ??, allspice grains), sereh (lemongrass, which grows in the garden in Suriname), laos (type of ginger root), masalla (type of curry) ?? the list can easily be extended to a few A4 sheets.
Hot!
Belonging between these two groups ?? and you wondered where they were? the most famous two peppers: the Madame Jeanet and the Adyuma. A real Madame J. should be narrow and elongated, with a very characteristic scent.
Unfortunately the real madame is rare in Dutch toko ?? s.
The Adyuma is actually called in full: ??A dyi uma ns??. Loosely translated: “he gives the woman a good name”. But that doesn’t really sound like a full shop, that’s why Adyuma. In traditional Surinamese cuisine, this pepper is mainly used for its scent. It is therefore not cut open or chopped, as you would with a madame or an alata pepre. You just put a whole Adyuma in your soup or in your rice (if it has just boiled dry) and let it come right away, WITH THE LID ON THE PAN! The treat comes when you remove the lid from the pan as short as possible before serving.