Haitian Cuisine

The food here has been very good, and NOTHING is low fat. We eat an incredible amount of carbs: RICE (diri), plaintain (banan), banana (fig), potato (patat), breadfruit (veritab), bread(pen), and a root they call yam, but I think it’s more like a cassava or something. There’s some corn (may), too. As for meat, we have FISH (pwason), goat (cabrit), beef (bef), chicken (poul), and pork (cochon) (but I told Marie Claude that I don’t really like pork, so she avoids it for me). Goat is definitely my favorite, with beef as a close second. I still have a hard time avoiding the bones in the fish, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat the eyes or the brain yet (I’m working on it), though they are considered to be the best part. Marie Claude generally removes the head for me. Fruit: mango, oranges (zoranj), limes (citwon), grapefruit, passion fruit, pineapple (anana), grenadine(?), jaka (which I don’t even know how to describe), and lots of avocados (zavocat) now that they’re in season.

There aren’t a lot of vegetables: cabbage (chu), carrots(carot), something they call spinach (espina) that is currently in season, onions (oinyon), hot peppers (piman), and tomatoes (tomat), which just went out of season, as far as I can tell. Eggs are very hard to find. For as many chickens as are running around everywhere, not many people eat them, and the eggs you do find are shipped in from Port au Prince (which may be why they are even scarcer lately). The bean sauce (sos pwa) is fantastic, and the peanut butter (manba) comes in sweet and spicy varieties. Most things seemed to be fried/cooked in oil or boiled, and there is always a lovely sauce. Preferred spices include sugar, salt, pepper, ginger, and Maggi bouillon cubes. When I actually ask what has been added, it’s hard to get anyone to list everything; they normally give the above list, and then say “epi”- spice.

Favorite drinks here include coffee, beer (Prestige is the fantastic Haitian brew, but there’s also a supply of others), juice, and soft drinks. I had hot chocolate in Dame Marie, made from locally-grown cacao, but it doesn’t resemble the hot chocolate we’re accustomed to in other places. Water doesn’t seem to be super popular, but you can find Aquafina, and a number of assorted treated varieties; I think the popularity is directly proportional to the ability to afford to need treated water.