Bahamian culinarians take a taste of The Bahamas with a twist to Cuba

Fri, Jul 17th 2015, 10:32 PM

Peas and grits, chicken in the bag, conch chowder and conch fritters got rave reviews from Cubans recently as a nine-member culinary team took a taste of The Bahamas to delight Cuban palates.

The team, which included chefs Simeon Hall Jr., Sheldon Tracey Sweeting, Charon McKenzie, Ron Johnson, Alpheus Ramsey, Carvison Pratt and Tyrone Kemp cooked against the odds to create Bahamian dishes with a twist.

In a small kitchen with one stove and an oven, the chefs made delicious dishes like new-fashioned tuna fish and grits with a spicy seared deep water tuna; island harvest salad with passion fruit vinaigrette; Eleuthera pumpkin soup with Andros crab tortellini and cinnamon whipped cream; Kalik Radler sorbet infused with gin, seared sirloin steak with textures of onion, cauliflower, tomato confit and tamarind; and a three-chocolate dessert with a dark chocolate cake, sour sop sorbet, chocolate meringue kisses, mangola gel, white chocolate powder and a watermelon and raspberry sauce.

The group also held food demonstrations at Bahamas House, which was The Bahamas’ culture headquarters in Santiago de Cuba. Thr demonstrations included dishes like conch chowder, conch fritters and chicken in the bag with guava hot sauce.

Hall and Sweeting the team leaders said they had planned for the events weeks in advance. However, they admitted that at times they had to think on their feet.

“I submitted a menu and he submitted a menu and it was similar,” said Sweeting. “We just meshed ideas together. We kept in mind the conditions that we may [have had to] work in because we didn’t know and we pulled it off.”

Hall said they hadn’t practiced anything in advance. “We knew that we were doing this for this event and that was it.”

He also said they noticed that there were distinct differences in the way Cubans prepare food.

“They seem to not like spice as much as we do,” he said. “They prefer their food to have very little peppers in it and we like to have our food with things like goat pepper and other spices.”

The chefs said they used traditional herbs like thyme and tomatoes to create most of the dishes.

“Our way of cooking follows that of creole where we use a lot of garlic, thyme, onion and sweet pepper,” said Sweeting. “In every course we wanted to create unique dishes and I think we accomplished that.”

Hall also noted that in traveling to Cuba, planning didn’t make much of a difference because they still had to end up doing a lot of things themselves, including making their own butter.

“As trained chefs, we strive for that adrenaline to know that we have to create in the moment. As long as we had fire and salt, we could cook,” he said.

At the end of the day, Hall said the Bahamian and Cuban chefs learnt from each other.

“It was a good cultural experience,” he said. “The chefs became students and everyone was asking questions and they work so hard. They came with a purpose of learning from us and I think that was fulfilled because the things that we take for granted they were so amazed by. With our terrible Spanish we tried to get some dialogue, but the common expression was cooking and that transcends any language barrier.”

The chefs were among a delegation of 300 that traveled for the 35th Festival de Caribe in Santiago de Cuba.

Culinary Manager in the Ministry of Tourism DeAnne Gibson was the team’s administrator.

“I chose initially Chef Simeon Hall Jr. and Chef Sheldon Sweeting and they picked the rest of the team. We wanted people who we knew could deliver. Everyone was working in conditions they were not used to and they really pulled their weight. It was really a team effort,” said Gibson. “Our food quality was not minimized. Everything was of fine quality and as good as anything that would have been produced at Ocean Club in The Bahamas.”

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