In the Market – Spices and Magic
Go to the market early in the morning, even if it’s only for a vanilla bean or cinnamon stick. It’s a cacophony of colors, smells and sounds. The subtle chives with their pale green stand meekly beside the ferocious chili peppers, bright red as if sunburned, that make their way into just about all of the cooking here.
Cooking West Indian-style means making a bouquet of chives, parsley, thyme and bay rum. But above all it’s “colombo” powder that provides a wonderful array of island flavors, a sensual and bewitching blend without which pork, goat and chicken wouldn’t have the same magical taste.

A wide array of tropical fruits and vegetables provides a burst of freshness:

When the santoises take to the water...

How pretty are the little boats known as “santoises”! Brightly colored and 4-5 meters long, they take to the sea about 5 in the morning to drop their lobster traps on the ocean floor at a depth of more than 30 meters. Every fisherman has his own secret “lobster hole” where he knows the best specimens can be found. They are simply grilled with a touch of chili and a squeeze of lime juice.

Here they fish for red snapper, mahi mahi and tuna which are grilled and accompanied with “dog sauce,” or prepared as blaff, fried or cooked in court-bouillon. The hunt for lemon sharks, sleeper sharks or tiger sharks is carried out at nightfall when the sharks return to the surface to look for food. Only the tiger shark has meat that is fine and tender enough to be smoked and eaten cold or in a fricassee.

Queen conch, the delicious shellfish with the iridescent pink shell, is collected by divers who descend 12 meters or more to collect them huddled in the grasses. As with octopus, the men extract the conch from the shell once they return to the surface and beat the meat on a rock to tenderize it. Without this step it would be rubbery and unpleasant to eat.

Some fish from Caribbean waters no longer make their way onto the table, such as the threadfin and the sunfish, since unfortunately they are often contaminated by bad algae, though red snapper, grouper, needlefish, mahi mahi, boxfish and the brightly-colored parrot fish are still proudly featured on menus of restaurants both large and small.

In Guadeloupe, it’s cod that sets the standard: it is used in acras and chiquetaille (flaked cod with onions and peppers in vinaigrette) or served with a sauce. It is also made into gratins, and is even an ingredient in the spicy little avocado balls known as “féroces d’avocat.”

In the old days in Martinique, the prow of every little fishing boat was decorated with motifs of the rising sun or with multicolored rosettes. Today the boats that head out to sea are painted green, yellow or pink. In the 19th century, it was believed that the painted designs brought luck to fishermen, who knew that the sea could at any time reclaim what it had given them.

Special thanks to: La Route des Boucaniers,Chef Francis Delage, Gustavia, St-Barths. Photo: French Market in St-Martin