Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Dylan was the chef-of-the-day for our Cooking Around the World adventure. He took us to Barbados tonight with soup and bread. I still haven't figured out why people from Barbados refer to themselves as 'Bajan', so if anyone can clue me in, I would appreciate it. When looking for recipes for our dinner, I came across more than a few pumpkin recipes from Barbados. Apparently they have two main kinds of pumpkins. The 'garden pumpkin' is more creamy and often used for pumpkin fritters; the 'belly pumpkin' is more fibrous and used as the base of soups. Not knowing what either of those pumpkins really look like, much less if we could even obtain them here, I used what I had and made a spicy "pumpkin" soup with the two carnival squash I had on the counter from our High Ground Organics CSA box. Spicy Pumpkin Soup Dylan flexed his culinary muscles when spicing up this dish. The traditional recipe only called for red pepper, black pepper, allspice, an...

Since most of the breads in Barbados are sweet, this one is called 'salt bread' though, admittedly, there is still sugar in it. I'm thinking that sugar cane might be one of their main crops! It was pillowy soft...and we spread it with hearty pats of butter. Dylan did ask, "Do they have butter in Barbados?" Yes. "Mom, are you just saying that?" No. 3 C white flour 2 t organic raw turbinado sugar 1 T sea salt 2 T olive oil 1 packet yeast 1 C warm water Place the salt, flour, and yeast in a large mixing bowl and slowly add warm water, mixing continually until the mixture forms a stiff dough, add more flour until you have a dough stiff enough to knead. Lightly flour the work surface, and knead dough for 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic, then place in a greased bowl. Now place bowl in a warm place for 40 minutes until it has doubled in size. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll dough into fist-sized balls and place in a greased baking dish. Sp...