The other day I had a moment of nostalgia and made some of what we called bakes when I was a child, growing up (for some years) in the Caribbean. Bakes are known as Johnny cakes in the US, as far as I understand, and used in much the same ways that we used them. This is certainly not something you should have every day, since they involve fat (vegetable shortening, or lard as we called it, although elsewhere the term is used for a kind of pig fat), flour, salt, and a pan half full of oil to deep fry it all in.
Definitely sinful.
I have very happy memories of having bakes with tasty oily fishy goodness of some sort. Salt fish (salt dried cod) would be a typical thing (bacalao as the Portuguese and Spanish call it), stewed with tomatoes, peppers and so forth. Instead I had it with some squid that I got from McCall’s Meat and Fish Company, a new butcher and fishmonger not far away in Los Feliz. In fact, it was the squid that got me started on the whole nostalgic trip with the bakes, since I planned to make it into a simple dish by heating up some olive oil with tons of chopped garlic in it, throwing in a tiny bit of my mother’s incredibly potent pepper sauce (that I’ve had a jar of since 2004 or so, using only a tiny bit of it at a time), rough sea salt and fresh ground black pepper, then cooking the washed squid bits in there for a short while, serving it on a plate, drizzling with olive oil and sprinkling with paprika.
The bulk of this preparation is very similar to what my mum would do in the old days, and, like the bacalao treatment she’d do, it shares so much with things that are done in Spanish cuisine (as I learned from a cookbook a couple of years ago and then confirmed in my visit to Madrid back in November. See some earlier posts in list below). In fact the paprika touch I learned on tapas adventures there, and from a Spanish friend who likes to cook seafood. So in the end, my preparation here, while being a nostalgia trip to my childhood on the one hand, is on the other hand a quick variant on something new for me, like the classic pulpo a la Gallega. I like how cuisines around the world reflect each other, constantly producing variations on each other themes, producing a sort of culinary call and response that bounces back and forth over both time and space.
-cvj
Chris: Glad you liked it!
Seymour: Indeed. But I’d never heard of “stamp and go”! I did a quick google, but must do more research on it some time! Fascinating.
Stew peas. Hmmmm, I imagine there’s a recipe in Jessica B. Harris’ book.
-cvj
CVJ,
Bakes, johnny cake, fried dumpling, stamp and go are all cousins to the more American….biscuit with the difference being bakes are fried (oddly enough) while biscuits are baked :).
Nobody can really eat these things for their health/nutritional value> We certainly eat them because they connect us with family.
Not sure where in the caribbean you family originates but mine is from Jamaica. The one dish I have never been able to try but am always tempted to make is something called stew peas……
Clifford: about the bakes vs. Johnny cakes, back where I grew up in the Caribbean, we really talked about them as baked vs. fried (so my grandma would make either bakes or JC’s on any given day) … the post and pic just made my day though, seriously considering going home and frying some up to compensate for the load of snow outside my window …
I like the idea of “degrees” of fusion… A natural cousin to “degrees of separation”.
-cvj
Sounds like fried biscuit to me. Am I wrong? Anyway, it always flips me out to remember that European paprika is actually a new world food, and precipitated into Euro/Hungarian cooking thru the Columbian Exchange (so-called, after Alfred Crosby’s rubric). Thinking of it as a NW food cuts out one degree of fusion. Kind of a mind-meld, so to speak.
crisp+soft.
Tasty.
-cvj
so what was the final texture like? I suppose that it is crisp on the outside and perhaps soft inside? or was it hard inside too like a biscuit? and I suppose there are different preferences.
I don’t know what I think of them. I try not to make them, since they don’t taste good to me, and so it is not usually an issue.
Yes, coconut oil is the bee’s knees!
-cvj
clifford, what do you think of the toxic parts which burn and blacken when you bake these cakes or anything else for that matter? My understanding is that the high temperature causes the food to turn to something indigestible and toxic.
do you use coconut oil?
I think you’re looking at recipes that have re-launched the item in the light of nutrition issues. Look in a cookbook that talks about traditional ways of doing them and you’ll see frying…
Either way, though, enjoy.
-cvj
About Johnnycakes versus bakes: I lived in Rhode Island for 32 years, but had Johnnycakes only once, and that was over the border into Massachusetts. They were not rich at all, and even Joy of Cooking’s recipe involves no fat of any kind. And they aren’t fried in oil either, but cooked like a pancake on a dry (or almost dry) pan. Bakes sound rather closer to hushpuppies.
Not scotch bonnet, but yes on the other aspects!
-cvj
Your Mum’s pepper sauce – scotch bonnet based and giving off fumes that bring tears to your eyes? And has kept in perfect condition for the past five years because it kills all living things on contact? I know the stuff; yet just a smidgen imparts the subtlest of warm glows and flavour to any dish