Guyanese Cooking Class!

Last week a local sister came over and taught us and another need-greater couple how to make several Guyanese dishes.

Pumpkin curry fixin’s

Peeled cassava & sweet potato

Peeled cucumbers & green onions

Pumpkin curry fixin’s on the stove

Peeling hard-boiled eggs

Peeling eggs & mashing cassava 

Cooked pumpkin curry & mashed cassava

Mashed sweet potato

Kneading the mashed cassava & sweet potato

Adding in some chopped green onion & grated garlic

Nate’s Cassava Egg Monkey

Forming the cassava around the eggs

Egg ball

Frying Pholourie

Fried Pholourie

 So Nate wanted to make egg ball, the couple wanted to make pholourie and I wanted to make curry.  The sister and the couple brought everything and we supplied the kitchen.  Also I had roasted the pumpkin the night before.  We spent all afternoon learning to cook these dishes.  The local sister mainly directed us.  She did a good job of keeping us all on task and not confusing our ingredients.  The boys did the hard labor of peeling and mashing the cassava and sweet potato for the egg ball while us sisters peeled and chopped vegetables.

For the egg ball, it is the mashed cassava and sweet potato (I think you could use the cassava by itself but I’m not sure).  We also added in some green onion and garlic.  This gets molded around a hard boiled egg and then dipped in a flour and egg wash before frying.  This is then served with a sour - a sour sauce usually mango (but since I am allergic... and yes I have tried mango here - still allergic!) but in this case we made one with cucumber.  The mango one is a sweet heat, the cucumber one was a  milder, less sweet sour.

For the pholourie, we used a mix - it is fried dough with split peas.  This we just mixed up and then dropped little balls of into a hot skillet full of oil.

The curry was a mixture of madras curry and garam masala spices, onion, garlic, ginger, green onion, salt and sugar.  This we toasted in a skillet with just a little bit of oil and then slowly added water.  Then we add the roast pumpkin and let it cook down.  We later ate this with rice.

Yum!