Pudding and Souse

An excerpt from “Foodessey of Flavour”, my food-based memoir.

This excerpt was published Hungry Zine’s Issue 05: Land + Water in Winter 2023.

Barbados’ ocean stacked in wide, horizontal layers, further out and in more blue shades than my camera could capture. Closest to shore, white bubbles frothing at the pinkish-camel sandy shore. Then a translucent shallow water yielded swirling browns, little specks of lavender. Above that, a marine light pistachio flecked with yellow but only when the waves crest rolled and right before it broke. This blended into turquoise that stretched to the end of the shallows. Turquoise holds lots of white in its shallow depths. As abruptly as the drop which caused it, the deep blue, wrinkled sea was the furthest band of colour.

I visited Barbados to be near this rainbow ocean. I often went to a shop called Harmony Deli on the southside of St. Lawrence road. I’d encountered the hidden gem when the calypso-bumping ZR bus from Bridgetown dropped me off at the closest stop to my rented shack, just off the tourist thoroughfare. A sign in front of a house advertised dishes including “sea cat”, Bajan-style octopus. I had read about it but hadn’t seen it on any menus yet. 

It would be nice to bring a takeaway meal to eat on the shore. I walked over the dry grass. A wooden fence and gate separated the shack from the house’s entryways. I opened the gate.

Inside the eatery was a round table with two plastic lawn chairs, crates of stacked rinsed bottles, an orange cat that frowned yet placed a paw forward as if waiting, and the shack with a window, a cash register, an array of bagged snacks and plastic cutlery and a menu nailed to the side of the counter. A woman came out from the private side of the house. She had neatly braided hair and strode to the register, looking at me expectantly. 

“Hi,” she said in the melodic Bajan accent. “What do you want?” She was being straightforward, not rude.

“Do you have the sea cat?” I pointed to the menu.

She shook her head. “Not today, no sea cat.”

“Oh.” It must have been a seasonal catch. 

“But we have other seafood. We have saltfish, that’s a traditional dish that’s very salty. There’s also jumbo coated shrimp - barbecued - grilled fish platter, and fish an’ chips.” 

I nodded as she talked. They all sounded good but I wanted to try something impossible to find in Vancouver. One item caught my eye.

“What’s pudding and souse?” I asked her. It sounded like a British dessert.

“It’s a pork dish. It’s from England. Slow-cooked pork with bones and marrow. It comes with tamarind rice, pickled cucumber and roasted breadfruit.” 

“Ooo! That sounds good. I’ll have one of those, please.”

“Alright. Anything to drink?”

There were only beers listed on the menu. “Any juice?”

“I have pineapple, apple, five-finger, mauby, and sorrel.”

“Sorrel, please!” Near Bridgetown’s synagogue I’d tried the purple juice of sorrel fruit with nutmeg, cloves, cinamon, bay leaf and sugar and loved the sweet and slightly tart taste.

“That’ll be ten U.S.”

“How much in Bajan?”

“Twenty Bajan.”

I counted out three fives and many coins. 

Sat at the rickety table for two, I plopped my backpack onto the other chair and waited with jiggling ankles while she ladled food into a takeaway container. Today wasn’t the day to try sea cat. The land cat approached, checking to see if I had food yet. I wouldn’t be sharing; I’d just spent a couple hours exploring Bridgetown and the surrounding area under the growing day’s heat and would be retaining every calorie and lick of flavour for myself.

“Here!” the shopkeeper called. I thanked her, grabbing my food and bringing it back to unbox. I arranged myself in the shade and placed the food in splendor in the sun. 

I lifted the takeaway lid in front of me to unleash a gentle cloud of steam, each trail of vapor reflected without shadows in the high noon sunlight. The dish before me was piled high, high! With succulent, come-apart chunks of pork, roasted breadfruit that looked like a cross between pineapple and bread, and fresh, tangy diced cucumbers with pickled spices. In the side corners were two round, plump scoops of rice cooked in orange-brown tamarind sauce. The pork fat smell twirled in the steam cloud with the pickled cucumber condiment and the sweet tamarind smell and my hunger intensified. I grinned with my utensils and tucked in.

The soft pork pulled apart with the perfect amount of glistening rendered fat. The bones contained collagen in the joints that was sweet to suck on and marrow that tasted rich and flavourful. Anything that’s been slow-cooked for a day tastes incredible and this meat was no exception. It was generously portioned; I cleaned bone after bone, pirate crossbones piling up on the other compartment of the flat open takeaway. 

The three breadfruit pieces were like no fruit I’d tasted in Canada. They were the densest fruit I’d ever had, like a potato, so they did resemble bread in how they gave when I bit but tasted like fruity blank slate carbs. They were the perfect base to hold the pork and pickled cucumbers’ big flavours. The pickled cucumber condiment paired nicely with the breadfruit and the pork. I must emphasize, they were pickled cucumbers, not pickles. The mind-cleansing clarity of cucumbers was at the core of every crunch through the bright green vegetable cubes. 

Lastly was the tamarind rice, perky and round. I enjoyed big spoonfuls with closed eyes and slow chewing to taste all the sweet, tangy tamarind sauce through the chewy grains, a bit wider than the jasmine rice of Filipino cuisine. Tamarind is used in my family’s Filipino dishes so it was exciting to taste it in the Caribbean. 

I spent a full half an hour savouring my pudding and souse and sorrel juice, whereas I normally take fifteen minutes to finish my plate. The cat pawed my shoes but wandered away in disappointment; I wouldn’t budge today. 

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By Abby Pelaez, 2022. All rights reserved. The contributed written content or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the owner.