A French Creole Sunday: Callaloo on a Clear Conscience

A French Creole Sunday:Callaloo on a Clear Conscience Anthony P. Maingot (bio) The idea of a "clear conscience" was very important in my Roman Catholic upbringing on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Of course, I speak of things as they were over half a century ago. It was an age when one associated only with fellow Catholics, preferably white French Creoles. The day of the week which anchored these relationships and reinforced them was most definitely Sunday. And Sundays meant mass followed by a lunch with callaloo and crab. At a table loaded with other delicacies—sugar-coated pumpkin fritters, fried sweet plantains, baked bread fruit au gratin, sliced avocado salad—the callaloo was the piece de resistance. A Sunday among the French Creoles was as predictable as the tropical showers during our "winter" season. Even those brief but prodigious downpours contributed to a sense that whatever else the outside world had in store for our small colonial island, nature guaranteed a consistent, and thus comforting, routine. So did unchallenged faith and religion. At church the family sat in the same pew (unofficially but by custom reserved for us). After mass we caught up with the gossip from (and, of course, about) the various members of the extensive family. In other words, it was a very familiar family affair. Alas, there would be no lingering no matter how juicy the mauvais langue, given that everyone's taste buds were already acting up. Not even the quasi-Victorian breeding—inculcated through liberal use of the rod of correction—could conceal the prodigious salivating. Time to head home to what was certainly waiting for us: rum cocktails for the grown ups, sorrel for the kids, a table for ten set with beautiful local flowers, and all these settings and activities quite literally enveloped in the aroma which wafted from the kitchen. Because it cooked in open pots and required frequent swizzling, the scent of callaloo moved like a mellifluous mist through every corner of the house and, one would have to believe, up to the Heavens to the Lord's great delight. The commander-in-chief and culinary architect of this kitchen was Cidrine. On Sundays she merely tolerated my mother who, being from Costa Rica, knew mighty little about the makings of this creole dish. Although I never got to know Cidrine's last name, her permanence in the service of the family made her as much "family" as the caste-like nature of race and class divisions would allow. That said, she certainly was someone to value and protect. Like the fame of a good pilot on a ship, Cidrine's reputation was widespread and, as I was later told, attempts to attract her away were frequent. Cidrine, you see, came from neighboring Grenada where the long French presence had absorbed so much of Africa that the subsequent British conquest could not erase those elements fundamental to a syncretic Tropical-French-African style of life central among which was, of course, cooking. In the [End Page 369] Caribbean only the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe were (and maybe still are) the equals of Grenadian cuisine. In this conformist and predictable world it never occurred to anyone to ask whether Cidrine had been to mass and I can't remember anyone saying a prayer in her name. It was our conscience which had to be clear; it was Cidrine's duty to reward that clear conscience with her callaloo and crab. And, you should know, this was no easy or quick task. In fact, proper Sunday callaloo and crab was a day-and-a-half enterprise which began early Saturday morning at the local market. Cidrine would pick up smooth green dasheen leaves, firm plump okras, onions (necessarily the ones imported from Madeira) and the Canadian salt meat. She would then have to catch the bus down to the fish market at Cocorite for the blue crabs. They grew prodigiously in the mangroves which lined the sea shore and would be kept alive in a wooden barrel until just before cooking. Of the myriad ingredients, the dasheen and the okras were, so to speak, the first violins of all...

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