When I was a child, everyone in the household was pretty sure that Great Gran was stealing the meat from the pepper pot, and all of the kids would occasionally have a good laugh about it. I didn’t have any reason not to believe that it was true, but I was still a bit startled and didn’t know what to do when I actually saw her in the act.
Great Gran must have heard me as I was about to saunter into the kitchen. She spun around from over the stove where she had been perched over the pepper pot, which might have been just finished heating up. She was quick, especially for her age. She looked dead at me, a piece of dark, pepper pot meat clutched between two fingers. I didn’t say a word, and might have been wide-eyed. I just backed away. At least that’s the way that I remember it.
As I know it, pepper pot in Guyana is an essential dish for celebrating special holidays, and for everyday eating. Pepper pot, and Guyanese style bread, is a good choice for Christmas morning breakfast, at least it’s been my choice for many years, and we always have a pot of pepper pot cooked for meals the whole year-end, holiday season through. Bread or rice will do. But if rice, then plain rice as a first choice, at least for me, because pepper pot in not quite like oxtail stew that might customarily be eaten with rice and peas. But you can have it that way, anyway. And if you don’t have Guyanese-style bread to buy and can’t bake, then try Jamaican or other Hard Dough bread if you can get this to buy, and it should work just fine.
Now, pepper pot is widely used in Guyana, Barbados and Grenada, and there is no question that the dish is Amerindian in origin. I have to confess, though, that I don’t know a lot of people (read, any people) who would use mostly bush meat (read, any bush meat), as I’ve heard would be the regular thing for Amerindian people to do. Many claim the origins of the pepper pot dish for Guyana, and this seems true enough as even my readings on Barbados heritage point to the dish as originating in Guyana. But what’s more important is that you better know what you’re doing if you want to make pepper pot, because not everyone can make pepper pot even if they can find good casareep (cas-reep). And if you don’t even know what casareep is, then you’re done even before you start. Well, too bad.
And, by the way, if you’re going to look into it more, and make or find some pepper pot to eat, you should know that it could be a tough stain to remove from clothes. And maybe I should mention here that if you’re going to try your hand at cooking it, then you’d better know a few things: Such as how long cow foot might take to pressure or boil as compared to, let’s say, ox tail; how and when to skim away excess oil and fat; how much fine leaf thyme to add; and what else to add . . . .
As I remember it, the pot that Great Gran was fishing out meat from was a pot of pepper pot that never seemed to end. It seemed that it was just added to, and I don’t know whether or not there was an actual schedule for what happened to the pot of pepper pot handing over the stove. But pepper pot was always looked forward to, and could almost always be an option for one meal or another.
“Grannie, how come there’s always pepper pot in the pot?” I asked.
This seemed a reasonable question for a child to ask, maybe even a question that I would ask now. But while the long answer that I got also seemed reasonable to me then as a child, I can’t decide to this day whether it was actually reasonable. Maybe it’s just a matter of perspective.
“The pepper pot pot is a special, magic pot that my father got from a big boat that them Dutch people had, after the boat sink near to where we used to live up the River,” Grannie said.
“The pot used to belong to them Amerindian people and the Dutch people steal it away with a lot of other things. Things that wasn’t to leave the country. It’s not like the Dutch people didn’t know that the things that they were trying to carry away back to where they come from shouldn’t be leaving the country because the Amerindian people tell them about all this.
“Of course, in them days Amerindian people didn’t trouble people even if a lot of them backra man used to trouble people and do what they want, but that’s the way that things used to be. But, anyway, the pepper pot pot end up on the boat and the boat end up under the water with sail things sticking up for anyone to see when the water was low and clear and if you were looking . . . .”
Maybe now is a good time to clear up some confusion for my friends from such as Jamaica, Anguilla, Antigua, and maybe even elsewhere: The pepper pot that I’m talking about is not calalu. Pepper pot has dark brown liquid because of the casareep and other seasonings, but I personally would hesitate to refer to it as soup or stew. And it would typically have lots of various meats to personal choice, even though fish wouldn’t work, but I wouldn’t personally say that chicken would be that customary either. And it boils and sits, and boils and sits, with seasonings including pepper, and can go on for a very long time with reheating and even additions, but I wouldn’t say that adding and continuing the dish for more than a few days would be that common nowadays with many that I know.
As I know it, pepper pot is good—essential—for celebrating special holidays, and for everyday eating, and you can have your choice of bread or rice. But remember that pepper pot can stain your new, nice pajamas on Christmas morning. And if you want to have your pot of pepper pot continue on indefinitely, it might be helpful to have a magic pepper pot pot like I might have had as a child, but do keep an eye out for the possibility that meat might end up missing.
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