THE COOKBOOK TEST #0046: CODE NOIR: AFRO-CARIBBEAN STORIES AND RECIPES
INSTALLMENT #0046 (PAID) COLONIALISM AND JERK CHICKEN / DOUBLES YOUR PLEASURE / NEAR BEER, CARIBBEAN-STYLE
Dear Subscribers,
Over the course of the past (nearly) year of weekly cookbook reviews, I've read and cooked from some massively silly books. There was the Dungeons and Dragons cookbook. The Minecraft cookbook. The shamefully shambolic Cooking with Columbo. Restated again, for emphasis: the Dungeons and Dragons cookbook.
CODE NOIR: AFRO-CARIBBEAN STORIES AND RECIPES sits at the opposite end of the silly-to-serious spectrum. I thought the book had a pretty cool name, and then I read it and learned that the Code Noir was, in fact, a 17th Century decree by King Louis XIV of France that has been described as "the most monstrous legal text of modern times." The code outlined how enslaved people in French colonies should be treated, in excruciating detail and without empathy or compassion. It also mandated conversion to Catholicism for all enslaved people throughout the French empire and expelled all Jews from France’s colonies.
Author Lelani Lewis gets into the colonial history - and her own personal biography, which is rich, complex, and truly global-spanning - while laying out a rich feast of Caribbean and Caribbean-inspired recipes, some quite traditional, some developed by the author. The book’s photos are terrific - lush and documentary, with a number of slice-of-life shots that add depth and context.
What Lewis lays out with engaging clarity is the layer cake-like stacking of cultures that have built the cuisine of the Caribbean into one of the great melting pot hotspots in the world: indigenous food meeting European food meeting Africa food meeting Asian food, as locals met colonizers met slaves met migrant workers. There's incredible suffering and death in the history (if you've never dug into the backstory of Haiti, for example, get ready for incredible stories of sacrifice, brutality, and colonial evil so pure and distilled that you could probably power a city with just a few drops of it), but there are also correspondingly high notes of bold / bright / complex / transportive flavors in the food and drink of the region, both sides of which Code Noir manages to capture.
The book looks gorgeous. It reads well. And it presents an intriguingly good-looking array of recipes, from tamale-like banana leaf-wrapped packets called pasteles to pepperpot stew to the fermented drink called tepache. Let's give it a shot.
at your service,
James
CODE NOIR: AFRO-CARIBBEAN STORIES AND RECIPES
BY LELANI LEWIS
TRA PUBLISHING | 2024 | $35
A disturbingly long time ago, I was just a baby food critic, tackling his first-ever review for the scrappy Minneapolis alt-weekly City Pages. My first spot: Marla's, a newish little Trinidadian restaurant. My verdict: Absolutely fantastic - two thumbs way up. My favorite dish: the doubles.
If you've never had doubles, you've missed out on one of the world's really great meals. This combination of fried bread, curried chickpeas, and a variety of savory sauces is far more than the sum of its parts, and it just pops with deep, complex, gorgeous flavor and compelling texture.
By executing Code Noir's recipe for doubles, I arguably only tested one recipe from this book. But, in fact: this recipe is six recipes: curried chickpeas, green sauce, fried bread, tamarind sauce, yogurt sauce, and a cucumber hot pepper relish.
I was least enthusiastic about attempting the green seasoning, not due to any culinary insecurity (perish the thought) but due to the fact it seemed like a thing Caribbean people had probably made to scale and bottled with a great deal of success.
I wouldn't mind making a sweet, tangy tomato ketchup from scratch except for the existence of Heinz, and a trip to the Caribbean grocery store revealed the equivalent existence of Chief, a perfectly serviceable looking bottled brand of green seasoning. Lo and behold: It's delicious. Tangy, a little hot, deeply herbal, no complaints.
That brings me back to the other five recipes, all of which I made with varying degrees of success.
RECIPE: Coconut-Lime Yogurt Sauce
GOAL: Make a refreshing, tropical-esque yogurt based sauce.
WHAT I DID: Exactly that. I added the zest of a lime and a sprinkle of salt to a container of coconut Chobani yogurt and it made a delicious sauce.
METHOD: Combine 6 1/2 Tbsp of coconut yogurt with the zest of a lime and a sprinkle of salt.
RECIPE: Cucumber Chutney
GOAL: Create a paradoxically cooling and spicy hot relish that would bring color and a kick of intensity to whatever dish it landed in.
WHAT I DID: I used half a habanero, which - in retrospect - might've been overkill. But once you get acclimated to the heat level, a little sprinkle of this stuff goes a long (and positive) way to painting the full flavor picture that makes doubles such an incredible meal. Excellent result.
METHOD: Food process: 1 mini cucumber (or about 1/3 of a regular one) along with a clove of garlic, a quarter habanero, 3/4 tsp apple cider vinegar, 1/2 sugar and a few grinds of freshly ground pepper plus a pinch of salt. Scales up ad infinitum, and can keep in a fridge for some time.
RECIPE: Tamarind Sauce
GOAL: Create a sweet / hot / tart sauce using a brown cane sugar and tamarind paste base.
WHAT I DID: I made a perfect tamarind sauce but kept it on the heat a bit too long and it bubbled up and more or less became a tamarind caramel sauce. This must count at least as a partial success, however, because it was legitimately delicious atop the doubles.
METHOD: Bring 2 cups of water to boil and add 3 Tbsp of tamarind paste - stir until paste dissolves. Add 1 cup of jaggery or brown cane sugar, 1 tsp of salt, 1 tsp ground ginger, and 1 tsp cayenne pepper, simmer until mixture thickens but before it turns into caramel, about 25-30 minutes. If it turns into caramel, serve anyway, it's delicious.
RECIPE: Green Seasoning
GOAL: Obtain a tangy / tart / herbal / fiery green sauce to lace the doubles with still more depth.
WHAT I DID: Bought a $4 bottle of Chief-brand Green Seasoning at Galaxy Foods International. It was delicious.
METHOD: ID your local Caribbean market and buy some green seasoning, or order it online.
RECIPE: Baras (Fried Bread)
GOAL: Neatly fry up some circular pieces of bread to act as receptacles for the curried chickpeas.
WHAT I DID: I hate frying in anything but my deep fryer, but these things were just too big to do in anything but a massive All Clad saute pan, so All Clad it was. As per usual with pan-frying, the oil took quite a while to heat up and then got way too hot way too fast. The bread cooked far faster than recommended (the recipe suggested 3 minutes a side, I was closer to 45-60 seconds a side) and the second side inevitably got a little browner than the first.
That said: The bread was absolutely delicious. Chewy, robust, slightly sweet, slightly spiced, lovely to handle and eat. And: It puffed up enough that it could be easily torn into halves and used as pocket bread, an unexpected benefit. I might heat the oil a little lower and slower next time, but this result was absolutely a good one.
METHOD: Whisk together 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 tsp of baking powder, 1 tsp of instant yeast, 1/2 tsp ground turmeric, 1 tsp of salt and 2 tsp of brown cane sugar. Gradually stir in 1 cup of lukewarm water. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes, until the dough is smooth. Grease a mixing bowl with coconut oil, and let dough rest under a damp cloth for an hour to rise.
After rising, divide dough into 10 balls, place on a board and cover with cloth to rest for another hour.
Heat about 1/2 inch of vegetable oil to 340 F in a large, heavy sauté pan. Roll out to 4" circles and then fry 1-2 pieces of dough at a time, until they start to brown and puff up, about 30-90 seconds per side. Remove to a plate covered in paper towels.
RECIPE: Curried Chickpeas (Channa)
GOAL: Conjure up an almost sauce-like concoction of onions, green seasoning, chickpeas, and Caribbean curry powder.
WHAT I DID: Undercooked them and forgot to season them. They weren't ruined - they were just a bit al dente - but the 40-60 minutes of simmering recommended in Code Noir was short by at least 15-30 minutes. I'd plan to go for an hour+ with some extra time to hang out before dinner. And I'd remember the salt and pepper, too - that was on me. I will say that between the bread, the curry, the tamarind, the yogurt, and the super spicy relish, I didn't notice the lack of seasoning. My six-year-old daughter, however, did, and she called me on it.
METHOD: Soak chickpeas in a large bowl of water for 24 hours. Drain and rinse.
Finely chop: 1 onion, 3 cloves garlic, 2 tsp peeled ginger. Heat 2 Tbsp of coconut oil in a saute pan and cook the onion, garlic, and ginger on medium heat until the onion starts to turn golden brown, 6-8 minutes. Add 2 Tbsp Caribbean curry powder, 4 Tbsp green seasoning, and chickpeas, and stir well. Then add 1 3/4 cups water, and bring to a simmer - simmer for 60-90 minutes, until chickpeas are tender and thoroughly cooked. Season with salt and pepper.
SERVICE: Present your guests with flatbreads, channa, coconut-lime yogurt, cucumber chutney, and tamarind sauce, and let them have at it.
I remember Marla's doubles being delicious and worth the trip to the restaurant; these, I think, were better still. Richer, bolder, brighter, hotter, more intense - just first rate, with bread that may be my new favorite naan-like meal companion.
NEAR BEER, CARIBBEAN STYLE
Not content to make a mere five recipes (well, two recipes and three sauce methods), I also tried out the book's recipe for Ginger Beer, ginger ale’s more fiercesome and impressive island-based cousin.
Ginger beer has been one of my favorite summertime drinks since the year 2000, when me and my roommate Jeremy would mix up dark-n-stormies in our tiny little scrap of an apartment in Cambridge, Mass. And while I've bought plenty of it in bottles, it has never occurred to me that you can just make the stuff at home, too - and that it's as good or better than anything you can get at the store.
The Code Noir method makes a syrup that keeps for months in the fridge and can be mixed roughly 1:1:2 with syrup:ice:seltzer to make a punchy, bold, slightly sweet, very ginger-forward and refreshing beverage. No rum needed - I'm sure it would mix well, but this thing is just also a terrific n/a sipper unto itself.
METHOD: Chop 4 1/2 oz. (120 grams) of peeled ginger roughly and add to 2 cups of water in a saucepan. Immersion blend until somewhat smooth. Bring mixture to a boil along with 1/2 cup of brown cane sugar, 4 allspice berries, and 4 peppercorns. Simmer for 30 minutes or until sugar dissolves.
Turn off heat and let it steep with lid on for at least a couple hours or better yet overnight at room temperature.
Add the juice from two limes, strain into a container, and refrigerate.
THE VERDICT ON CODE NOIR
(***BUY IT*** / BORROW IT / SKIP IT / SCRAP IT)
It's not a cheap book. It's not a light book. But it's an ambitious, beautiful, useful, and legitimately fascinating book.
For me, Green Seasoning was about $18 of herbs for a one-shot sauce vs. a $4 bottle, so the economics were clear. I'm normally happy to scratch-make everything, but I was up to six recipes this week already, so I cut myself a bit of grace (and now have a delicious bottle of green seasoning in the fridge, which I'm going to start dumping on new things, starting with pizza.)
I love when I hit these "it's not just me!" moments. This week it's: "As per usual with pan-frying, the oil took quite a while to heat up and then got way too hot way too fast." (Aha! Not just me!)
This book sounds like a fun check-out-from-the-library-first pick for me, to assess how expansive my pantry might need to be. No Caribbean grocery store around here that I know of, and I'm reluctant to special order single ingredients. Thanks for the review!