I had been living on the island for about six months when I decided to try my hand at cooking local food. I knew how to prepare lasagna, beef stew, macaroni and cheese and many other comfort food dishes that my mother prepared for me as a child, but this was not practical for Caye life since most of the ingredients were difficult to obtain. The local food consisted of mainly fish, which Mom never cooked fish, not wanting the smell to permeate our home, so the only place I at fish in the United States was in restaurants. I was going to have to start from the beginning.

I had acquired a boyfriend after not too long on the Caye, which is an almost unavoidable condition when you live on an island in the Caribbean. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that the men of the islands are very charming, they LOVE women and are quite proficient in the art of sweet-talking. In addition, the Caye men, for the most part, have well-sculpted bodies and are very strong, attributes which are in their favor when pursuing the a woman. The reality of the situation of a single woman living on the Caye is that it is much easier to have a man in her life to keep an endless barrage of potential suitors, who without any doubt, know a woman would never choose to live alone, and to help in daily life, which has many physically strenuous aspects. So aside from the standard romantic reasons I chose my boyfriend, I was thinking rationally.

All Caye men can cook. This is set in stone. Ask any one of them. The main reason for this is that they are fishermen and when they are on a fishing trip out at sea, they must cook for themselves. Also, many of them were required to share in the household duties as children and this included cooking. Not only can they cook, they also can cook very well. My particular Caye man was a diver and on many occasions he spent weeks on a boat catching fish and packing them on ice aboard the boat. He was very particular about how his food was prepared, not allowing me near the stove for quite some time, which was actually quite fine by me, and on a regular basis, he prepared the most amazing meals I have ever tasted. I watched and learned and over time my skills at cooking local food surpassed even his, although he would never admit it. I had the added advantage of combining my knowledge of my mother’s cooking with what I learned from him.

This particular day I decided that I would cook the rice while he was out fishing and when he came home, he could prepare his catch of the day. We had no oven, only a four burner table top stove, as did all but the most prosperous residents on the island. Rice is the mainstay of any Caribbean meal. There always had to be rice, even if there were potatoes…rice was a MUST!    There is only one kind of rice, flour, and most every food item on the island. I used to joke that there is only one kind of man on the Caye too. When you went to one of the little shops, the rice was measured from a hundred pound sack into an appropriate plastic bag, which was then weighed on a scale hanging from the ceiling. The bag was then tied in a knot and used again on the next trip to the shop. Most of the time the rice was clean, with only a few brown kernels and tiny black stones that had to be picked out by hand. The rice was then rinsed with water to clean off any remaining dust. Sometimes the rice was very dirty and no matter how many times you rinsed and scrubbed it, there was a slight taste of earth when you ate it.

This particular day the rice was very nice, and I went home with my one pound bag and the intention of cooking a delicious pot full. Now, the best rice is cooked in coconut milk. In fact I could eat a plate of coconut rice with nothing else, it is so delicious. In order to make the coconut milk I would have to first grate a mature coconut, but even before that I had find one. Luckily there were two or three that day that had fallen in the year, which had about a dozen, very tall coconut trees. I learned very soon after arriving on the island not to walk under a coconut tree, because if one fell on our head…well you can imagine. I picked up my coconut and readied myself for the next stop. I had to husk the coconut and remove the meat from the shell. I had watched it done many times and I was determined do it right. One way to remove the husk is with a machete, a method I have not to this day mastered. A more practical way is with a husking stick, preferably made of iron, but can be made out of hard wood. The stick is usually about five feet long and approximately two inches in diameter and has a flat point on the top. Approximately half of the stick is buried in the ground to secure it and the remaining part protrudes straight up. My boyfriend had carved a wooden stick which resided in the back yard. I took a coconut from our pile, held it high and thumped it on the stick so the point penetrated the husk. Next I pushed on the husk, while it was still on the stick, to tear it off. About one third of the husk came off so I repeated the process two more times. There is an art involved in tempering the pressure one exerts during this process so that you don’t end up impaled by the stick.

I then threw the husk in the husk pile to be burned at a later date when there was no breeze and the sand flies and mosquitoes appear. The husk smoke is the most effect insect deterrent and I can recall calm nights when the air was thick with smoke, but no bugs. Oddly enough the husk pile attracts mosquitoes prior to burning and must be placed far from the house.

Now I was ready to remove the shell from the meat. If you are good with a machete you can chip it off so that you are only left with a round piece of coconut meat, the water still inside. It is a proud feat for a Caye man to chip a coconut in one piece. I however, being inept with a machete, had to use a hammer to break the shell, hopefully, into large pieces. Yes, I did get lucky this time. I discarded the water since; it is the water of the green, not the mature, coconut which is excellent and delicious to drink, a good source of iron and a mixer for local rum, if you are so inclined.

Finally I was in possession of pieces of coconut shell, lined with sweet coconut meat. The trick to separating the two is to use a table knife, not a sharp one if you value your fingers. The procedure is to wedge the knife between the shell and meat and, if you are very lucky, the meat pops away; if not, you have to keep prying it off in small pieces. When all the meat was removed, I tossed the shell into the husk pile for future use.

I washed the pieces of coconut and then faced the task of grating the coconut. The best coconut milk is made from meat that is grated on a local contraption, consisting of a wooden frame, about 12 inches wide and 24 inches high. A handle made up of the sides of the frame that extend about three inched past the top, attached to a cross piece completes the primitive, but effective, kitchen accessory. A thin sheet of metal is attached to the frame with small nails and holes are made with a large nail in as many places as possible on the sheet. The underside of these holes, where the metal is slight pushed out; provides a sharp surface on which to grate the coconut meat. The finer the grated coconut, the richer the milk and this tool does the job better than even the best food processor.

The downside is that if you do not know the correct technique, your fingers will end up grated along with the coconut. You must know the coconut and how easily it will break, based on how thick, large and dry each piece is, so you can exert exactly the correct amount of pressure to safely complete the task. It is truly an art which I have mastered, but not right away, if you get my drift.

When you have finished grating, you then determine how much coconut milk you need for your recipe. I was cooking one pound of rice, so I only needed the milk from one coconut. On the islands, we do not measure the amount of liquid we need, but rather just determine. The once I poured the warm, not hot, water in my bowl I squeezed the grated coconut and watched the water turn milky white. Placing a strainer over another bowl, I began to squeeze the now milk through the strainer which was left with only the fine, dry grated coconut. At this point it is called coconut trash and can be discarded as it has little or no taste or use, although some would disagree, since they use it for purposes not known to Caye folk, such as pig feed. If you have a mosquito fire going you can sprinkle it on top and get some good smoke.

I poured the milk over the rice, brought it to almost a boil, lowered the flame to the lowest setting and placed the cover on the pot. It would only be about twenty five minutes until my first pot of coconut rice was ready to eat. About 15 minutes later the boyfriend arrived home, smelled my cooking and approached the stove. I was so happy that my first attempt at Caribbean cuisine was going to be a smashing success. He lifted the top and said, “Oh, you cooked oats,” in an approving tone.

“No, dear, its rice,” I explained as walked over to take a look. What lie inside the pot was a mass of white, custard-like mush.

“How much coconut milk did you use,” he asked?

“I just poured in the whole bowl. I only covered the rice about 2-3 inches.”

“My love”, he attempted to console me, “you only cover the rice by this much,” holding two fingers together. He laughed affectionately and went on to explain that what I had created is what they call rice lab.

We ended up having a delicious meal that night, consisting of coconut milk rice, fresh fish and ripe plantain…at the local restaurant.