Bermuda - rum, and fish, fish, fish

Jan 18

"You can go to heaven if you want. I'd rather stay in Bermuda."

Mark Twain

Having returned to my kitchen series, I'm nowpicking up on my world tour of food. And today it's Bermuda, which, as you will see, I should have explored before I got to America.

I confess I thought that Bermuda was in the Caribbean, part of the West Indies. However, it's actually a very long way away in the Western Atlantic, way off the coast of the Carolinas - over 1000 kms.. And it's tiny - a total area of 54 square kms even though there are 181 islands, some of which must be just mere lumps of rock. You are never more than a mile away from the sea. The main islands are joined by bridges and so look like one island.

From space you can see how tiny and how isolated it is. Formed from volcanoes long, long ago, there's not much land to farm on either, which sort of explains why it was never really a plantation island.

It owes it's name to its discoverer the Spanish sailor Juan de Bermúdez who found it in 1505 on an expedition to the Americas. Honestly when you see how remote and tiny such places are you wonder how anybody ever found them. Back then they had no maps and had no idea what existed west of Europe and over the seas. Juan de Bermúdez reported on it though and for a century or so sailors from Spain and Portugal used it to get fresh food - meat, fish, fruit?, although they would not have been able to get fresh water there. There is none. The inhabitants get their water from rainwater - and some from underground, although that is not drinkable. A somewhat amazing fact in itself is it not?

The island was not inhabited until 1612 when the British in the form of the Somers Isles Company made it part of British America and set up some tobacco plantations for which they imported slaves from the West Indies. They were not successful however, and by the 1620s the land was sold to locals who turned them into farms to feed themselves and slavery was over by the beginning of the 17th century. After that the British and sailors of all other nations crossing the Atlantic, used it for maritime reasons - which for the British meant a Royal Naval Dockyard - the most important navy base in the Western Hemisphere. In the 18th century they began exporting salt, and I believe they still do, but in the 19th century tourism became the largest industry, although there would have been whaling as well. After World War 2 it also became a tax haven, which is why its small population (around 60,000) is relatively prosperous - 52% black, 31% white - plus others. The black part of the population also covers a range of blackness. But it is still a British Overseas Territory, although self-governed.

Besides no human inhabitants the island also has very few animal natives - a couple of bird species, some bats, and now, I believe a lizard and some turtles. But of course there is fish which dominates the island's cuisine.

The roots of the cuisine lie with the Spanish, and Portuguese sailors, the British colonisers and the African and North American Indian origin slaves. And as I said, their raw material is fish - and rum, the most famous brand of which is Goslings, and their Black Seal brand:

"Eventually the black rum was sold in champagne bottles, reclaimed from the British Officer’s Mess, and the corks sealed with black sealing wax. Pretty soon people began to ask for the “Black Seal”. Many years later a play on words and images gave birth to the little, barrel juggling “Black Seal”. Goslings Rum

Before I leave the rum behind I should mention the island's Black rum cake, which is traditionally made in a Bundt pan, includes pecans and is glazed with butter, sugar, water and more of the black seal rum. It has to be black seal rum - and you can buy it in Dan's. There are lots of recipes online.

And no - still on the black seal rum, this is one of the, doubtless many, cocktails that are made with it. This one is claimed as a Goslings invention and is called dark 'n stormy and is made with the dark seal rum, ginger beer and lime juice. Pretty simple I guess. But then like food, probably some of the best drinks are the simplest.

I suppose the isolation of Bermuda is responsible for the fact that there are dishes unique to this tiny group of people on the planet. Wikipedia mentions the Portuguese influence as being very strong, although I do not quite understand why this should be so - any more than Spanish that is, which is not really mentioned. For they never 'owned' the place - merely used it as a stopping point on journeys between Portugal and the Americas. Maybe some of them, like Mark Twain thought it was heaven and stayed.

Nevertheless there are dishes that are indeed influenced by them - like these Malasadas - a kind of doughnut without a hole, but which have a small dent in the top, which is dusted with cinnamon sugar. My kind of doughnut.

The main feature of Bermuda cuisine however, is fish, particularly spiny lobster, which I think is the same as our rock lobster, cod - which is often salted, wahoo, tuna and dolphin fish. All endangered one might think, although nobody mentioned this kind of problem.

So let's start with breakfast because this is, to me, the weirdest of the 'national dishes'. The 'brunch' is traditionally eaten on Sundays and consists of salted cod, boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, avocado and banana, and almost always, in the Portuguese tradition with an onion and tomato sauce.

And a word about onions - onions were a major export for Bermuda until the end of WW2, so much so that it was once described as 'the onion patch'. And so onions will often make an appearance in their cuisine. But then it does in virtually every cuisine on the globe does it not?

Next up Hoppin' John otherwise known as peas and rice. The peas are black-eyed beans and there are plenty of those onions. Plus ham and sometimes greens. The origins of this one are with the slaves who came from the Southern United States, where it is also a traditional dish and a New Year favourite.

I'm lumping the next two dishes together - the fish sandwich and codfish cakes, because I suspect that sometimes the fish element in the sandwich - which must be mostly fish - is sometimes a fish cake. I saw somewhere that the unique and somewhat surprising thing about the sandwich is that the bread is often fruit bread - even hot cross buns.

The last and possibly the most famous Bermuda dish is their version of fish chowder which is dark in colour due to the black rum. Some versions I saw were chunky like the one on the left, some smoother. Some say it is often compared to bouillabaisse because of the mix of fish that are used.

The other crucial ingredient of the chowder (and other dishes too) is Outerbridge's Sherry pepper sauce - a mix of peppers - hot ones and sherry. It's origins lie in trying to prevent scurvy on ships. Small hot peppers from the area were soaked in barrels of sherry in an attempt to get the sailors to eat the peppers or at least extract some of the vitamin C which must have leached into the sherry,. And now it is a proud Bermuda export. I'm waiting for Ottolenghi to discover it. He seems to discover a new condiment from somewhere in the world almost every week.

The company that produced it even published a cookbook, and you will find lots of recipes online for how to make your own.

I'm still a tiny bit mystified by the strength of the Portuguese influence on the cuisine, but it's been an interesting small bit of discovery for me - from the location, the geology, the history to the sheer wonder of the impact of one tiny piece of rock in the middle of the ocean on the world.

THE LETTER J

Also difficult - I couldn't see any jars, or junk or joggers on my way back from the shops but I did retake this piece of names in concrete. Every time I pass it I wonder what happened to Jessica and Jacob and who were/are they? Jessica is fading a little from view.