Cou-cou and Flying Fish

Barbados's national dish: cornmeal beaten with okra into a smooth mound, served with flying fish steamed in a tomato and Bajan seasoning sauce

Origin: Bridgetown & Barbados

From the journey of Okra.

Cou-cou is cornmeal cooked with okra and beaten smooth, and the okra is what makes it cou-cou rather than polenta. The pods are simmered first and their liquid, thickened by the mucilage they release, becomes the cooking water for the meal; the sliced okra is then beaten back in. That mucilage is doing structural work, giving the finished mound a smooth elastic body that plain cornmeal cannot achieve, and it is the clearest surviving West African technique on the Barbadian table. The same preparation is called fungee in Antigua, fungi in the Virgin Islands, and turn cornmeal elsewhere; the dish is shared across the Eastern Caribbean and the name changes with the island. What is particular to Barbados is the pairing. Flying fish, Hirundichthys affinis, gave Barbados its old name of the land of the flying fish and appears on the country's coins and its coat of arms. The fish is filleted, rolled, and steamed or braised in a sauce built on Bajan seasoning, a green paste of thyme, marjoram, parsley, spring onion, garlic, and scotch bonnet that Barbadian households keep made up in a jar. Since the 1990s the flying fish shoals have moved south and a long-running fishing dispute with Trinidad and Tobago went to international arbitration in 2006, so a national dish now depends partly on a negotiated boundary. The cou-cou is turned out in a smooth dome using a wetted bowl, which is the traditional presentation, and the fish and its sauce are spooned around it.

Ingredients

Cou-cou

  • 250 g okra, topped and sliced into rounds
  • 1.2 litres water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 250 g fine yellow cornmeal
  • 40 g butter

Fish

  • 8 flying fish fillets, or 4 fillets of any small firm white fish
  • 2 limes, juiced
  • 3 tbsp Bajan seasoning

Sauce

  • 2 onions, thinly sliced
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 tbsp tomato purée
  • 1 green pepper, sliced
  • 4 sprigs thyme
  • 1 whole scotch bonnet, left unbroken
  • 3 tbsp oil
  • 300 ml water or fish stock

Seasoning

  • 1 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

  1. Wash the fish fillets in water with the juice of one lime, then rub them all over with the Bajan seasoning and leave for twenty minutes.
  2. Roll each fillet from the tail end and secure with a cocktail stick if they will not hold.
  3. For the sauce, soften the onions, green pepper, and garlic in the oil for eight minutes, then add the tomatoes, tomato purée, and thyme.
  4. Cook down for eight minutes, add the water, and bring to a simmer with the whole scotch bonnet sitting on top.
  5. Leave the scotch bonnet unbroken. It gives the sauce its perfume and, split, would give it a heat that overwhelms the fish.
  6. Lay the rolled fish in the sauce, cover, and steam gently for eight to ten minutes. Do not stir.
  7. Meanwhile boil the okra in the 1.2 litres of water with the salt for ten minutes until soft.
  8. Strain out the okra and set it aside, keeping every drop of the slippery cooking water. That liquid is the whole structure of the cou-cou.
  9. Return 900ml of the okra water to the pan and bring to a simmer, then rain the cornmeal in slowly with one hand while beating hard with a wooden spoon in the other.
  10. Beat continuously for fifteen to twenty minutes over a low heat, adding a little more okra water if it seizes.
  11. It is ready when it comes away from the sides of the pan in one mass and a spoon stood in the middle stays upright. Cou-cou is beaten rather than stirred and the arm work is not optional.
  12. Beat in the okra rounds and the butter, then pack the cou-cou into a wetted bowl, turn it out as a dome, and serve with the fish and its sauce spooned round it.

Notes

Keep the okra cooking water; it is the liquid the cornmeal is cooked in and the reason cou-cou has its texture. Rain the meal in slowly and beat hard and continuously, or it goes lumpy in seconds. A wetted bowl turns it out cleanly. The scotch bonnet goes in whole. Bajan seasoning is sold in jars and is easily made by blending thyme, marjoram, parsley, spring onion, garlic, onion, and scotch bonnet with lime juice and salt; it keeps for weeks. Any small firm white fish stands in for flying fish, which is rarely sold outside the region.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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