Fungee and Pepperpot

Antigua's national dish, cornmeal and okra beaten into a firm dumpling and served beside a long-simmered stew of salt meat, spinach, and pumpkin

Origin: Antigua and Barbuda

From the journey of Corn.

Fungee, pronounced foon-jee, is cornmeal cooked stiff with sliced okra and beaten smooth, then shaped into a ball or a mound with a wetted spoon. The okra is not a flavouring; its mucilage is what gives fungee its characteristic slippery cohesion and stops the cornmeal setting grainy. Beside it goes pepperpot, which in Antigua is not the Guyanese cassareep stew of the same name but a long-simmered pot of salt beef or pork with spinach, aubergine, pumpkin, and dumplings. The pairing is the national dish and it is the plainest surviving evidence of the plantation kitchen. Cornmeal and salt meat were rations; okra, pumpkin, and callaloo came from the provision grounds that enslaved people were permitted to cultivate for themselves. What was assembled from those two sources became the food of the country. The same dish under other names runs the length of the Eastern Caribbean and back across the Atlantic. Coo-coo in Barbados is fungee exactly, and both descend recognisably from the West African maize and okra porridges that came with the people who made them.

Ingredients

Pepperpot

  • 500 g salt beef or salt pork, soaked overnight and cut into chunks
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 300 g pumpkin, peeled and cubed
  • 1 aubergine, cubed
  • 300 g spinach or callaloo, shredded
  • 200 g okra, sliced
  • 1 scotch bonnet, whole and pricked
  • 2 sprigs thyme
  • 1.5 litres water

Fungee

  • 250 g fine yellow cornmeal
  • 750 ml water
  • 150 g okra, thinly sliced
  • 30 g butter
  • 1 tsp fine salt

Method

  1. Drain the soaked salt meat, cover with fresh water, and simmer for forty-five minutes, then drain again.
  2. Return the meat to the pan with the 1.5 litres of water, the onion, garlic, thyme, and whole scotch bonnet. Simmer, covered, for an hour until tender.
  3. Add the pumpkin and aubergine and cook for twenty minutes, then the spinach and sliced okra and cook for fifteen more, until everything has collapsed into a thick stew.
  4. For the fungee, simmer the 150 g of thinly sliced okra in the 750 ml of water for ten minutes until soft and the water has gone slippery.
  5. Whisk the cornmeal with 200 ml of cold water taken from a separate measure until smooth, then pour it into the simmering okra water with the salt, whisking hard.
  6. Cook over a low heat for twenty to twenty-five minutes, beating hard with a wooden spoon every few minutes, until very stiff and pulling away from the pan.
  7. Beat in the butter, then shape the fungee with a wetted spoon into balls or a mound on each plate.
  8. Serve the pepperpot alongside, not poured over, and eat the two together.

Notes

Antiguan pepperpot is not Guyanese pepperpot, which is a wholly different dish preserved with cassareep and eaten at Christmas. Barbadian coo-coo is the same cornmeal and okra preparation under another name and is served with flying fish. Fine cornmeal gives a smoother fungee than coarse; polenta works but needs a little longer.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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