We had a dinner party on the weekend where we focused on the “aphrodisiac foods of the Caribbean”. The only exception to the menu was an inclusion of shellfish (which can really put you in the mood because of it’s high zinc content). If you’ve been reading this for awhile, you may know that my sweetie Blaik has a shellfish allergy. It would be a lousy end to a great meal if he were to die at the end of it.
With so many of us watching our weight (especially me) so I focused on great flavours that put a bounce in your step, but little padding on my hips. I worked on lower fat menu with an emphsis on flavour and foods that bump up those trace minerals. The reason many of the island people have such longevity and great sex lives is that most of the Caribbean islands are volcanic. Which means food is grown and water runs through the dark, black mineral rich soil. Minerals act like toothbrushes on internal arteries- keeping them free from plaque deposits and lest the blood flow easily throughout the body. And in sex, it’s all about blood flow.
Here’s the menu:
Appetisers
Vegetable samosas
Mango spears
Plantain chips
Served with a Banana Daiquiri cocktail
Soup
Peanut, Sweet Potato and Pumpkin soup
Main Course
Bajan Flying fish
Pineapple Coconut Jasmine rice
Spinach salad with Pears and Candied Pecans
Boiled Plantain with Butter sauce
Served with a Dry Ontario VQA White wine
Dessert
Queen Anne cake with Praline ice cream
Served with home made Ginger Tea
You’ll probably see some of the typical foods I talk about for abundant health. Coconut, spinach, pecans (albeit covered in sugar), ginger, and mango. Flying fish is low in fa and I cooked it covered in Bajan spices and fried (4 minutes per side) in only a small amount of butter. The appetizers I cheated on and bought ready made (like the patties and samosa’s shown above) at the local Caribbean store. I also bought and cooked plantain for the first time in my life. It completely tasted like potatoes. I covered it with a brown sugar and cream sauce as well (so it wasn’t as low fat as it could have been). Plantains are better for you than potatoes and are high in vitamin A and potassium.
Here are the facts if you are as intimitated as I was about my first plantain experience. They were delicious and everyone loved them. They will be on the menu again. I’ve pasted a picture of the plantain chips and Queen Anne’s cake. I made my cake with dates and a brown sugar and coconut icing that was delicious. I found the cake a little dry (and will experiment on another recipe), but again it was low in fat. Oh unless you added the Hagen Daz pralines ice cream. Smile.
The plantain averages about 65% moisture content and the banana averages about 83% moisture content. Since hydrolysis, the process by which starches are converted to sugars, acts fastest in fruit of higher moisture content it converts starches to sugars faster in bananas than it does in plantains. A banana is ready to eat when the skin is yellow whereas a plantain is not ready to eat “out of hand” until hydrolysis has progressed to the point where the skin is almost black.
We played Jimmy Buffet and Bob Marley music and had a ball. Nobody left stuffed, and it felt (ever so briefly) like a romantic island get away.