Chef Khalid Muhammad shows us how to prepare a beloved side dish that's sure to turn up on
most tables in Trinidad: a verdant callaloo, whipped into a froth with a traditional whisk
called a swizzle stick.
Well, a Callaloo Trinidad is made with the with the leaves of the of the Dasheen.
So, this is a Dasheen, it's a root vegetable - it's a tuber.
And it's also called taro in other parts of the world. Um....
Typically, everyone in the Caribbean will eat Dasheens, will eat this part of it - but not a lot of people use the leaf....
...Which is this part. This goes on top.
For the callaloo bush - we call it the callaloo bush - the bush from the Dasheen Bush, sorry....
We would just chop up the stems and kind of do, like, a chiffonade on the leaves.
So, typically.....
We would - just cut off the ends.
Discard that.
And then we would actually peel - long - we peel the stems.
You know, this is what I grew up seeing my mother and grandmother do.
But no one does that anymore. Right now, we.... right now, we just chop it.
[Chopping sounds]
Nice and thin, so it breaks down.
And for the leaves, we just put them together.
The leaves are actually real good for rolling fish in, or chicken in, and braising it.
You use it as a... You know, like how you stuff cabbage or bok choy or something like that.
So, what I do here is, I kind of cut it down, like so....
then again
and then we cut a Chiffonade.
[Chopping sounds]
To the callaloo, I'm also going to add ocras.
So you're just gonna.... All you want to do is take the tops off.
And again, just chop nice and thin.
Okay, just gonna start with some oil - some vegetable oil.
So, basically now, we actually just throw everything into a big pot, cover it, and
let it go for like 45 minutes until it - the callaloo - breaks down and....
.....everything becomes nice and soft. But....
I am.... I've changed it up a bit. I tend to soften the vegetables a little bit before I add them all together.
So first, we're gonna start with some onion.
[Sizzling Sound]
And then, I'm gonna add the ocras.
Bit of salt and pepper.
[Sizzling sound]
Gonna go ahead and put some pimento peppers - and it's diced pimento peppers....
These are not hot, they're just for flavoring.
Some scallion.
Chopped garlic.
[Cooking sounds]
Just going to add a bit more oil to the large pan.
I'm just going to add this in there......
[Sizzling sounds]
And now the vegetables are soft. And I'm gonna add all the Callaloo in at once.
Going to add some diced pumpkin.
Give that a stir.
Just to break down the Callaloo a little bit.
Now, going to put some coconut milk in here. Just fresh coconut milk.
Like so. Just give that in the stir.
You're going to drop one hot pepper into it.
We're gonna add some fresh thyme. Just crumble it in.
And just leave it to simmer.
So, as you can see, you know, the Callaloo - everything is all kind of broken down.
So, first thing I want to do is - I want to fish the pepper out.
Because if the pepper burst inside the Callaloo, it becomes too hot.
So, we put it in whole, just to give flavor, without getting it too hot. And then you fish it out, at the end, and um......
So it's not too hot. The pepper did burst, though.... So we're always careful, when we're stirring the Callaloo,
to make sure that it doesn't, you know, burst open and get the Callaloo too hot.
We actually serve this on the side, for people - if they want to just take a slice off, yeah...
So this is called a swizzlin' stick. These are Trini hand blender.
And we just go in there and we just give it a little..... swizzle.
K.....
Actually, we use Callaloo as a soup, as well. You can get Callaloo as a soup.
Traditionally, at home, you would never use Callaloo as a soup, but now, in restaurants -
a lot of restaurants serve Callaloo as soup.
So, this is our finished Trinidad style Callaloo.