Vegetarian recipes from the French Caribbean

Caribbean cooking in the French islands is built on local roots and gourds — yam, sweet potato, dasheen, chayote, red squash — served with rice and red beans. The aromatic base is a fixed mixture found everywhere: country onion, garlic, thyme, parsley, seasoning pepper and lime juice, crushed raw. Oil is the other constant, because frying is both an everyday cooking method and a way of holding flavour, as in vegetable accras, leavened wheat-flour fritters in which the vegetable is grated very fine before being spooned into hot oil.

Two inheritances show in the meatless dishes. One comes from South India, arriving in the nineteenth century with indentured workers: colombo, a ground blend of coriander, cumin, turmeric and mustard, which names red squash colombo, simmered with coconut milk or water. The other is European and goes through the oven: chayote gratin treats a local vegetable as a gratin, with bechamel and breadcrumbs, the chayote first boiled and drained so that it does not water down the dish.