Side Dishes

Crispy, chewy bammies (cassava cakes), steaming buttery yams, sticky dumplings: these are the dishes which support the main course and add a lot of character to our cuisine. In the Orient either rice or noodles are prepared daily; in Europe and America the preference tends towards breads, potatoes and pasta. In the Caribbean we have a range of ground provisions (foodstuffs grown in the ground), sometimes referred to as ‘blue food’, because some, such as coco and yampie, have a blueish-purple tinge when cooked. These are usually boiled and placed beside the meat to sop up the gravy.