I come from a long line of eaters. Some people eat to live, others live to eat. My family definitely belongs to the latter group. When eating lunch, my father will ask “What’s for dinner?” You get the picture. Food is important to the Laurences. So, when my mother used to ask me what I wanted for Christmas breakfast a few days ahead of the day, I knew it was an important decision and I must be truly loved to be given the honour of deciding how our family would start that particular day.

It was an easy decision. Every Christmas I requested the same breakfast ‘Accra and Float’, or saltfish fritters and fried bread. We would eat the fritters wrapped up in the bread with some hot pepper sauce. Delicious! It wasn’t until later in life that I realized this was not a normal breakfast request from an eight year old. It also took me years to realize that my mother had to get up at 6 am every Christmas morning in order to make this for me. As I think of it now, however, with two children in the house, perhaps she had another reason to get up that early on Christmas day.

‘Accra and Float’ is a West Indian dish. I’m not sure it is always served as breakfast, but in my house, with my Trinidadian father, it was always a morning meal. Now that I am older, I’ve decided to embark on making my favourite Christmas breakfast for myself. (I should have paid more attention when I was little!)The first task is finding the saltfish, or salted cod. Originally, cod was salted as a preservation technique. Even though it is not necessary to do so anymore, there is still a market for salted cod. The salt flavours the fish, and even though you soak the salt out of the flesh, it leaves its mark with a delicious result. Salt cod has been used all over the world, not just in the Caribbean. It was eaten all over the Mediterranean. In Greece they serve Bakaliaros Tighanitos me Skordalia or batter-fried cod with a garlic dip. The French Brandade is one of my favourite preparations of salt cod, but nothing touches my heart like Accra.

You can find salted cod in good grocery stores, but it is also easy to find on the Internet (here, here, or here). The only drawback is that the shipping often costs more than the price of the fish itself. I remember the saltfish my mother used always came in a little wooden crate. It sat in the fridge in a little wooden box until Mum was ready to soak it. The fish must be soaked in order to extract some of the salt. This is done easily, it just takes planning. One or two days ahead of time, cover the cod in water and press it down so it is completely submerged. Leave this in the fridge and change the water three or four times in a 24 hour period.

That’s the hardest part of the process finding the fish and soaking out some of the salt. From there it is a matter of opinion as to how to prepare the batter. What makes accra Accra, as opposed to Bakaliaros, or Croquettes de Morue is the addition of scallions and often a hot pepper like Scotch Bonnet. I can’t imagine that my mother would have added a Scotch Bonnet to our Accras, since neither she nor my brother like hot and spicy foods. She would have left it up to my father and me to add our own spice with pepper sauce. Scotch Bonnet or not, the rest of the ingredients for the fritter batter is pretty simple onion, garlic, an egg or two, some flour, chives, thyme, scallions and whatever else strikes your fancy. Mix this together and drop by the teaspoon full into hot oil to fry. Drain and serve warm. Mum would always make batches, holding them warm in the oven.

The Float is not really that unusual. It is made with a pretty standard dough recipe. Mix together tsp. active dry yeast, tsp. sugar, and 1 cup of water. Let that sit for about 5 minutes and then add 2 tbsp. melted butter. Combine 1 cups sifted flour and 1/4 tsp. salt in a bowl and mix this into the yeast mixture, kneading until it becomes a smooth, elastic dough. Let it rise for 2 - 3 hours and then divide into balls. Let these sit for another 45 minutes and then roll them out into flat discs. Fry the discs in oil and serve with the Accras.

The only thing missing from the meal now is the hot pepper sauce. My father has made me into a snob with respect to hot sauces. It is a family understanding that no proper pepper sauce comes from a commercial manufacturer. Real pepper sauce must come from someone’s kitchen – preferably someone like my Auntie Grace or another person close to the family. It usually comes in a jar that once held marmalade or other preserve, and still has part of the old label stuck on it. It should be hot enough that when the jar is opened by the person next to you, your nostrils should be tingling. THAT is real pepper sauce. Luckily for me, I have some just like that sitting in my fridge.

I ordered my salt cod today. This Christmas I will get up early. I’ll be up at 6 am taking my saltfish out of its soaking water. I’ll flake the fish and combine it with Scotch Bonnets, scallions and seasonings. I’ll take my float dough out of the fridge where it’s been sitting, divided into dough balls and covered. I’ll roll them into thin discs and I’ll start frying, making all the neighbours wonder. I’ll take out my jar of real pepper sauce and I’ll sit down to my favourite breakfast all year. Maybe I’ll even fill a stocking.

It was the late 1970s when my father gave my mother the gift he really wanted for Christmas. Indeed, it was really a gift for the whole family. We would all be able to use it and we would all reap its benefits. My father gave my mother the largest, most monstrous microwave ever built for Christmas in 1977. It was a Panasonic microwave and it was at least as big as the conventional oven that was currently built into our kitchen wall, about half the size of the desk I’m currently using.

I had never even heard of a microwave before.

Dad explained it as an oven that cooks in seconds what would regularly take many minutes, even hours! Mum was more apprehensive than excited. She informed us that this new oven works by using microwaves which were very dangerous beams that could possibly escape from the oven door, or so she had heard. My brother and I were strictly ordered to remove ourselves from the vicinity of the oven as quickly as possible after pressing the ‘Start’ button, especially you, Meredith, since your head is on level with the microwave door and the beams will most certainly destroy your brain, added my brother. None of this information kept me away from the new kitchen toy.

Luckily, the oven came with a manual and recipe book. Perhaps this is a case of mistaken memory, but I remember that book being a huge collection of information and recipes, the likes of which I have never seen since. The first recipe that I attempted was a sandwich, of all things. I now know that any type of bread in a microwave is a disaster, ending up rubbery and chewy. Then, however, I believed that this machine could do anything! Because it was Christmas time, the recipe for the ‘Double Decker Turkey Club’ was the obvious first choice. We had plenty of leftover turkey and combining this with bacon (miraculously cooked in two minutes in the microwave between two pieces of paper towel), cranberry sauce, stuffing and gravy was a little bit of leftover heaven. My father and brother made several requests for this sandwich. The trouble with the microwave was that only one sandwich could be made at a time (at least according to the manual), so I was given my first experience as a line cook, making sandwich after sandwich for my family, running far away from the microwave every time I pressed ‘Start’, as though diving for cover after throwing a grenade.

The other recipe that worked its way into my microwave repertoire was a ‘Hot Fudge Chocolate Sauce’, particularly good on ice cream. This became a favourite of my mother’s. She asked me to make this so many times that I knew the recipe off by heart, though I’ve forgotten it since. Mum and I truly loved that sauce. It was something special – worth the sacrifice of my brain cells. It was decadent and chocolate-y, but the best thing about it was that as soon as it hit the cold ice cream, it would solidify and become chewy fudge. That was the best part of all – the dessert changed as time went on. With the first bite, the sauce would still be warm and liquid-y. The contrast of the cold ice cream with the hot fudge was decadent. Then, the fudginess would slowly set in and the sauce would become chewy. Mum and I have always had a weakness for chocolate, a bond that we still share. We’ve both graduated to keeping higher end chocolate like Valrhona and Scharfenberger on hand at all times, but the ‘Hot Fudge Chocolate Sauce’ made with chocolate chips still holds a warm spot in my heart.

The microwave lost its appeal with my family after not too long, as most microwaves do. Once we were out of leftover turkey, I think all we really used it for was re-heating foods. Then in the early 80s, microwave popcorn came on the market. I had always been in charge of popping popcorn for my father, but had had to do it on the stovetop. Mum hated the smell of popcorn. I always felt for her when we made it in the house, but not so much that I would turn down the idea of munching on hot buttered popcorn while we all watched my father change channels incessantly on the television. (My mother never seemed to worry about the effect the channel surfing had on my brain!)

When my father first came home with microwave popcorn, I lost my job as popcorn maker. Now anyone could make the popcorn there was no skill involved or required. I relinquished my title easily, however. The microwave did a great job with the popcorn fewer un-popped kernels and it truly was so easy. The only battle was deciding whether to watch the popcorn bag expand and risk losing my brain cells, or chance over-popping the corn as I hid from the free waves, which would result in a terrible burnt smell through the house worse than the popcorn smell itself, my mother said.

I don’t know where that microwave is now. I expect my mother sold it in the garage sale she had before she left the country. Perhaps it has been sold to a museum by now, or maybe I’ll see it on the Antique Roadshow sometime soon. Whoever has their hands on it must be sitting on a goldmine the largest and most unused kitchen appliance ever! I’ve had microwaves since then, but again, the only things I used them for were popcorn and re-heating foods. I even took a microwave cooking class years and years ago, but while microwave cooking might be easy, it does take all the pleasure out of cooking. Cooking requires human touch and brings out emotion. It may bring serenity or stress, pleasure or frustration, but it brings out something. You just don’t get the same feeling from pressing a button and running for cover.

Christmas is coming. It’s time to dry orange peels.

When I think about the Christmases of my childhood, I don’t recall the stockings I received, the trees I decorated, the gifts I gave, or the carols I sang. When I think about the Christmases of my childhood, something that immediately comes to mind is sorrel, a West Indian beverage brewed from the leaves of a plant in the Hibiscus family. My mother would make sorrel in two different batches, every year in December, and only in December. One batch, spiked with rum, was for my father. The other batch was unadulterated and left for my brother and me to fight over.

All three of us, my father, brother and I are big drinkers. By that, I don’t mean that we get soused at every opportunity; we just drink a lot of liquids. While the three of us would drain a pitcher of water with dinner every evening, my mother, on the other hand, would ask for only half a glass of water at dinner. I never understood how that could be enough.

We drank a lot of different beverages throughout the year. We always had water with dinner, unlike many of my friends who drank milk with meals. Coke was a big family favourite, but the intake of soft drinks was strictly controlled by my mother. Still, on special occasions (like getting a report card of straight A’s I’m not kidding) we were sometimes allowed a Coke with dinner. Dad had a special fondness for peach-flavoured Quench, and powdered iced tea was a house staple. Of course, Mum would always tell us there’s water in the tap.

Still, none of these beverages could compete with the Christmastime sorrel. I don’t know if it was because it was a limited time only beverage that it was coveted so dearly by my brother and me, or if it was because its sweetness naturally appeals to children and anyone with a sweet tooth. Whatever it was, I know that I was furious whenever I discovered that my brother had finished a bottle in one sitting, or, God forbid, finished the last of the sorrel. The latter meant that I had an entire year to wait for another glass! As I grew older, I learned to hide a bottle of sorrel from my brother in order to avoid such a grim circumstance.

As I write this, I have a bag of sorrel leaves in my cupboard, sent to me by my mother. Now I’m able to make the sorrel myself, spike it with rum if I want to, AND drink it all in one sitting without competition if I feel like it! My mother sent me her recipe for sorrel a few years ago, but as I started to dry my orange peel this year, I wanted to know if her recipe is the version widely accepted throughout the Caribbean, or if there were variations to explore. As expected, I began to see many opinions on what should and should not go into the making of sorrel. Jamaicans, for example, believe that fresh gingerroot is a must, while my mother, whose recipe hails from Trinidad, never puts ginger in her sorrel.

This recipe discrepancy came as no surprise to me, but my jaw dropped when I looked into how sorrel got its name. Wouldn’t you know it came from ‘Anancy’, the trickster’! This discovery almost knocked me down, for I had all but forgotten about Anancy. Anancy is the main character in a series of Caribbean folk tales. He is a spider who plays jokes and tricks on everyone. As a child, I was given the very same Anancy book, by the very same aunt, three Christmas’s in a row! Needless to say, I knew my Anancy stories, but I had never heard this one:

The story is told of Anancy discovering a ‘red-sinting’ at the Grand Market which he later managed to extract some juice from. To the extract, he added sugar and some spices for flavouring. On tasting his concoction he exclaimed of its likeness to real wine by shouting repeatedly ‘so real, so real, so real’. He sold his so-real wine to his customers who loved it so much they kept wanting more and more of it. The word ‘sorrel’ then emerged as a corruption of the words so-real and the drink became a popular one at Christmas time.

This Anancy folk tale was unknown to me, but I loved it. It makes perfect sense at least it makes perfect Caribbean sense. You can read more about sorrel, its origin, uses and medical properties here . In the meantime, start drying your orange peels, and be sure to hide a bottle from your brother!