Oil Down

As tradition built it

Oil Down

Grenada's national dish, cooked communally for occasions such as Independence Day

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

• 2 lb salted meat, classically pig tail
• 1 medium breadfruit, in wedges
• 4 green banana
• 6 eddoes, peeled dasheen root
• 3 cups coconut milk
• ¾ tsp turmeric
• dumplings
• 2 cups dasheen leaf callaloo, shredded

Method

1. Boil the salted meat (classically pig tail) three times to strip its preservative salt before it goes into the pot.
2. Arrange breadfruit wedges in a circle at the base of the pot, place the meat at the centre, and add green banana and dasheen root.
3. Add coconut milk, turmeric and dumplings, then finish with shredded dasheen leaf callaloo on top.
4. Bring to a boil, drop to a low simmer, and never stir; cook until the liquid is fully absorbed and the coconut fat has reduced to an oily concentrate at the base, roughly fifty to ninety minutes depending on quantity.

What a modern chef changes

Enclosed Heat, Two-Texture Callaloo

Rung 02

Method

1. Run a Big Green Egg closed and low to reproduce the enclosed, undisturbed heat the traditional pot depends on more consistently than an open hob.
2. Cook the salted meat sous vide separately, at a temperature that fully tenderises it without the repeated boiling the traditional desalting method requires, then add it to the pot only in its final stage so it does not overcook further.
3. Blend and pass a portion of the dasheen leaf callaloo through a chinois before it goes in, folding the silkier purée through the coarser shredded leaf for a two-texture finish rather than replacing the traditional leaf entirely.