Pepperpot

As tradition built it

Pepperpot

About 4 hours cooked, plus at least 12 hours resting before serving

Ingredients

• ½ cup brown sugar, plus ¼ cup reserved
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp granulated garlic
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp cayenne
• 2 tbsp dried Guyanese thyme
• 1.5lb beef chuck, cubed
• 2lb oxtail
• 3lb cow heel
• 3 tbsp, per meat, divided among the beef, oxtail and cow heel cassareep, a portion, for marinating
• ½ cup cassareep, reserved, for the pot
• 6 cloves, finely chopped, divided among the three meats garlic, chopped, for marinating
• 2 to 4 tbsp oil, for browning
• 5 cinnamon sticks
• 1 tbsp whole cloves
• 3 to 5 wiri wiri peppers
• to taste thyme
• enough to cover water, to cover

Method

1. Combine the brown sugar (reserving a quarter cup), salt, granulated garlic, black pepper, cayenne and dried Guyanese thyme into a dry rub, and work it into the cubed beef chuck, oxtail and cow heel.
2. Marinate the beef, oxtail and cow heel separately, each with a portion of cassareep and chopped garlic, for at least 30 minutes.
3. Brown the beef in the oil with cinnamon sticks and whole cloves.
4. Simmer or pressure-cook the oxtail and cow heel separately until fork-tender, roughly 45 minutes under pressure or up to three hours stovetop.
5. Combine all three meats with the reserved cassareep, three to five wiri wiri peppers and thyme, top up with water to cover, and boil hard for 10 to 15 minutes.
6. Reduce to a bare simmer for a further two and a half to three hours until the meat falls from the bone, adjusting seasoning at the halfway point.
7. Rest at least 12 hours before serving; kept unrefrigerated, bring back to a full boil morning and evening, cassareep's preservative action reducing but not eliminating the need for this ritual.

Notes

In Santa Rosa, Moruca, the Lokono make ha'chikupero, their own hottest style, as a near-daily breakfast rather than a special-occasion dish, eaten with arasoka, fresh cassava bread, rather than the bottled cassareep and shop bread more usual on the coast.

What a modern chef changes

Cassareep reduced from scratch, sous vide meats

Rung 01, 02

Method

1. Reduce the cassareep yourself from raw bitter cassava rather than from a bottle, in a dehydrator-assisted two-stage process: press the grated pulp through a proper matapi, or a muslin-lined ricer as a domestic substitute.
2. Boil the extracted juice hard for the full two hours the detoxification genuinely requires, then reduce the second, spiced stage slowly enough in a wide pan to concentrate rather than merely thicken it, a direct extension of the traditional technique rather than a substitution for it.
3. Cook the oxtail and cow heel sous vide, separately from each other and from the beef, at temperatures that render the connective tissue properly gelatinous without the greying a hard boil gives, then finish all three meats together in the reduced cassareep only at the end.
4. Pass the finished pot liquor through a chinois for a clarity the traditional dish, thickened by long bone-in simmering, was never trying for but which suits a plated, restaurant-style presentation.