Sky Juice and Flying Fish: Traditional Caribbean Cooking

by Jessica B. Harris

Savor the food, flavor, rhythm, and romance of the Caribbean.

A truly authentic guide to down-home traditional Caribbean cooking, the kind you'd find at roadside stands, Sky Juice and Flying Fish captures the feel of the Islands, bringing the blue-green sea, the tropical breeze, and the exotic scents of the Caribbean into the American kitchen.

A culinary history of each of the Islands provides the perfect introduction to the 150 mouth-watering recipes for appetizers and soups, entrees, side dishes, and desserts, all featuring the distinctly exotic seasonings -- ginger, garlic, chili, coconut, curries, and rum -- of the Caribbean.

Begin your meal with plantain chips and a rum-spiked 'ti-punch. Go on to Bajan Fried Chicken from Barbados, complemented by a banana-ginger chutney and served with Jamaican Rice and Peas. Finish up with a sumptuous coconut pudding.

A glossary lists ingredients from achiote (small reddish berries) to z'yeux noirs (black-eyed peas), which can be found in grocery stores, Caribbean markets, or through the mail-order source list provided in the appendix.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Cooking

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 1991

About the author

According to Heritage Radio Network, there's perhaps no greater expert on the food and foodways of the African Diaspora than Doctor Jessica B. Harris. She is the author of twelve critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora including Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa's Gifts to New World Cooking, Sky Juice and Flying Fish Traditional Caribbean Cooking, The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, The Africa Cookook: Tastes of a Continent, Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim. Harris also conceptualized and organized The Black Family Reunion Cook Book.Her most recent book, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, was the International Association for Culinary Professionals 2012 prize winner for culinary history.
In her more than three decades as a journalist, Dr. Harris has written book reviews, theater reviews, travel, feature, and beauty articles too numerous to note. She has lectured on African-American food and culture at numerous institutions throughout the United States and Abroad and has written extensively about the culture of Africa in the Americas, particularly the foodways. In the most recent edition of the Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, author John Mariani cites Harris as the ranking expert on African American Foodways in the country. An award winning journalist, Harris has also written in numerous national and international publications ranging from Essence to German Vogue. She's a contributing editor at Saveur and drinks columnist and contributing editor at Martha's Vineyard magazine. In 2012, she began a monthly radio show on Heritage Radio Network, My Welcome Table, that focuses on Food. Travel, Music, and Memoir.

Dr. Harris has been honored with many awards including a lifetime achievement award from the Southern Foodways Alliance (of which she is a founding member) and the Lafcadio Hearn award as a Louisiana culinary icon from The John Folse Culinary Academy at Louisiana's Nicholls State University. In 2010, she was inducted into the James Beard Who's Who of Food and Beverage in the United States.

Dr. Harris holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Queens College, New York, The Université de Nancy, France, and New York University. Dr. Harris was the inaugural scholar in residence in the Ray Charles Chair in African-American Material Culture at Dillard University in New Orleans where she established an Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. Dr. Harris has been a professor of English at Queens College/C.U.N.Y. for more than four decades. She is also a regular presenter at the annual Literary Festival in Oxford, England, a Patron of Oxford Gastronomica at Oxford/Brookes University in Oxford, England, and a consultant to the Lowcountry Rice Culture Project in South Carolina. She is currently at work developing a center for connecting culinary cultures in New Orleans.

In 2012, Dr. Harris was asked by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture to conceptualize and curate the cafeteria of the new museum which is being built on the Mall in Washington DC that is scheduled to open in 2015 and is a member of the Kitchen Cabinet at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. The Heritage Radio Network sums her up saying, "Doctor Jessica B. Harris damn near knows it all when it comes to African and Caribbean cuisines and culinary history. She's a living legend". Harris lives in New York, New Orleans and Martha's Vineyard.

Reviews

[Samantha Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someone hunted down all the grannies and aunties, some granddaddies and uncles too, and got them to give up some of their recipes! Growing up in a Caribbean household where no one used written recipes or measuring cups, ever, this book was essential for reverse engineering the staples and treats from my childhood. If you're brand new to Caribbean cooking, this is an easy to follow introduction that also supplies background information about the dishes. If you're from the islands, not every dish will just like the ones you know but they'll be close. I'm on my second copy after the first got loved to death in my kitchen.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Callaloo Voodoo

crabmeat - peanut oil - green onions
thyme sprigs - bacon - spinach
okra - scotch bonnet peppers - lime

Cream of banana soup

ripe bananas - scotch bonnet peppers - cream
red peppers - yellow peppers - chicken stock

Pineapple consommé (how odd)

chicken broth - pineapple juice- pineapple

Chilled consommé with ginger

beef consomme - ginger - lemon
dark Jamaican rum

Jerked seasoning (cinnamon and rum are atypical)

allspice berries - cinnamon sticks - nutmeg
green onions- onion - scotch bonnet peppers
dark Jamaican rum

Avocado and grapefruit salad (a strange one!)

avocados - pink grapefruit - cane vinegar
allspice - parsley - candied grapefruit

Greek Salad Norma (Apples!?)

romaine lettuce - red onion - tomatoes
red-skinned apples - cucumbers - cane vinegar

Griots de porc

pork loin - lime - orange
chives - scotch bonnet peppers - onions

Poulet Lanterne

chicken - Bell's seasoning - crushed pineapple
unsweetened grated coconut

Buckra turkey à la Larry (celery turkey and rum sounds like a psychotronic classic!)

whole turkey - limes - butter
bread crumbs - manioc flour - Bell's seasoning
shallots - onions - celery
dark Jamaican rum

Dipping sauce #1

avocados - scotch bonnet peppers - mayonnaise

Lambi Creole

conch meat - lemon - onion
Caribbean bird chiles - tomatoes - thyme sprigs

Crasé de morue (this is an odd one)

thyme - chives - green onions
allspice - scotch bonnet peppers - onion
bok choy - breadfruit - green bananas
limes - eggs - avocados
salted cod

Curried lobster salad

Bibb lettuce - tomatoes - cooked lobster tails
mayonnaise - avocado - coconut cream
lime - scotch bonnet peppers - onion
allspice - ketchup - Pickapeppa hot sauce
vinegar

Salade des fruits tropicaux

mango - banana - pineapple
blood orange - star fruit - light rum
toasted coconut

Lavender tea

dried lavender - honey

Caribbean Bloody Mary

tomato juice - Puerto Rican white rum - celery salt
Pickapeppa hot sauce - green onions - scotch bonnet peppers
onion - allspice - ketchup
vinegar

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book with a wide range of recipes from the Caribbean.
It's unfortunate that the publisher chose not to have the slightest hint of an illustration, not even a line drawing.
Today, cookbooks are crammed with largely useless photographs showing a finished dish, I know what steamed sea bass looks like on a plate.
What I don't know is what a dish with which I am entirely unfamiliar should look like.
Still worth 5* though !

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this cookbook for my global cooking project. The smaller Caribbean countries do not have cookbooks dedicated solely to their own cuisine, so a general Caribbean cookbook has to do. Harris assigns each dish to a country, however, so if you're doing a country-specific meal, that helps. As might be expected, the larger countries like Jamaica and Barbados dominate the recipes, but you can find dishes from smaller islands like Antigua and Barbuda and St. Lucia as well. For the country-specific meals I've planned, I've needed to supplement my meal plan with recipes from other Caribbean cookbooks.

There are no pictures of food in this cookbook.

The recipes are very simple - I think perhaps too simple. Two of the dishes that I made (Broiled Tomatoes and Conkies) did not turn out at all - I followed the recipes exactly as described, and it was clear that a few steps were missing and/or some ingredient measurements needed to be adjusted. As I continue to use this cookbook, I'm definitely going to do a test-run or two before making these recipes for company.