Barbara Ellington, Lifestyle Editor
GREEN GUNGO peas is another staple on the Jamaican Christmas dinner table both at home and abroad. So loved is the little green grain that Jamaicans overseas keep some frozen for months just to make the authentic Christmas meal come alive across the miles.
Back on the home front, the jury is still out on the correct name of the most favoured dish - rice and peas. Some say gungo peas and rice while others call it gungo rice and peas. For me it's elementary - there is no rice called gungo so ....!
If you can afford it ($500 per quart in May Pen), you probably need a prescription to buy it; make sure you eat every grain on Christmas day. Dried and canned gungo peas work as well, but there is just something about the freshly-shelled pea. And did you know that some people eat the raw ones (although some nutritionists say they are bad for you), I am still fine.
In addition to rice and gungo, try stewed green gungo with your favourite 'salting' (protein/meat) - from codfish to chicken feet and a huge portion of coconut milk (preferably grated/blended). Or how about a big pot of gungo soup the first Saturday in January? Call up the friends for dominoes and scrabble and just lyme. Think sweet potato, ham bone (non-pork eaters can take photos), salt beef, all the other left-over meat, youngish breadfruit, more coconut milk, dumplings and yellow yam plus the other good things we must have in the soup. And for heaven's sake, put nuff gungo in it!
And for our uptown friends, impress the guests with a tiny bowl of cream of gungo soup if you please - yes, everything granny served in enamel bowls can can be enjoyed in fine china.
Green Gungo Peas Soup
Ingredients
1 lb. shelled green gungo
1 lb. stewing steak
1/2 lb. pig's tail or salt beef
ham or ham bone
2 quarts water
1 lb yellow yam
1/2 lb. sweet potato
Dumplings
Scallion
Green pepper
Thyme.
METHOD
1. Cut up and soak salted meat to remove excess salt.
2. Put all meats in water, bring to boil, add gungo peas and boil till almost cooked.
3. Add yam, potatoes, dumplings, thyme, escallion and green pepper.
Simmer uncovered until soup is thickened about 30 minutes.
Serves six.
- Recipe courtesy of Enid Donaldson-Mignott
