Dominican Cuisine!

Caution! Don't read this if you're hungry! For... probably a couple reasons. ;D

I think one of the first questions we ask when we start thinking about another culture or country is "What do they eat?"-- maybe because our time spent around the table defines us. Maybe because foods that we like in common give us shared experiences. Maybe because our foods describe our culture more concisely than a sentence ever could.

So in the Dominican Republic, what do people eat?

Well, let's start out with some semi-familiar ground... Betcha can´t guess what these are!

  

All cereal, regardless of the presence of Tony the Tiger or that weird-looking rooster, is referred to as cornflé, cornflakes. (I once asked a girl what they call froot loops. "Cornflé!" she answered. Well okay then! Also, I got made fun of for eating that chicken and vegetable platter at the bottom. I could have been eating traditional Dominican fare that day! Even if that's what they eat at home all the time, Dominicans love their traditional foods. And to be fair, peanut butter is not your average Dominican fare. Most have never tried peanut butter and jelly; in fact, if they eat it at all, they usually eat it with the national casabe bread, which has been made here since before Columbus made his gallant entrance on this island. It's made from ground up yuca root (which is also frequently served boiled, as pictured below right) and many times casabe is flavored with garlic. With peanut butter? That's an interesting combo.

 

This meal is a pretty typical Dominican lunch. Lunch is the big meal of the day, the one the housewives or their household helpers actually cook for. If a Dominican hasn't eaten rice? He hasn't eaten. Also, Dominicans generally do not eat leftovers. If there's food remaining from lunch at the end of the day, it might get eaten for supper, but it doesn't usually see the table again. They cook what they need for a given meal or a given day, a habit that's probably based on not having an excess of food to prepare, as well as not having a refrigerator or predictable electricity for a fridge if they did have one.

It's easy to see the rice and beans on this table. The casserole pan to the left was mashed potatoes, if I remember correctly (although it could have been mashed plantains, too) and the one at the very top was arepa, a corn and coconut milk cake that's very traditional, and loved by most Dominicans. The poor burnt offering on the bottom... well, that was my attempt to show one of the daughters of the family I stayed with how to bake banana bread from a box mix (don't ask me whose fault that was!). Dominicans don't bake; even if they have a super nice oven, it gets used for storage and they buy their breads and pastries from a panadería, a bread store.

Rice is so important, it gets served a variety of ways. With beans over the top, with pigeon peas cooked inside, with a tomato-based cooking liquid, or even with milk, cinnamon, and sugar-- arroz con dulce.

Despite the fact that lots of fruits and vegetables are grown here in the country, very few actually get eaten regularly. The biggest exception are the viveres, or root vegetables, like potatoes, sweet potatoes, yuca root, and plantains.You saw the yuca above, and you've prooobably seen the plátanos in the grocery store at one point or another.

Here are a few other fruits... Avocados here are huge, too. Literally.

Cereza cherries, a tropical variety with strange seeds inside that tastes like a delightfully citrusy cherry.

Coconuts are the big green ones, and limoncillos are the little green ones that grow in bunches like grapes.

These are chinola, or passionfruit. This is one of my favorite discoveries down here... their juice is delicious, if a little tart.

This is pineapple and mango. Papaya is also really common here, but I didn't have a picture of that one! Our mangos got huge last year, though.

And we can't forget coffee! So traditional Dominican coffee is made in a greca, or a Greek style coffeepot, and since it's super strong, it gets served by the ounce in small cups. Or maybe plastic Solo cups, depending on the occasion. They usually add a tablespoon of sugar, and maybe some milk.

 

And here below we have my buddy Conrado, displaying the traditional Dominican soup sancocho.

This one's breakfast: fried cheese slices with a heaping helping of mashed plantain, known as mangu.

 Not gonna fib, though... sometimes they eat stuff I think is weird. Like... pig innards.

 

Or smoked fish that makes the whole house... smell. Actually, the bacalao isn't bad (salted codfish). It's the smoked arrenque that is pretty, well, rank.

But if you go to the beach, you might get to sip some coconut water... or munch on a candied coconut/cinnamon confection I don't have a name for.

Probably the overall favorite is helado from the local ice cream shop-- Bon. This one's a frozen yogurt blended with frozen fruits. And it's tasty!

 There you have it... a few things Dominicans like to eat... and a few I prefer. Which ones look tasty to you?