Serving up Caymanian side dishes

For anyone cooking up a Caymanian Christmas spread this year, what should you serve alongside your Christmas beef or stewed turtle?

Mac and cheese, and sweet plantains may already be on your list, but some people’s meals would not be complete without pink potato salad or Cayman-style cornbread.

Here are two tried-and-true recipes from Faith Gealey and Betty De Vere for these staple side dishes which go with any Caymanian feast.

Cayman style cornbread

Faith Gealey’s top side-dish vote goes to Cayman-style cornbread, with baked macaroni and cheese, and pink potato salad also scoring highly. Faith uses a McCoy family recipe which has been passed down through the generations, and tweaked over the years.

Ingredients

• 2 cups fine cornmeal
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar (preferably dark brown)
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 2 large eggs
• 2 sticks butter or margarine
• 2 1/2 cups evaporated or coconut milk
• 2 tsp vanilla

Method

Preheat oven to 350F.

Grease a 9” x 13” baking pan and set aside.

Sift all dry ingredients together.

Add wet ingredients and mix well.

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for one hour or until inserted toothpick comes out clean (start checking around 45 mins to avoid overbaking).

Purple potato salad

Betty De Vere shared her late mother Vinola Ebanks’ recipe for pink potato salad. Vinola was a well-known and much-loved Bracker, known for her love of dancing and preservation of Caymanian culture through her tourism work and thatch making.

Ingredients

• To serve 6 people
• 6 Idaho potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 1/2 cups beetroot, home cooked or bottled, drained and diced.
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 4 seasoning peppers (red and green, with seeds removed and finely diced)
• 1 cup of mayonnaise
• Salt and pepper to season
• Optional: mustard

Method

Peel and dice potatoes. Boil in salted water until tender. Drain.

Mix diced onion and peppers into the mayonnaise (and mustard, if using) and then add to the potatoes. Stir to combine.

Add beetroot, season to your preference and stir to combine.

Can be served warm or chilled.

You may also substitute breadfruit for potatoes.