Fete de la Cuisine, the island’s premier culinary festival and a bounty of local and international flavours, is underway – taking place November 7-12. A key feature of the gastronomical line-up is a competition of traditional foods and beverages, which is open to the public, taking place on November 12. Reminiscent of Christmas, the contest is focusing on local drinks and desserts, such as guavaberry rum, sorrel drinks, lime- and other fruit punches, potato and bread puddings and carrot cakes. Promoters are aiming to create excitement around these products and keep traditions alive, encouraging young and old alike to take part. Leading up to the festival, The Weekender is speaking to a few culinary connoisseurs. First up, we have Fele Vlaun.
Fele Vlaun, venturing into his mid-80s and having grown up at a time when Christmas carolling from November was the norm, grew up with these traditions and still enjoys making guavaberry rum, in particular, and all sorts of Christmas tarts. Fele likes doing things his way, learning the old methods, picking up tips and tricks along the way, and changing things according to his own preferences.
He says it’s hard to compare different food and drinks, because there are the old, traditional ways of doing things, and the new ways. As for him, he sticks to the old St. Maarten way of making guavaberry rum, but is very experimental when it comes to baking treats like tarts and puddings.
Take sweet potato pudding for example – nowadays, you see people mixing all sorts of fruit into it, including guavaberries, raisins and cherries. It completely changes the taste. He loves it, but knows that not everyone does.
When it comes to baking tarts, the sky is the limit for Fele as far as variety is concerned. Is it a fruit that can be stewed? He’ll make a tart of it. Sure, guava, prune, guavaberry and coconut are delicious, but his favourite pie is actually tomato pie. Boiled, peeled, and deseeded, the tomatoes are stewed just like any fruit, and made into pie filling. He enjoys them on different occasions, and recently made a few to celebrate his wife’s birthday. He’s made pies of starfruit, pineapple, even with fruit he’s received from family from other islands that he wasn’t familiar with at the time.
Baking powder in pie crust, or measurements of any kind? Not his style. Baking is treated just like cooking – doing what was taught, from memory, rather than following a precise recipe. He prefers the crust crispy, anyway.
As for making his specialty, guavaberry rum, he is more of a purist. Sure, there can be a little done differently when it comes to seasonings – cinnamon bark, bay leaf, even mace. Mace is the lacy membrane surrounding nutmeg seed, and is a little more popular on some of the other islands than it is here. He heard about adding it to guavaberry rum from a gentleman on the French side, and later had a friend from St. Vincent bring some over for him. He still likes to use it when he can get hold of it.
The process, however, is where he thinks the old way is best. No boiling the guavaberry and adding the rum – in which case, you have the finished product in very little time. Placing the fruit and rum into large glass bottles, he sets them out in the sun for three, even five weeks – letting the juice draw out slowly.
He sometimes buys guavaberries from the French side, but he has two trees of his own which he much prefers to use. Unfortunately, with the long dry spell this year, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to harvest them to make rum the traditional way in time for the upcoming Christmas season – right now, they are dry, small and very green. There’s no way they will be ripe by November, and he’s particular about using properly ripened fruit, pointing out that the flavour in the final product is noticeably better.
So, will he do it the new way and boil the guavaberries this year because of the time crunch? No, he says; it’s not his way. It doesn’t bother him that much, though. He has some saved, and there are other rums, drinks and treats to be made and enjoyed. Here’s to keeping what you love and changing what you don’t!
