Curaçao's Culinary Heritage

Discovering Curaçao's Food Culture with Sheedia

In this episode of The Moreish Podcast Hema and Sheedia chat about the vibrant and diverse food culture of Curaçao. Following up on all we learned in the history of Curaçao episode, we dive into the Caribbean island's culinary influences from African, Dutch, and Indigenous cultures, and how the proximity to Venezula has influenced what is eaten. Sheedia gets into dishes like funchi, iguana soup, and keshi yena, and sweets that may have been influenced by the Sephardic Jews. Join us for a delicious exploration of Curaçaoan cuisine!

Connect with Sheedia
Website
YouTube
The Dungeon Podcast

Resources
Top 10 Dishes You Need to Try in Curaçao
Keshi Yena recipe
Blue Curacao

Transcript

Sheedia: And on Mondays we eat beans, because if you eat beans on a Monday you will have food for the rest of the week.

Hema: Where did that come from?

Sheedia: Probably from enslaved people or people that didn’t have a lot of food. It’s not something that everybody does but if you do have a lot of the, the Criollo restaurants, so the local restaurants, they will have beans on a Monday for sure guaranteed.

Hema: Hi Sheedia. Thanks for joining me again on The Moreish Podcast. 

Sheedia: Hey, thank you for having me again.

Hema: I was so excited to learn all of the things that you shared about the history of Curaçao. And today we're going to dive into one of my favourite topics, which is food.

Sheedia: Yes.

Hema: Before we do that, let's talk a little bit about who you are and where you currently are.

Sheedia: Yeah, so, hey, I'm Sheedia. My business is actually called Hey Sheedia. I am a Freedom Alchemist from Curaçao. Born and raised. Always been a citizen of Curaçao. And what it means to be a freedom alchemist to me is that I help people experience more freedom by challenging the norms. And I do that in different ways.

Um, one of those ways is the Dungeon Podcast, which is a place for Caribbean people to talk about taboo subjects. So that's how we challenge the norm there. I also have a Papiamentu course that I do online. I run racial awareness events that helps people become aware of the racial dynamics that exist within  Curaçao.

And lastly, I run a coaching business where I help people either one on one or in groups to challenge the norms and experience more freedom in their lives, whether that is in business, in their personal lives, in relationships, in many different ways.

Hema: You have so much going on, so I really appreciate you taking the time to join me for last week's episode. And then to talk today a little bit about the food of  Curaçao. So

Sheedia: Thank you, it's a pleasure.

Hema: To recap a little bit when we ended the last episode and I was, you know, asking you, what is the culture? You said that the culture of  Curaçao is a really big mix of many different cultures.

And we talked about, there was the Indigenous people and then the Spanish came along and then the Dutch really held control over the island, for many, many years. And there's still a relationship with the Dutch, and I'm assuming that comes through in some of the food.

Sheedia: Yes, really does. If I have to think of Cominda Criollo, which is creole food, is what we call it in Papiamentu. It is very much influenced by the, by all of that in one way or another and heavily influenced by African culture and I love that. I've actually been to Uganda in Africa and I remember them serving funchi.

I don't remember what they called it but it's a dish that we eat here with beans and I'm like, I feel like I'm eating local food. I actually came when I was, staying in Trinidad before I went to Uganda and the Ugandan food is way more like  Curaçao food than the Trini food.

Hema: So, for anybody that doesn't know what funchi is, tell us.

Sheedia: Yes, so funchi is a sort of polenta, the Italian dish polenta. And how you make it is you put water to boil, you add a little bit of salt, and then you mix in cornflour. Corn. Is cornflour the word?

Hema: Cornmeal?

Sheedia: Cornmeal. Yeah, that's the word. You mix it in and then you make like a, a thick, solid, version of that. And that you eat with stews or fish or beans. You eat it instead of rice most of the time.

Hema: There's, there's a version of funchi in many different Caribbean countries, and

Sheedia: Yes. Yes.

Hema: Sometimes they call it a little bit different, but it's essentially the same thing.

Sheedia: Yes. I think. I think it's in Jamaica they call it fufu.

Hema: It is a side dish that you eat with usually some sort of stewed meats.

Sheedia: Yes, stewed meats, and for us a lot of the stew is mixed with vegetables, so we do eat like stew chicken or stew meat, but we, if you want  to have a real Curaçao meal, that we're thinking about, a real criollo food, it would have some sort of vegetable mixed in it. And the most popular ones are like, green papaya, cabbage, snei bonchi. That is, green beans. And komkomber chiki. That I don't know how to translate in English.

But we call, if you translate it, it's like small cucumbers, but it's like these small little balls that are prickly on the outside and have really small seeds on the inside.

I, I've never tried to translate it in English and I never just, I've never heard about how to say it in English.

Hema: When I was doing some research, and we didn't talk about this in the history section last week, but sugar cane at some point was an industry on the island.

Sheedia: And not in Curaçao. They might have planted it, but it's never like an industry that Curaçao is known for sugarcane. We “planted salt”. Because they call it a salt plantation or a salt flat, you know.

Hema: So then I guess my, and this is where, talking to someone like you really is helpful. When I was doing some reading, there was some talk of a famous liqueur in  Curaçao that has oranges and they, this article linked it back to the time of when sugarcane was a big industry.

Sheedia: Hmm, interesting. I've, I, I do know that they have planted sugar canes, but not that it was an industry here.

Yeah, because also  Curaçao did not export a lot of things, right? We were more of a slave market and what we did export was salt because the Dutch are a huge salt eating country with like their herrings and stuff. So, that was a big thing. It's no longer a thing here in Curaçao, the salt plant, the salt flats, not plantations, but it is still in Bonaire. Bonaire is still a huge salt producing country.

Hema: What is this, orange liqueur that I was reading about?

Sheedia: Yeah, so it is blue Curaçao. That's usually what it's known for. There are plenty of fake versions out there. The original ones is by the Senior Company, which is a Jewish company. It's made out of Laraha, and Laraha is really the Valencia orange from Spain. When they brought it to  Curaçao, they planted it and it turned sour. So it was no good to eat for anything until they discovered that the peel has this like a aromatic oil that you can pull from it and then they mixed it with alcohol to make the  Curaçao liquor.

Hema: Where does the blue come from?

Sheedia: It was just a cute colour. And it's, and it's popular in blue but it actually comes in multiple colors. So there's a orange version, red, blue, clear, and green.

Hema: What is the most popular brand?

Sheedia: The Senior and Co company, but because it's called  Curaçao liquor and you can't trademark the name of a country, everybody can make their  Curaçao liquor and, or blue  Curaçao, whatever they want to call it.

And it's not the original or the real thing. And it might not even be made with Laraha. And you know the real one because it has, the bottle is trademarked. So it's like a, a round bottle with a, a long neck. That is the original one. 

Hema: So let's talk about the national dish of  Curaçao.

Sheedia: Many people will argue, I think the the national dish is either iguana or okra soup. That's what I would say. I'm not sure if anybody has agreed on a national dish.

Hema: Okay. So let's, let's talk about both of them. How is Iguana eaten?

Sheedia: Iguana is eaten mostly as a soup. It is boiled with, um, with potatoes and, and you eat it as a soup. It's watery. Like, our soups are very watery. It's not very thick. So, and I'm not somebody that has eaten a lot of iguana soup, to be honest. But it is very popular. They eat it, they give it a lot to pregnant women, or when you're sick, they give you iguana soup, and it's very potent for those things. It's also very good for men who are struggling with erectile dysfunction, I heard.

Hema: So iguana soup is considered to have like many medicinal effects.

Sheedia: Yes, yes. I mean, it's an aphrodisiac. It helps the population grow. 

Hema: And then the, and then the okra soup.

Sheedia: Yes, the okra soup, we make that with seafood, so fish, oysters, clams, potatoes, and it's a very thick and slimy soup, and we eat that with funchi on the side. Yeah.

Hema: Is okra, did it come to the island from somewhere else?

Sheedia: That I don't know. I have no idea.

Hema: It's very popular in many Caribbean countries. 

Sheedia: I wouldn't be surprised if it's an African thing because I believe it's also pretty popular in African cultures and it's also very popular in the southern American coast. So I would think the Afro people have that in common in one way or another. 

Hema: There is a dish that I was reading about, and it said that there was a similar version of this dish in Curaçao and Aruba. Keshi…. 

Sheedia: Yena

Hema:  Yena. Tell me about that.

Sheedia: Keshi Yena. So if you translate that, literally it would be cheese-filled. And if you look at gouda cheese, gouda, and how it comes, it has like this thick layer on the outside of it. And the enslaved people they had to make do with what was available. And so this skin was really thrown away, and what they did was they would fill it with whatever they had, and that's how you had filled cheese. Because the, the skin was filled. 

Now when we make it, we don't make it with the skin anymore. It's like with real gouda cheese. But yeah, it's, it's filled with mostly meat, olives. And it's a stew that's inside the cheese.

Hema: It is a stew that's inside cheese?

Sheedia: The cheese, yeah. I mean, yeah. We, we think of that because it's called keshi yena, but it's basically you have cheese on the bottom and cheese on the top and between that you have the stew.

Hema: And the version in Aruba would be, would be similar.

Sheedia: Yes, yes.

Hema: What goes inside? What is the filling that is in between the cheese?

Sheedia: It's, it's, beef stew. I mean, you can make it with, chicken too. I usually take beef, but it's, uh, beef, stewed with oftentimes like, obviously onions and, peppers and stuff like that. Not, pika, what do you call it, pika. Um, not spicy, but filled with a lot of things and, yeah, a mixture of stew and you put the cheese on top and at the bottom. Put it in the oven and then you get keshi yena.

Hema: Is this a dish that's eaten often?

Sheedia: Actually, no. It’s something I've, I barely have heard somebody making it, but it is very much something you eat for, like, something special. If you want to do something different or if you want to go to a restaurant and be like what is like a very  Curaçaoan thing and you're honouring our ancestors and stuff like that, then yes, you will have keshi yena. So yeah, it's it's not something that you would hear ‘Oh, my mama made keshi yena’. But we do honour that and have it for special occasions and such.

Hema: As you said, the, base of this and the foundation of this came from the times of slavery 

Sheedia: Yes.

Hema: when people were creating a dish similar.

Sheedia: Yes, yes.

Hema: When, when you ta…, when you were talking about the, the ingredients that go into keshi yena and you said not spicy. Is food in Curaçao spicy or no?

Sheedia: No, no.  Curaçao food is, generally speaking, not spicy, but there's always spices on the side. So, if we talk about the yambo or any type of soup, it's always served with a little bit of, a small little lime and some scotch bonnet pepper on the side that you can throw it in and make it spicy. Depending on the type of food you have, you have like this spicy mixture of vinegar and onions and scotch bonnet as well that you can serve on the side. Sometimes they'll actually have hot sauce, but yeah, it's, it's always an option to make it spicy. And people ask, do you like spicy? Do you, you know, it's, it's a conversation that we have.

Hema: And what is your preference?

Sheedia: I like it a little bit spicy, and the only reason why is because I spent time in Trinidad and Jamaica, and I had no other option but to start liking spicy.

Hema: Let me tell you, my family is Trinidadian, and there are times where I'm just like, can you not put so much pepper in it? Because I actually want to taste the food.

Sheedia: I've tried. They don't get it.

Hema: No, and some, and some people do, some people don't. It is, you know, it is the way it is. 

If someone were to say like, what is an average everyday kind of a meal in  Curaçao? What would it be?

Sheedia: It will be some sort of stewed meat or chicken with rice and some salad on the side. And the salad is often either tomatoes or lettuce, wòrtel, that is…carrots! Yeah, carrots. 

So those type of things on the side, or they'll have like a macaroni salad on the side. But yeah, a lot of rice, sometimes rice and beans, or funchi as the base, and then some sort of stewed meat, fish sometimes as well. Some people eat a lot of fish. Yeah, that's, that's it. 

I mean, you could have stewed goat, you could have stewed chicken, you could have stewed meat. 

Another popular dish that people have, you can't have it all the time is tutu. That is, it's funchi technically, but it's mixed with, beans, usually black-eyed peas, or kidney beans, and coconut, and sometimes, a salty, red meat that we have here mixed in there, and then you eat it with cheese. You can eat it as a side dish. That is often also served with saltfish. So that is tutu. 

And you can't have it too much because it has sugar in it, and beans and sugar, that's a lot of sugar in your body. And on Mondays we eat beans, because if you eat beans on Monday, you will have food for the rest of the week.

Hema: Where….

Sheedia: That’s the belief.

Hema: Where did that come from?

Sheedia: Probably from enslaved people or people that have didn't have a lot of food. It's not something that everybody does, but you do have a lot of the, the Criollo restaurants, so the local restaurants, they will have beans on a Monday, for sure, guaranteed. 

Hema: And is it always black-eyed peas?

Sheedia: Oh, no, um, the beans can vary. It can be, black-eyed peas is often not eaten as a bean, but it's either the, white beans, um, the, the big ones, round ones, or the kidney beans. And that's then, served more as a soup with, also with sugar in it, cooked with pig's tail and a salty red meat that we have here, karnisa is what we call it, and served with rice or funchi, mostly rice.

Hema: When you mentioned the salty red meat, what, what meat is that?

Sheedia: Mystery meat. I've never researched it. Somebody told me it's horse meat. I don't believe that.

Hema: But you, you've been eating it and you don't know what it is.

Sheedia: No, and it comes from the US and Canada. Cause there's a US version and a Canadian version, I believe. I don't remember which one is more expensive and better.

But I believe it's cow meat, but yeah, it's red and very salty, so you have to, just like the pig's tail comes, it's very salty, so you have to let it sit a night before, or you have to boil it a few times to, before you eat it.

Hema: You've a couple of times mentioned dishes that feature or have cheese.

Sheedia: Yes.

Hema: And so cheese seems to be quite a staple or something that in Curacao you eat a lot. 

Sheedia: Mm hmm, mm hmm. That's the Dutch influence of it all. So, the Gouda cheese, if you're asking a  Curaçaoan for cheese, they're automatically meaning Gouda cheese. 

Hema: Okay.

Sheedia:  And there's different degrees of Gouda cheese. Some are more pungent, and some are a little bit less. We call it young and old cheese, and there's a few in between. So that's what we eat. 

And also, we eat a lot of bread and cheese, or bread and salami, bread and ham, for breakfast and dinner, which is a very Dutch thing that we have. And afternoons is traditionally when we eat warm, which is a Caribbean thing also.

Hema:  There was a couple of things that I wanted to ask you about because there are some ingredients that are used quite often around different Caribbean islands that we actually haven't talked about yet. Things like plantain and cassava. 

Sheedia: Yes. Yes.

Hema: Are those also eaten in  Curaçao?

Sheedia: Cassava not so much. Plantain, I didn't say plantain when I said, you know, the side, as a side dish. That's technically a staple too. I'm not a huge plantain fan. I, I always eat it, but I don't like frying it. So I don't usually, if I have to cook, I will not have plantain on the side of my food. But, yes, it's always there. Fried, fried sweet plantains. Cassava is available. It's not often eaten here. Yeah, yeah.

We do, so as I said, we have that Caribbean, or not just Caribbean, but all these cultural influences. So then you have certain things like arepas in the morning, which is a very, Colombian, Venezuelan thing. Mostly Venezuela because we're closer.

Um, you have sometimes boiled banana or, tostones, which is, a Puerto Rican thing. Not, no, not Puerto Rican, Dominican. Maybe Puerto Rican too, but Dominican for sure. That's where it came from for us. Um, so you have those influences as well, but cassava, we have that, we call, we have yuca sometimes. That, you do have from time to time. But it's not a big staple.

Hema: It's, it's, it's not a staple that is eaten very often. 

Sheedia: No, no.

Hema: It's, it's interesting to hear the difference in the different Caribbean countries and where they're located, what their history is, and how that sort of comes forward in the food that's currently eaten and the culture of the food. You know, where I hear like the beans, which probably came from, the Spanish and we saw, as you talked about a little bit of the, enslaved people and the enslaved Africans and the influence, but the cheese, that cheese culture and, the bread and ham coming from the Dutch, which is very different than a lot of the other places that I've talked about so far on the podcast.

Sheedia: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I will also add that, a lot of the enslaved people, they had to eat leftover dishes. So, obviously, that's where the keshi yena came from. But, you know, people eat cow tongue or ox tail, obviously, pig's tail, which I've mentioned a few times. 

For Christmas, a staple is pig ears that we cut up and put in vinegar with onions and cloves. And you eat that with bread. So there is a lot of leftover food also included in the culture.

Hema: Yeah. Which as, you said, would come from the times when the enslaved people just had to make do with whatever scraps. And I'm saying that in quotes, they were given.

Sheedia: Yeah. Yeah.

Hema: That are now turned into the most delicious of dishes.

Sheedia: Yes, for sure.

Hema: We haven't talked a lot about fruits and what's really popular. One of the things that I came upon and you mentioned it earlier is papaya. And I was reading about a papaya stew and you mentioned papaya a little bit earlier. Is that something that's quite popular?

Sheedia: Yes, papaya is one of those fruits that grow here pretty easily and naturally. It does need a lot of water, but we eat it as a fruit. So you'll eat it as a fruit. You'll get it at the batido stand, which is a, place that makes, what do you call a batido? A shake, a shake with milk and sugar. So you'll get it there and then when it's green, we eat it as part of the stew. 

So as soon as it's sweet, I’ve tried making that once when a papaya got a little bit too sweet, and it's a bit disgusting, but as long as it's green, you can cook it and make it part of the papaya stew.

Hema: If, if I were to come visit  Curaçao and I said, Sheedia, I want to eat the most local thing ever. What would you take me to eat?

Sheedia: For me, it would be okra soup, but I actually realized I didn't mention the kadushi soup, which is made out of cactus. It's similar. People usually prefer one of the two. They either prefer okra or they prefer kadushi. And they're made the same way, except one is with okra and the other is with kadushi, which is a very specific cactus that you have to pick at a very specific time in order for you to make the, the soup with.

Hema: And when you say cactus, I sort of think that makes sense because in the last episode you talked about, there's not a lot of rainfall in  Curaçao.

Sheedia: Yes, there's a lot of cacti here. It's very dry island.

Hema: And so perfect growing conditions for cactus.

Sheedia: Yes, because if it rains too much, then for sure you can't pick the kadushi to make soup with it. But also they die, oftentimes, because they can't handle that much that much rainwater. 

Hema: Before we wrap up our section on food, one of, one of the populations and one of the groups that made their way to  Curaçao, in our history episode were the Portuguese Sephardic Jews.

And I don't hear anything that we talked about today in terms of food that would really be influenced by them.

Sheedia: They say that part of our stews are influenced by them. So when you talk about the keshi yena, the, I say olives are in there. I've heard that that is a very Jewish influence in our culture. I've also heard, and this, again I'm not fully, sure about, but some of our sweets are Jewish traditions.

So some of our sweets, are cocada, that is shaved coconut with sugars and it becomes hard. We have k’oi lechi, which if you translate it is milk thing. It is, you have two versions. You have one that's made out of, um, white powdered milk with sugars and corn syrup and you put it together and you just refrigerate it and it's done. And it stays good outside too. And then you have the warm k’oi lechi that is made with, that's boiled to be hardened. And it's a little bit, a hard block of, that. 

Then we have one is made out of peanuts and sugar, also hardened. So we have a few of those things, and I, again, I'm not sure 100%, but I do know that some of those have Jewish influence in them.

Hema: There was so much that we talked about today. We didn't get to all of the food that you can find in  Curaçao, but we gave a really great overview, today. And so

Sheedia: hmm.

Hema: as we wrap up, um, is there one, special occasion dish that you think if somebody goes to Curacao, they absolutely have to try?

Sheedia: The first thing that comes to mind is ayaka, and it can be compared to tamales in Mexico, but also you call it ayaka in, in Venezuela as well. But it is a layer of cornmeal filled with stewed chicken with, like those round small onions and sometimes a little bit of cashew and a prune and a little bit of raisins.

So it's, it's all laid out perfectly on this layer of polenta or funchi and then wrapped in leaves, banana leaves, and then boiled. And you re-boil that, so then it's frozen. Once it's made, it's frozen and you buy that or you make it and then you boil it again, re-boil it to unthaw it and that's what you eat for Christmas it's so good. 

Hema:  That is very similar to pastelles that are made in Trinidad 

Sheedia: Yeah

Hema: and pasteles that are made in Puerto Rico. So we have that, we have that shared, wrapping. And when I was speaking to Laura from, in talking about Puerto Rican food, I believe she said that technique of wrapping food in leaves comes from the African culture.

Sheedia: I would believe so. Yeah. It makes sense. It feels right.

Hema: This was so interesting to talk about food, and again, we're going to leave all of the information and links and maybe some photos in the show notes, and we'll share some on our Instagram if anybody's interested in looking to see what that actual bottle of Blue  Curaçao looks like. I will share that. And this is not the end of our conversation with you, Sheedia. We are also going to be talking about the language of Papiamentu, the course that you teach and all of the origins coming up in another episode.

Sheedia: Yes, I'm excited about that because I'm very passionate about Papiamentu.

Hema: I’m gonna leave a link your YouTube channel where you do have some lessons and that I was looking at in the show notes and we will see you guys again for another episode with Sheedia to learn all about the language of Papiamentu.

Sheedia: Yes, thank you. And as we say in Papiamentu, aio! Bye bye!