The Guadeloupe Breakfast I Grew Up On

When I was a boy in Guadeloupe, my mother would put the salt cod in water on Saturday night before she went to bed. A big bowl, cold water, the fish sitting in it like it was resting. She never made a fuss about it. It was just what you did, the way you might put the kettle on.

By Sunday morning that bowl had been emptied and refilled three times, and the kitchen smelled of garlic hitting hot oil. There were seven of us children, so nothing small ever came out of that pot. She would have a pan of green bananas going, still in their skins, water bubbling away, and she would stand there flaking the cod with her fingers and telling us to move out of her way.

We called it ti-nain morue. Ti-nain is what we say in Guadeloupe for the green banana, the unripe one, firm and starchy, nothing like the sweet yellow thing you put in a lunchbox. Morue is the salt cod. Put them together and you have the food that fed my island for generations: cheap, filling, honest, made from a fish that was salted so it could survive a long journey and a banana that grows everywhere you look.

Back home this is not a fancy dish. You see it at lunch counters in Pointe-à-Pitre, and the people eating it are builders and drivers and fishermen, men who have been working since five in the morning. Big plates. No garnish. Nobody photographing it.

I want to show you how I make it now, in my own kitchen, with a jar of my Caribbean Hot Sauce doing the job my mother did by hand with a scotch bonnet and a lot of patience.

Recipe at a glance

• Cuisine: French Caribbean (Guadeloupe)
• Prep: 15 minutes • Cook: 30 minutes • Total: 45 minutes (plus overnight soaking for the salt cod)
• Serves: 4
• Featured sauce: Caribbean Hot Sauce
• Heat level: 7/10, building and warm, never punishing
• Diet: Gluten free, dairy free, pescatarian

What you’ll need

Two ingredients do the heavy lifting here, and both of them are cheap. Salted cod you will find in Caribbean and Portuguese shops, in African food shops, and increasingly in the world food aisle of the big UK supermarkets. Buy the thick pieces if you can, the loin rather than the tail, because they flake into proper chunks instead of shredding away to nothing.

Green bananas are sold in the same shops, usually loose. Look for firm ones with hard skins and no yellow coming through. If they have started to turn, they will go sweet and soft on you, and this is not a sweet dish.

For the salt cod

• 400g salted cod (morue), preferably thick loin pieces
• Cold water for soaking

For the bananas

• 8 green bananas (ti-nain), roughly 1.2kg
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar

For the sauce

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, finely sliced
• 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 4 spring onions, sliced, white and green parts kept separate
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 sprig thyme
• 2 tbsp Full Feast Caribbean Hot Sauce, plus more at the table
• Juice of 1 lime
• A good handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• Black pepper

How I make it

1. Start the night before. Put the salt cod in a large bowl, cover it with plenty of cold water, and leave it on the counter or in the fridge. Change the water three times if you can: before bed, first thing in the morning, and once more an hour before you cook. This is the only part of the recipe you cannot rush, and it is also the part where most people go wrong.

2. Give it a final boil. Drain the cod, put it in a pan, cover with fresh cold water and bring it to the boil. Boil for five minutes, drain, then do it once more with clean water. Taste a small flake at the end. It should taste seasoned, like a well salted fish, not like the sea. If it is still fierce, boil it a third time.

3. Flake it with your fingers. Let the cod cool enough to handle, then pull it apart into large flakes, picking out any bones and skin as you go. Fingers, not a fork. You feel the bones before you see them.

4. Prepare the bananas. Wash them well. Cut both ends off each banana, then run a knife down the length of the skin, about 1cm deep, from top to bottom. Do not peel them. That slit is what lets the skin come away in one piece later, and it is the trick my mother never once explained, she just did it.

5. Boil the bananas. Drop them into a large pan of water with the salt and the vinegar. The vinegar keeps them from going grey and keeps the pan clean. Boil for 25 to 30 minutes, until a knife goes into the thickest one with no resistance. Drain, and while they are still hot enough to handle with a cloth, slip the skins off and cut each one into thick rounds.

6. Build the base. While the bananas cook, warm the olive oil in a wide pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and the white parts of the spring onions with the bay leaves and thyme. Cook them slowly for six or seven minutes, until soft and glassy. You are not looking for colour here.

7. Now the garlic. Add it and give it one minute, no more. When you can smell it properly, it is ready. Burnt garlic will follow you through the whole dish.

8. In goes the cod. Add the flakes and turn them through the onions gently. Two or three minutes is enough. You are warming the fish and letting it take on the garlic, not cooking it again.

9. The sauce. Spoon in the Caribbean Hot Sauce and stir it right through. Let it cook for two minutes so it loosens and coats everything. The pan will smell like Sunday morning at my mother’s house, and that is exactly when you know it is right.

10. Bring it together. Tip the banana rounds into the pan and fold them through carefully, using a spoon and a light hand. They break easily. Squeeze over the lime, grind in black pepper, and scatter the parsley and the green parts of the spring onions.

11. Rest it, then taste. Take it off the heat and leave it two or three minutes. Now taste. You almost never need salt, the cod has done that, but you may want more lime. Serve it hot, in bowls, with the sauce jar on the table.

The role of Caribbean Hot Sauce in this dish

Salt cod is a strong fish. It has been cured, boiled, and boiled again, and it needs something with backbone standing next to it or the plate falls flat.

My mother did this with fresh scotch bonnet, chopped fine, plus garlic and vinegar and time. The Caribbean Hot Sauce does the same work in one spoon. It is thick, so it clings to the flakes of cod instead of running to the bottom of the pan. It is balanced with vinegar, so it cuts through the salt the way lime does. And the heat builds slowly, which matters in a dish you are going to eat a big bowl of.

You will notice the green bananas are quiet on their own. Starchy, mild, almost like a waxy potato. That is by design. They are there to carry the sauce. Every round you fold into that pan picks up the garlic, the oil, the chilli, and turns into something worth eating.

It is gluten free and vegan in the jar, for what that is worth here, though the fish makes the finished plate neither.

Tips from my kitchen

• Soak longer than you think. If you only have a few hours, cut the cod into smaller pieces first so the water reaches more of it, and boil it three times instead of two. Under-soaked cod is the single reason people say they do not like saltfish.

• Never salt the pan. Not the sauce, not at the end. Salt the banana water only. The cod brings all of it.

• Keep the bananas in their skins. People try to peel them raw and end up with sticky hands and half a banana. Boil them whole with that slit down the side, and the skin comes off like a jacket.

• Use the oil. Some cooks drain the pan at the end. Do not. The oil has the garlic, the thyme and the sauce in it. That is the dressing.

• It is better the next day. Cold from the fridge, eaten standing at the counter with a fork. My siblings and I used to fight over what was left.

What to serve it with

At home this is a whole meal on its own and nothing else comes to the table. If you want to build it out, half an avocado on the side is traditional and very good, the soft fat against the salt is the whole point.

A plain green salad with a sharp dressing works. So does white rice if you are feeding a crowd and want to stretch it further, though my mother would say the bananas are the starch and you are being greedy.

If you are cooking for people who do not want heat, hold back the sauce in the pan and let everyone add their own at the table. For a milder, greener version of this plate, the Fresh Herbal Sauce spooned over at the end gives you the garlic and herbs without the chilli. And if you want to try the range before you commit to a jar, the Spicy Discovery Trio is where most people start. You can see the full range in the shop.

FAQ

How do I soak saltfish overnight?

Put it in a big bowl, cover it with cold water, and change that water at least three times over twelve hours. More water and more changes is always better than less. Then boil it once or twice in fresh water before you cook with it. If you taste a flake and it makes you reach for a glass, it needs another boil.

Is saltfish the same as cod?

Usually, yes. Morue in the French Caribbean means salted, dried cod, and that is what I use. You will also find salted pollock and salted haddock sold the same way, and both work here. Fresh cod is a different ingredient entirely, it has no cure and no depth, so if you use it you are making a nice fish dish, but you are not making ti-nain morue.

How long do you boil green bananas in the skin?

Twenty-five to thirty minutes for medium ones. Test with the tip of a knife in the thickest banana, it should slide in with no resistance. Slit the skin down the side first and add a spoon of vinegar to the water, then the skins come away easily and the flesh stays pale.

Can I use plantain instead of green banana?

You can, and green plantain is the closest substitute, but it is firmer and takes longer to boil, so give it an extra ten minutes and cut it into thicker pieces. It is a heavier plate. Green bananas are softer and lighter and closer to what I ate at home.

Is saltfish very salty when it is finished?

It should not be. Properly soaked and boiled, it tastes seasoned rather than salty, which is why the recipe adds no salt to the pan at all. That balance is the whole skill of the dish, and it is entirely down to how patient you were the night before.

Final word from me

This is not a dish anybody made to impress. It was made because salt cod kept and bananas grew, and there were a lot of mouths in the house. That is where most of my favourite food comes from.

Cook it on a Sunday. Put the bowl of cod in water the night before and forget about it. And when you sit down, put the jar on the table so everyone can take as much heat as they can handle.

If you cook it, tell me. I always want to know.

JP