The Martinique dip
Dipping is a meal best eaten in the morning with the whole family. Stale bread sprinkled with cod or lobster court-bouillon is spread on a banana leaf. It's a simple breakfast. It's the perfect way to get together with your extended family over a dish whose origins are the talk of the town. According to the most plausible version, it originated from the joint idea of a baker and a fisherman. Other more or less far-fetched explanations, especially those that often have everything originating in Africa, give it an assured origin of slaves. Others say that it was Indians arriving from Calcutta and the Pondicherry trading post in 1853 who brought them back in their luggage along with chèlou, another Indian dish, or madras. These are not Kalinas. Explanations for the origins of Trempage are so vast and diverse that people don't seem to want to simply acknowledge that its origins are recent and Martinican. This traditional dish is eaten all over Martinique. For some years now, the town of Trinité has been celebrating this dish on the day of the Trempage Show.
Ingredients. Bread and your choice of cod, crayfish, lobster, skate or chèlou, which have replaced fish heads, and étrilles(sirik). Small thyme, country onion, French onion, Indian wood leaves, bay leaf, parsley, garlic, large thyme, tomato and concentrated sauce for color, oil, 1 vegetarian chili pepper, 1 hot pepper, flour, stale bread, 1 kg cod or your choice of lobster, shelled shrimp or chicken.
Accessories: ripe Ti-nain, diced avocado, shelled crayfish, which can be added on top for better presentation.
Preparation for 5 people - time: 30 minutes - easy.
Advance preparation. Soak the cod the day before. Boil the next day to desalinate. Discard water. Crumble the cod. Remove bones. Before preparing the sauce, soak the stale bread.
To prepare the court-bouillon sauce. Fry the ingredients in oil, cover with water to cook, then add the crumbled cod and chili pepper without breaking them up. Dissolve a large spoonful of flour in water and pour into the sauce, stirring all the time to prevent lumps and obtain a homogeneous preparation. Add the tomato paste and salt if necessary. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the amount of sauce.
Then press the bread, crumble it and spread it out on a clean banana leaf. Pour the court-bouillon over the crumbled bread. Le Trempage is ready for tasting.
Tasting procedure. The dish is placed on a large, clean banana leaf. Each person washes his or her hands cleanly, and eats at his or her assigned place, as this dish is eaten in communion and with the fingers, in one's own space. The other hand must remain behind the back. The dip is accompanied by a madou, a refreshing local drink.
The Fariba fruit factory
After the Second World War, in 1921, in Sainte-Marie, Quartier Bezaudin, Monsieur Louis André, a tax clerk, had a passion. He loved processing produce, all the fruit and vegetables he came across. When he's not baking flour in his wood-fired oven, he's making jam, ice cream or starch for porridges. At the 1931 Colonial Art Exhibition, he won a gold and a silver medal. The man at the head of his company, Ella, an acronym made from his own initials, employed around ten people. He died in 1976 at the age of 96. His daughter Pauline épouse Nogard, a war widow and retired school principal, took over. She continued to develop her father's passion, adding her own energy and specialties: fruit flour for bread, shampoos, soap, other jams and syrups of her own. The lady died at the age of 85 on June 16, 1992, and her heirs did not take over. However, she in turn inspired Luc Quiatol, a regular visitor to the company, to devote himself to the art of transformation. He lives in Sainte-Marie, but in Quartier Citron. It has to be said that this young man regularly rubbed shoulders with the grande dame of the Bezaudin countryside, Pauline Nogard, to whom he had a real admiration, and who was renowned for her extensive research into product transformation. So it was that, in the footsteps of their eldest daughter, and thanks to the know-how of a team of farmers based in Sainte-Marie, they decided to take up Madame Nogard's torch.
The company, now called Fariba, a registered trademark, took over and offered the population the best products from Martinique's terroir. The idea of drying ripe bananas germinated and gained ground, becoming Fariba's specialty. The idea of drying ripe bananas germinated and gained ground, becoming Fariba's speciality. The company recovered the green bananas from the sheds, built a mould and developed a more efficient dryer, not forgetting, of course, the all-important objective of ensuring the product's taste quality.
The Saveurs des caraïbes company. Today, Luc Quiatol has mastered the art of processing bananas without coloring agents or preservatives, and owns an artisanal business in the La Ferme district. Since 1989, thanks to his family's know-how and prodigious perseverance, he has been producing a healthy range of banana and manioc flours, mamaiba (a blend of flours for crêpes) and dried bananas that preserve all the energy of Martinique's bananas. On-site video tours are available. Attached to the importance of agro-processing, the manager plans to set up a catering-tasting system to enable the general public to discover the different applications of the products. The products can be found on site, as well as in the traditional distribution system. For Luc Quiatol, there is continuity between agricultural life and cultural life, which encompasses all our riches to form one society: the Bèlè society. It combines the production of the sector as an economic value with this artistic cultural continuity whose transmission we must preserve. Above all, there must be no break between generations, because the chain of continuity must never stop.
