Guyanese Pepperpot, The Everlasting Pot of Food

[Roopey]

So, my father and his family are actually from Guyana, so I've grown up with the tradition of going to grandma's house to eat Pepperpot for Christmas. It's an amazing beef stew that is made with Cassareep. Cassareep is a sauce made out of the cooked juice of cassava roots. The cool thing about all of this is that cassareep has some magical properties. It is a powerful antiseptic, powerful enough to preserve the meat inside the Pepperpot indefinitely, as long as it is brought to a boil for 3 minutes every day.

http://www.food.com/recipe/cassareep-217563

So, Cassareep is the real point of this post. It is an awesome sauce that the native people of South America had come up with, in the northern parts of the Amazon rainforest, that you can make a magical pepper pot out of, that you just keep adding more water, meat, and cassareep to, and it just keeps building flavor and getting better and better!!

I'm going to start an experiment here pretty soon where I try to keep a Pepperpot going for as long as I can, and I'll post updates and get all you guys's mouths drooling for some Pepperpot.

http://www.gotoguyana.org/food-recipes/pepper-pot/

Edited June 17, 2015 by Roopey

[Anodyne]

That's so cool!

I had read that you wanted to cook cassava really well (& for some varieties maybe leach it first too to remove those cyanogenic whatsits - seems to depend alot on the variety used though), but didn't know where to start. This double-cooking method where you boil down the cassava syrup first and then boil that again in a stew (& again the next day, & the day after... ) sounds like it'd do the job admirably.

This summer I'll be taking care of a place where some cassava is growing, so it'd be cool to know how to cook it. Doubly so as the place has no fridge! Now I just need to make a vegetarian version. Of a beef & pork stew, uhuh yeah right, you're thinking - but there's some pretty tasty sounding vege recipes too, like this one which uses split peas & porcini (actually they just used diced cassava for that one, but I think it'd be better with the syrup especially if you had one of the "bitter" varieties which require more prep). I reckon I'd try it with black/kidney beans & fresh mushrooms, & maybe use the cassareep & a bunch of fried onions & some herbs n' spices to make up a thick brown gravy stew for them.

Do you reckon the preservative effect would work on beans as well? The traditional stew has some veges in it too, so I guess it should?

I've also read that you can use cassava to make a tasty alcoholic beverage? There's a Peruvian version (might be called masato?) that was chewed up like the corn for chicha, there's a Guyanese version (parakari) which uses a special amylase-creating yeast similar to Asian rice wines etc, but the best-sounding one (cassiri) used a mix of cassava and sweet potato (which has natural amylases, so no saliva required!) And apparently if you use purple sweet potatoes you get a great coloured drink too - might be something to try with leftover cassareep!

Thanks for the tasty ideas Roopey, good to hear from you!

[Roopey]

I was actually veggo for years, and a potato, mushroom, bean version of Pepperpot is indeed delicious. It doesn't need to be cooked nearly as long, and in fact I would cook it for about an hour with the beans and mushrooms, then I would throw in some big chunks of potato and stopped it once they were tender. Easy done, and still yummy. The longer you let it sit, though, the more that flavor gets through all the potatoes and beans. Soo good.

Cassareep can also be sourced online, although I think I may have had troubles getting it through customs when I lived over there. Well, at least my package never showed up, but I never got a letter from customs either, so who knows what happened.

It is interesting to note how simple, yet almost exactly spot on this recipe is. Cinnamon, Clove, Mother-Of-Herbs (Which they call Guyanese Thyme, or just Thyme), Very Spicy Chilis (They usually either use Scotch Bonnet or Wiri-Wiri), Sugar, Meat, and a very thick and bitter starchy sauce (Cassareep). That's it. Some recipes add onion and garlic, which is ok, but I actually prefer it without them. Either way, it is the perfect way to start the day if you are about to go out and work the fields all day, or run around the jungle and hunt some boar or something. Especially when served with a fresh loaf of bread and a few different types of ciggies.

Edited June 18, 2015 by Roopey