Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

One of the wonderful things (among many) about having an island resort in Belize is discovering the food of Belize. Many years ago I discovered a wonderful Belizean dish: Dukunu. We don’t serve it on the island because it is too labor intensive : ( But at a locals Belize City restaurant, like Ceni’s, you can sometimes find it.

Dukunu is a fabulous dish! And you can make these marvelous corn packets at home using this recipe. Residents of New Mexico will be particularly interested as it is similar to, but also very different from tamales, a staple in New Mexico.

Dukunu is usually vegetarian, which is one of the reasons I love them since I don’t eat meat. It is not made of masa, but of roasted and ground corn kernals. Also, it uses coconut milk. This corn mixture steamed in corn husks was a favorite of the ancient Mayans of Belize.

6-8 ears of corn, shucked
1/8 cup of water
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 T. of melted butter
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 t. sugar
corn husks, soaked in water

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. Soak corn husks in water. Use 1 T. of butter to coat the ears of corn and then wrap each ear in foil. Place wrapped corns on a baking dish and roast in the oven for 25-30 minutes until soft. Slice corn kernels away from the husks. In a blender or food processor blend the roasted corn kernels and water until fully ground. Add coconut milk, 1 T. butter, salt, sugar and baking powder to corn mixture and blend well to combine all ingredients. Put 1 – 2 tbsp corn mixture in each corn husk. Fold the sides of the husks in toward the center and place in a steamer. Steam for 30 minutes.

We have a fantastic menu serving Belize food and other great recipes out on the island. I am the one responsible for the menu (with many suggestions incorporated from guests and staff alike), so I LOVE all of the food we serve as a result.

I can state that my favorite meal on the island, hands down, is Fish Tacos. I could eat them 3 times a week, they are that good.

The reason they are so good (besides the tortillas being freshly made and the fish being freshly caught) is the secret sauce. Charlie Woodward, one of our managers, is responsible for this gem of a recipe. And now I am going to publish it right here!

All you need is 3 ingredients: cilantro, freshly squeezed lime juice, and mayonnaise. Use 3 parts mayo to 1 part lime juice and 1 part finely chopped cilantro. Mix them together to the consistency of a salad dressing.

For fish tacos serve the taco ingredients buffet style (each person makes their own taco) with tortillas, fried fish, slivered cabbage, chopped tomato, onion, and bell peppers, grated cheese, and cooked beans. Pour the secret sauce over your taco and enjoy!

Usually, the only time a tropical island in Belize makes the news is when a hurricane hits (a rare event) but last week, when Discovery Channel’s new series, Alone In The Wild, featured TV celeb Jason Gardiner stranded alone on a Belize island for 5 days, it became a news story. Apparently, a highlight of his experience was finally catching and eating a fish after failing to do so for five days. Happily, you will experience no such deprivations on Adventure Island as our kitchen features a down-home, made-from-scratch cuisine that our guests rave about.

 

Years ago a guide trainee, whose name escapes me now, was on the island for a couple of weeks. He was a super guy but never did come to work for us; he didn’t quite have enough experience. Much of his work history was in the restaurant business.

On one of his last nights on the island he made this chicken dish that everyone flipped out over. I got him to write it down, and we have been serving it ever since. I even tried to take it off the menu once, to substitute Jerk Chicken because it is a more regional dish. Our Belizean staff begged me to put this back on, and take Jerk Chicken off, so I did.

Toby Chung joined us on the Adventure Island at Glover’s Reef trip in January of 2007. I remember him because he came back with these incredible snorkeling photos that are still on our Belize snorkeling page. The other day, after I posted the Lime-Rice recipe, he posted a request for this recipe on our Belize island Facebook page. Four and a half years later and he is still thinking about this meal!

We serve this dish with mashed potatoes. The marinade is so good that we hold some out for the vegetarians for their potatoes. I am a vegetarian, so I can say for sure it’s fantastic as a ‘gravy’. So, by popular demand, here it is.

Serves 6-8

Marinade:
1 cup water
¾ cup olive oil
¼ cup soy sauce
juice of 1 lime
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup honey
1 T coriander
1 T cumin
1 T oregano
½ T chili powder
1 T garlic salt
1 T paprika
1 T thyme
½ T black pepper

3 whole chickens, cut into pieces
1 14 oz can stewed tomatoes
½ cup water

Whisk all marinade ingredients in a bowl, same some marinade out for mashed potatoes for vegetarians. Pour the rest over the chicken and marinate 1 hour. Remove chicken from marinade, place it on baking pans and brown 15 minutes is a 425 degree oven. Turn oven down to 350 and bake ½ hr. to 45 minutes until done.

While chicken is cooking, put the marinade that you pulled the chicken out of into a frying pan and add tomatoes and water. Bring to boil, thicken with cornstarch or thin with water to make a nice consistency. Pour this sauce over the chicken to serve.

Our Belize island menu is extremely popular… every trip at least 3 people tell me to publish a cookbook. This just never rises to the top of the list. I think instead I’ll just put them on the blog, a few at a time. This is a VERY simple, VERY good recipe!

Serves 3 – 4

¼ cup minced onion
1 garlic clove, minced
2 T. vegetable oil
2 cups white rice
4 cups water
2 T. fresh lime juice
½ cup of chopped, fresh cilantro

Sauté onion and garlic in the oil until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the rice and stir until well coated with oil. Add the water and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil and stir. Reduce the heat, cover, simmer without stirring for 15 – 17 minutes. While cooking make the fresh lime juice. Remove from heat and stir in the lime juice and cilantro. If you don’t like cilantro, just leave it out, it’s still fantastic.

Belize doesn’t produce many handmade souvenirs. They don’t have a tradition of handicrafts, except for drums from Dangriga and Hopkins. In fact, most tourist gift shops in Belize will be filled with products from Guatemala.

So what do you take home to your friends and family? I have the answer! Belize does have an interesting selection of excellent food and drinks. There are many options in the local supermarkets. For guests on our trips, it’s easy to go to Brodies supermarket on the Northern Highway, just 2 blocks from the Biltmore. We get back off the island in plenty of time for you to walk down there on your last afternoon before we pick you up for dinner. It’s easy and the items are very reasonably priced.

Belize’s #1 producer of excellent hot sauce and jams is Marie Sharp. She makes carrot hot sauce, grapefruit hot sauce, and my favorite: cactus hot sauce! You can get mild, medium, hot and fiery hot, and you can buy large bottles or tiny plastic bottles that only cost 90 cents (US) each. Your friends will LOVE them. I know mine do. The small plastic bottles are also perfect for a camping trip. Don’t leave Belize without taking home a supply. I find that 2 large bottles and 10 of the travel size lasts me for one year.

But she also makes jam. You can find mango, banana, mixed tropical fruit, orange, pineapple, guava, papaya, and red or green habanero jelly (my favorite). We serve a lot of all of these on our island with johnny cakes and biscuits. These are fabulous jams! Take some of them home too!

You can also buy coconut oil, coffee (except their coffee is only OK), dried tropical fruits, plantain chips, pumpkin seeds, and cashews, all grown and processed in Belize.

Another very interesting item is recado. This is a spice paste sold in balls or bars, also known as red achiote paste. You can’t make Belize Stew Chicken without it. You can find the local recipe elsewhere on this blog.

But don’t forget the beer! Belikin Beer, the beer of Belize, is very, very good. It comes in 2 varieties: beer and stout. You can tell which is which by the color of the caps (beer: green cap, stout: blue cap). You’ll get a lot of opportunity to try this on the island, as we include beer at no additional charge for our Belize vacation packages.

And rum! Belize produces a lot of rum. One Barrel is our staff favorite, but there are many other fantastic rums and rum mixes, as well as coconut rum which is so good you can drink it straight.

And something that might surprise you, the Bowen & Bowen soda factory makes all of their own soda pop. We serve a lot of this on the island too. Their ginger ale is MUCH better than what we can get in the US, and they are all made with cane syrup grown right in Belize; no high fructose corn syrup. I don’t drink soda in the US, but I do in Belize. It’s all quite good. They don’t produce any diet drinks but they have a great soda water that you can mix with squash.

Squash? Did you hear that right? I mean the drink concentrate. It’s a British product (remember Belize used to be British Honduras). It’s amazing stuff. It needs no refrigeration. You can get lime, orange, tropical fruit punch, grapefruit (my fave), pineapple, and mango.

There are other products they produce in Belize that you probably won’t be taking home with you: excellent yogurt, cheese, bacon, beans, rice, sugar, and their own version of Wonderbread.

And if you really want to go local, take home some Roses toilet paper. Produced right in Belize!

These images were taken at the Brodies on the Northern Highway. All prices, when visible, are in Belize dollars (2 Belize dollars = 1 US dollar, so divide by 2).

(You can click each image to view the full picture.)

I got back a few days ago from my whirlwind tour of Belize lodges. I found out near the end that I had toured 33 inns in less than a week. After a while, fancy hotels all start to look the same, and if it wasn’t for my pictures I wouldn’t be able to keep them straight in my mind. We saw a LOT of hotel rooms in 5 days. But one stands out for its charm and grace: Victoria House on Ambergris Caye.

If you want to go somewhere and just have your eyes soothed by sheer gorgeousness every second of the day, spend some time here. We arrived very late in the day, so I didn’t get the pictures I wish I had gotten, but still, the magic of the place shows through, I think. It has a plantation style design unique in Belize. I have resolved I am going to get shutters in my own house after seeing this magnificent inn.

And the restaurant! We had dinner there. The food was superb, the service was impeccable. There was a couple sitting on the patio when we arrived who had just gotten engaged. They were telling everyone, including the hoard of passing travel agents. They were so happy. I can see why he popped the question at that moment, what else could he do in a place like this?

(You can click each image to view the full picture.)

At our island kitchen in Belize we employ 3 local women to cook for our groups. Belizean cuisine has only a few good recipes (from my point of view)… almost everything is either deep-fried, over-cooked, or made with processed ingredients, like white flour. It has taken me years to teach these wonderful women to cook for American tastes. Our guests tend to prefer whole foods, low in fat, and simply prepared.

One excellent local recipe that we serve many times during the week are freshly-made flour tortillas. This stretchy dough is broken into bits and deeply worked by repeatedly folding it over itself in a one-handed push on the counter. As they are formed, rows of plump balls line up neatly as they continue to rise. Cooked on a hot, dry griddle and served almost immediately, they accompany breakfast burritos, quesadillas, and fish tacos with secret sauce! (For more about Belize food visit our website.)

Knowing what goes into these tortillas, I have always been surprised at how sophisticated Americans fall over themselves to get at these hot and supple bread loaves. Most of our guests would never eat this kind of processed white bread at home. I believe it’s because in our busy lives we simply don’t get to eat breads hot out of the oven very often (or hot off the griddle in this case); these tortillas remind us of a simpler time.

Inspired by this experience of daily fresh bread on the table, I decided to incorporate fresh tortillas into my diet at home, but without the white flour and Crisco. I wanted to use both corn and amaranth flours, and the recipe needed to be easy so I could make them even when I had little time. I discovered the way to accomplish this is to make the recipe for the dough mix fill most of a gallon jar, so I could simply scoop out the right amount for one meal, adding water only. I use a rolling pin on a floured board, as I’ve never mastered the Belizean technique of patting the dough into circles. Cooked on a hot skillet with no oil, these brown cakes puff up a bit, even with no leavening. Sometimes they turn out pliable, sometimes a bit crispy, but they are always excellent, and take so little time.

We still serve the Belizean-style tortillas on the island, they are EXTREMELY popular! Here are both recipes:

Belizean Flour Tortillas

For 6-8 persons
4 cups white flour
1/8 cup shortening (Crisco)
1-1/3 T baking powder
½ t. salt
¾ cup coconut milk or milk

Mix dry ingredients together, add shortening and liquid. Knead lightly until well-kneaded (about 5 min). Form into small balls (somewhat larger than a golf ball). Let sit for 10-15 min then flatten with finger tips onto a smooth counter and press into a circular flat shape, about 3 times the thickness of a kayak paddle. Cook on griddle for about 5 minutes on each side.

Lucy’s Wheat, Corn, and Amaranth Tortilla Mix

5 cups spelt flour (or other wheat flour)
1-1/3 cup amaranth flour
1-1/3 cup corn meal
2 T salt

Mix all ingredients together and store in a glass gallon jar until needed.

For one person, to make 2 tortillas:
Scoop out ¼ cup of the mix. Add about 1 T + 1 t. water. Stir until well mixed, kneading dough until stretchy. Add more of the mix if you accidentally added too much water. Divide into 2 balls and let sit on counter for up to 15 minutes. Flour your counter and roll out into a thin circle, about 6” across. Get a skillet very hot, then put the tortilla in with no oil or butter. Bake there until it begins to look lighter in color on the bottom, about 30 seconds to 1 minute. Flip the tortilla and cook more until it puffs up and brown spots appear. Turn back onto the other side to finish baking through, another 30 seconds to 1 minute. Serve as soon as you can.

Our Belize island menu takes advantage of fresh seafood caught locally. The shrimp in Belize is fantastic! Here is the recipe most commonly served in Belize, this recipe serves 6.

2 lb peeled & de-veined shrimp
2 T olive oil
2 onions
2 bell peppers
3 garlic cloves
1 T oregano
1 T basil
1 8 oz can salsa casera
juice from 2 limes
1 T Belizean Recado: spice paste sold in balls, a.k.a. red achiote paste
½ cup water
1 t salt
2 tomatoes

Chop onions and peppers finely. Lightly fry shrimp in a large skillet in olive oil, then add onions, peppers, minced garlic along with basil and oregano. Saute’ until shrimp is almost done and veggies are a little soft. After a few minutes add salsa and lime juice and continue to cook. Next add Recado, diluted into the water. After everything has been going about 10 minutes add the salt and tomatoes sliced in to thin wedges. Continue cooking about 5 more minutes. Serve over coconut rice.

Belizeans have a diet quite unlike ours. We are used to having the world’s cuisine at our fingertips, but Belizeans have about 7-10 dishes that they eat over and over: rice and beans, stew beans and rice (two different dishes, believe it or not), stew chicken, potato salad, cole slaw, vegetable salad (what they call a tossed salad), whole fried fish, scrambled eggs, fry jacks, Jonny Cakes, cassava bread, fried plantain, and coconut rice are their mainstays. They will eat some version of these dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One could describe their diet this way: Comfort Food 24/7.

One time a friend of mine from Dangriga came up to visit me in the big city of Belize. We planned to go out for lunch. I asked him: “Where do you want to go for lunch? My favorite is the Lebanese, want to go there?” He looked at me with scorn and replied in a heated tone: “I am not Lebanese, I am Belizean! I eat rice and beans!” So we went to the regular Belize restaurant that served all the same dishes he ate everyday.

Belizean Stew Chicken is a wonderful way to prepare chicken. Here’s the traditional recipe that we serve on the island:

Serves 6-8

3 whole chicken, cut into pieces
juice from 3 limes
Belizean recado: spice paste sold in balls, aka red achiote paste
1-1/2 T chicken bouillion
½ can salsa casera
½ T Season All
¼ bottle BarBQ sauce
1 T garlic salt
½ T thyme
½ t black pepper
1 onion
1 green pepper
½ head garlic
1 T chopped fresh cilantro

Wash the chicken with lime juice. Skin it and put it in a big bowl. Mix enough recado with a little water just to color and add to bowl. Slice onion, chop pepper, mince cilantro, and garlic and add that and everything else to bowl. Mix well. Let sit for at least an hour. Remove chicken from bowl. Saute’ chicken in frying pan until almost done. Add onions, garlic and pepper from bowl on top of the chicken and let it finish cooking.