Passport & Plate - Keshi Yena
Aruba | Sunday, March 9, 2014 | 5 photos
Ingredients
Butter
1 lb (454g) Dutch Gouda (sliced)*
1 large onion (or two small red onions)
2 cups chopped chicken
1 can peeled, chopped tomatoes
¼ cup minced pickles
1 large green pepper (chopped finely)
8 large green olives (chopped)
1½ Tbsp minced garlic
¼ -cup golden raisins
1 Tbsp Dijon-style mustard
¼ cup ketchup
1 Tbsp piccadilly
2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp dill
½ tsp cumin
1 cup chopped cashew nuts
Hot Delight Papaya or Mme Jeanette sauce** (to serve)
How to prepare this recipe1. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Butter four personal-sized oven pans (or one deep, 10-12 inch baking pan) and line the bottom and sides with 2/3 of the sliced Gouda.
2. Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a frying pan, add chicken, cooking on medium heat until Chicken is no longer pink on the outside (10 minutes).
3. Add onions and stir-fry until they are golden brown (5 minutes).
4. Add tomato, pickles, green pepper, olives, capers, garlic, raisins, mustard, piccadilly, ketchup, thyme, nutmeg, dill, Worcestershire sauce, and chopped cashew nuts. Cook for an additional 5-10 minutes, stirring regularly.
5. Divide this mixture between the four Gouda-lined personal pans. Cover with the remaining slices of Gouda.
6. Set in preheated oven to bake for 30 minutes, until cheese begins to turn golden brown.
7. Slice and serve with Hot Delight sauces. (Caution: Even the “mild” papaya flavor is EXTREMELY spicy.)
*The traditional recipe uses an entire hollowed-out cheese wheel, but as this is expensive and can be excessively rich, most modern versions use cheese slices instead.
**If not available, replace with sambal or Tobasco sauce.
The story behind this recipeThe last place I expect to discover authentic Aruba is in the Marriott Resort, the centerpiece of the Palm Beach tourist zone. (95% American, I’m told.) Yet it’s on one the dozen gleaming steel stovetops of the windowless kitchen that Chef Marlon Damien takes me off-menu, brewing an eyebrow-raising mix of chicken, pickles, tomatoes, raisins, cashews, and more. Steam billows, thick with an intoxicatingly complex perfume…sweet, savory, spicy, salty, and sour at once. This is a dish that shares my philosophy on flavor: “More is more.” It’s an irreverent mutt of a meal, and I am already in love.
As he tucks the stew of colorful textures between slices of creamy Gouda cheese, Marlon speaks in Dutch – though, like most Arubans, he speaks English, Spanish, and local Papiamento equally well. Keshi yena, he explains, was the food of the colonial immigrants, slaves, who would bury whatever scraps they could find in mounds of Dutch cheese and bake them. Centuries later, the dish *is* Aruba: imported yet native, hot as the baked sand, a mix of influences as complex as the Papiamento language, with a pleasingly cloying veneer that masks but does not drown rustic hidden depths – all wrapped in warm, cheesy comfort.
I seek out the dish around the island, always finding it in a different form. Opinionated chefs with recipes inherited from opinionated (grand)mothers argue that ketchup or Piccadilly sauce offer the perfect mélange of flavors; others call these foreign incursions. Sometimes the dish is sweeter, or heartier, or imbued with flavor-altering capers or nutmeg. Like the island it evolves, offering plays of living history for the palate.
Back in Amsterdam, my fervor grows. I buy special pans, but re-colonize the keshi yena with Dutch groceries and American tastes. I serve it at dinner parties, smiling smugly as new tasters scoff at the eccentric list of ingredients. They, too, will be converts by the end of the first helping.
