But if rice in general has a prominent place in the culture and consciousness of Caribbean people, then rice and peas in particular has a prominent place in the culinary possibilities of rice creations. No less and in no particular order, rice and peas is generally also referred to as peas and rice, or cook-up rice, with interesting ingredient and style variations rooted both in Caribbean geography, and in continuing experimentation, and I've often heard rice and peas or peas and rice as references even when peas is replaced by beans.
So, cook-up rice, as I knew it, might most typically be cooked with black eyed peas, or maybe pigeon peas or split peas, and would out of necessity require grated coconut extracted milk, this before the age of commercially available cream-of-coconut. And I was no stranger as a child to calalu cook-up, and eddoe leaf cook-up, which was actually eddoe leaf cook-up and not the considered-more-elegant calalu cook-up, as I picked or saw picked the eddoe leaves, and it was generally know that if you don't know what you're doing with eddoe leaves that the price would at least be a severe bout of itching of the tongue.
Although I haven't had eddoe leaf cook-up recently, or even calalu cook-up, I've had with a variety of peas and beans; most often kidney beans in my current general neck of the woods; with a variety of ingredients; and with or without coconut milk, the absence of which I still have to get used to.
In addition to its importance and place in the general flow of life, a good cook-up is also an important feature of celebrations and ceremonies, from bush cooks where a good All-In-One or All-Man might be called for, or at least all that you have to put in the pot, and for other events where less might just be more.
"Girl, yuh better not let New Years come and yuh ain' got cook-up in yuh pot; even if you don't have black-eye, at least cook some pigeon peas, or something."
As I know it: rice in general, and rice and peas in particular, is important to Caribbeans; probably the most loved by the greatest number. Do you agree? How do you know it?
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