An Embarrassment of Mangoes (8 page)

I was looking in the wrong spot, I discover much later. I needed to check a guide to Bahamian English, not a cookbook.

I eventually find the entry in
More Talkin’ Bahamian
by Patricia Glinton-Meicholas: not coo-coo, but
cuckoo
soup, as in the bird that has a habit of laying its eggs in other birds’ nests, from which comes the word “cuckold.” “Talk has it,” Glinton-Meicholas writes, “that if you are a man of the age of consent in The Bahamas, you tend to avoid dark, multi-ingredient soups . . . It might be cuckoo soup into which certain bodily fluids have been put to ‘tame’ you . . .” Her mother tells the story of a young man who throws a bowl of soup out the window, suspecting it is of the dreaded cuckoo variety. One of the family pigs eats it and within minutes is running around and shouting, “I want to get married, I want to get married.”

Much later still, I have a chance to ask a trio of sophisticated, stylish Bahamian women for their opinion on the power of conch. Two of them dismiss it scornfully as just male rubbish. The third one smiles. “Anything you believe can work, can work,” she says.

N
orman’s Cay, to the south of Allan’s, is a long, skinny upside-down U of low-lying coral and sand covered with scrubby vegetation. Between the arms of the U, near its open end, a DC-3 lies three-quarters submerged in a few feet of water, a short snorkel from where
Receta
is anchored in a deeper portion of the cut. In the late seventies and early eighties, Norman’s was a transshipment center for the Medellin cartel; the DC-3 was making a delivery, and didn’t quite make it to the airstrip.

So much drug money passed through the cay in those years—$3 billion worth of cocaine, so the story goes—that the cash was weighed, not counted. The Bahamian government of the time was persuaded to turn a blind eye, and visitors were discouraged; bullet holes from the discouragement are visible in the derelict, overgrown buildings near the water’s edge.

Eventually, the DEA convinced the Bahamians to take action, the cartel was forced out, and the cay abandoned.

“We can’t go in for a beer,” Steve says with dismay. “We don’t have any money.” We’re both staring at a minuscule, palm frond–roofed bar and a handful of pastel cottages that shimmer like a mirage in the afternoon heat on the supposedly deserted cay. A sign warns us to look both ways before crossing the old drug-runners’ airstrip, which lies between us and the mirage. A couple of small planes—not at all mirage-like—are tethered on the scrub at the edge of its cracked concrete. On the other side, the overgrown vegetation turns abruptly into tended grounds, tropical plantings, and conch shell–lined walks; the open ocean glitters behind the buildings.

We’ve come to shore for an afternoon walk because once again the wind is blowing stink and
Receta
is hobbyhorsing on her anchor chain, making it less than comfy onboard. We’re stiff from the previous night’s sleep too—since we had to continually tense our muscles to keep from being tossed around in our berth like sacks of potatoes. To work out the kinks, we’d first gone on a snorkeling (and conching) expedition, but cut it short when the waves and current made it more work than fun. So we threw on dryish shorts and Ts, and ran the dinghy up on the beach to explore the deserted cay instead—without even a dollar in our pockets. Why would we bring money when our guidebooks assure us there’s nothing at all here beyond the derelict, pockmarked vestiges of the drug-running era? And then, about a half-mile up the cay’s cratered road, we stumble on this. “MacDuff’s,” a Scottie dog–shaped sign says.

The surreal watering hole is still there when we return late the next afternoon with cash. Inside, the blond, heavily tanned guy behind the bar wears a tank top and a tiny Speedo and grooves to Jimmy Buffett. In fact, Dale Harshbarger even
looks
like Jimmy Buffett. Our request for Kaliks completely wipes out the supply of the Bahamian beer in his cooler. Business has been brisk recently, he says, and it’s hard to calculate how much he’ll need at his tiny, just-getting-going bar, when patrons must fly in on their own planes or sail in on their own boats and then happen upon the place.

Ponytailed and laidback all the way to the sixties, the bikini-clad Dale makes popcorn while I slowly extract his story, my old journalism antennae quivering. A pilot himself, he had been flying around in the early nineties—he mentions the words “midlife crisis” at this point—trying to find a piece of property with beach on one side and an airstrip on the other, when he spotted a little ad in an aviation magazine for this spot on Norman’s Cay. He bought it and set to work turning it into an outpost of Margaritaville, fixing it up bit by bit while getting the word out to pilots that they’d no longer be greeted by guns if they landed. The bar opened just a couple of months back, and its spiritual inspiration, Jimmy Buffett himself, had already visited in the flesh, landing his plane on the weed-sprouting airstrip. Or so the sole other patron of the bar this afternoon—who, no surprise, is also a pilot—tells us when Dale wanders off.

“You didn’t have to worry about not having money,” he says. Dale is already accustomed to running chits for unsuspecting cruisers who come ashore and then stumble on the bar as we did, parched and penniless.

The next evening, MacDuff’s is positively packed—granted, it takes only eight bodies to pack the place. Local pilots Mike and Mike, who occupy two of the stools, have done a run to Nassau in their plane and picked up a fresh supply of the desperately needed Kalik. They’re introduced by their nicknames, which reflect what people here usually say to them: “I Need a This” and “I Need a That.” They’ve also picked up a sack of groceries for Mary and Scott, off the sailboat
Partner-Ship
, who occupy two more of the stools. They’ve been here before, and needed this and needed that and knew enough to ask. Yesterday’s pilot is back again, this time with his wife, and they fill the other end of the bar. CNN Weather flickers on the satellite TV, and although the volume’s turned way down—you don’t interfere with the Buffett tunes—it still commands regular attention from this group of pilots and sailors.

Until, that is, the satellites cut out. The sky has blackened, and one of those regular squalls begins to hammer the building, rain dancing on the palm fronds and slanting through the screens. No windows that close in this bar. And in short order, water is pouring through the unfinished cupola at the center of the roof. The regulars calmly adjust their stools to avoid the deluge (mostly unsuccessfully), don the rain gear they’ve cleverly brought along, and continue to drink their beers. Dale continues to serve behind the bar—but with one hand now, since the other is holding a large open umbrella. “Your personal Mary Poppins,” he says. “Louvers for the roof are on the list, but they’re way behind a steady supply of Kalik.”

I Need a This (or is it I Need a That?) launches into a tale of another storm, featuring fallen trees and downed power lines. But Dale’s generator continues to crank without interruption—at least until, several Kaliks later, the rain slackens enough for Steve and me to trot the half-mile back across the airstrip and down the now deeply puddled road, past the shot-up buildings to the beach and our dinghy, me laughing—and weaving—the whole way.

Cracked Conch

This dish is well worth a bit of mess in the galley. Fresh conch is sometimes available in specialty fish markets and in some Asian grocery stores; ask your local fishmonger if he or she can order it for you.

4 large conch, cleaned

4 limes

2 large eggs

1⁄2 cup water

Hot sauce

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 cup dried bread crumbs, cracker meal, finely crushed corn flakes, or matzoh meal

1⁄2 cup vegetable oil (approx.)

1. Slice conch lengthwise into thin slices and then pound the slices until they are almost translucent. Squeeze the juice from two of the limes over the sliced conch and allow to sit for a few minutes.

2. Mix eggs, water, a few dashes of hot sauce, and salt and pepper in a bowl.

3. Combine crumbs and more salt and pepper on a plate or in a plastic bag.

4. Dip a few pieces of prepared conch in the egg mixture, then in the crumbs. Shake off excess.

5. Heat a shallow layer of oil in a large skillet. Fry a few slices of the conch just until golden. Repeat with the remaining slices, adding more oil to the skillet as necessary.

6. Drain on paper towels. Serve with the remaining limes, cut into quarters, and hot sauce.

Serves 4

Tips

• The cracked conch can be deep-fried if desired.

• Bahamians often dip and fry the whole conch without slicing it. Simply pound it until it is double its original size and then marinate it for an hour in lime juice and a bit of chopped hot pepper before cooking.

Perry and Noel’s “Tastes Like Lobster” Conch

If you can’t get fresh conch, try this recipe with monkfish. A firm-textured fish with a mild, sweet flavor, monkfish is sometimes called “poor man’s lobster”—making it an appropriate choice for this dish. Monkfish will require about double the time on the grill.

4 tablespoons butter

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

4 large conch, cleaned and tenderized

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 sweet green or red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 tomato, diced

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1⁄4 cup white wine

1. Butter four large pieces of heavy aluminum foil. Sprinkle each with a little of the sliced garlic.

2. Put one of the cleaned and tenderized conch on each piece of foil. Top each with 1⁄4 of the onion, pepper, and tomato, and the rest of the garlic. Dot with remaining butter, season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with the white wine.

3. Tightly seal the packages and cook on a preheated barbecue for about 8–10 minutes.

Serves 4

Bahamian Peas ’n’ Rice

“Every cook have his own recipe,” one of the friendly young fishermen on the boat
Heaven Sent
said when he gave me the basics of his version of this staple side dish. The “peas” are the small speckled-brown pigeon peas grown in backyard gardens throughout the islands, closer to black-eyed peas in look and taste than the sweet green variety. They are mostly sold canned or dried.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 small onion, diced

1⁄4 cup chopped celery

1⁄4–1⁄2 small hot pepper, seeded and finely chopped (or to taste)

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup cooked pigeon peas or black-eyed peas

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme or 1⁄2 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper

11⁄2 cups water

1 cup uncooked rice

Hot sauce

1. In a heavy pot, heat oil. Cook onion, celery, and hot pepper for a few minutes until softened but not browned.

2. Add tomato paste and cook for 2–3 minutes.

3. Stir in pigeon peas, thyme, salt, and pepper. Add water and bring mixture to a boil. Stir in rice, reduce heat, and cook, covered, over low heat until water is absorbed and rice is done to taste, about 20–25 minutes.