Obviously being so far out in the boondocks, adding variety to our diet can be a little difficult...especially considering the fact that the Plateau and surrounding areas are chronically plagued by drought. This, combined with that universal challenge called "budgeting," often inspires us to be creative in inventing new dishes using available ingredients (preferable grown by us).
And for me, I often feel keenly the relative absence of fruit and GREEN vegetables (I am frequently given to cravings of a huge bowl of fresh berries or an apple or kale or a green salad), so....
Voila! The latest creation: Green Papaya Salad with Roasted Vegetables
I knocked a green papaya (papay) off the tree in the back of the house and made it into strips with a vegetable peeler (apparently, this is a staple ingredient of a well-known Thai dish called som tum...just in case you like random information). Then I added grated chayote squash (militon) and moringa (doliv) leaves and flower buds (from the garden...I foresee a nice long post about moringa in the blog's future.) We were going to add cabbage (chou) too, but it didn't arrive in time from the market. The "greens" were tossed with Haitian vinaigrette.
This base was then topped with boiled potatoes (pòmdetè) and roasted pumpkin (jiwoumou...from the garden), onions (zonyon), and eggplant (berejènn), also drizzled with the vinaigrette.
The result: fresh, nutrition-packed, inexpensive, and tasty....although the green papaya is a bit chewy. In fact, we ended up having to chop it up, as the strips were too long and difficult to eat.
