Green Banana Souse

For this recipe, we will make a vegetarian version of a pickled pork dish that is common throughout the southern Caribbean Islands. You will first need about two pounds of green bananas and this you can find at most any local supermarket. Place the bananas in a large pot of boiling water for about twenty five minutes and then remove them and allow to cool to room temperature. Peel the skins off and cut them crosswise into about half inch slices and place into a bowl. Add enough water to just cover the bananas in the bowl and add three tablespoons of lime juice, two cloves of crushed garlic, and one half cup of thinly sliced white onions. Then you can season this with one teaspoon of salt, on half teaspoon of chopped hot habanero pepper, and some fresh ground white pepper. Go further and add one cup of thinly sliced cucumbers and one half cup of fresh chopped water cress. Chill the souse for a few hours before serving. Normally, one would find this souse dish including meats like thinly sliced pieces of pork, fresh crab meat, fish, scallops or mussels. I have found the banana version to be just as tasty and delicious. Another treat I remember from the mid-summer memories of the past is stuffed okras. A simple recipe to make, from the little odds and ends from your home garden, this recipe will surely make your guests wonder what you have been reading this past week. Blend together or hand blend in a mortar and pestle one tablespoon finely chopped onions or green onions, which ever you prefer better. Also add to the blend two cloves of garlic, one half teaspoon of curry powder, one cup of finely chopped peeled and deveined shrimp, one half teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of hot pepper, and one tablespoon of parsley. Now you will also need about eighteen fresh and firm looking okras from the local supermarket or farmers market. Cut the top and the end of the okras and make a slit down the center with a paring knife. Put a little of the blended shrimp mixture inside each okra and after all are stuffed you can start to cook them. Heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a nonstick frying pan and place the okras together so that they are tightly packed. Sprinkle with a little salt, cover and cook for about fifteen minutes or until the okras are cooked but still firm. These make great appetizers for your summer parties and I suspect that some of the more ambitious readers will experiment this week and try cooking this recipe out on a grill, or under an oven broiler. Whichever way you try and succeed, you will find that trying new foods and cooking them not in accordance with the recipe, can result in failure, or some burnt dinner snacks. The banana raisin drink is one I would like to share, and it is more popular in the Eastern Caribbean islands like Grenada, St. Vincent and Barbados, you will need about one third of a cup of any kind of raisins. Also one and one half cups of water, eight ice cubes, two ripe peeled bananas, one teaspoon of vanilla extract, one and a quarter cups of evaporated milk, one quarter cup of rum, three quarters of a cup of granulated sugar to sweeten to taste and one teaspoon of grated or ground nutmeg. Combine the raisins, water and the ice cubes and put into a blender and process until the raisins and the ice cubes are crushed. Then add the bananas, the vanilla extract, the evaporated milk and the rum. Blend it for a few seconds until pureed and add a little more rum, when no one is looking now. Remove from the blender and sweeten with some sugar or condensed milk and place in the refrigerator until chilled. Serve in glasses sprinkled with nutmeg on the top. For garnish, you can skewer maraschino cherries, with banana slices and mango cubes onto a toothpick which is floated on the top of the glass and then doused with a next shot of rum.