Serving Guyana’s egg balls in Trinidad

CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

When you see au­then­tic Guyanese egg balls, white and black pud­ding on James the Pie Man’s ta­ble on In­de­pen­dence Square one can eas­i­ly mis­take the lo­ca­tion for a busy street cor­ner in his home­land of Guyana, where those two most icon­ic street foods can be found.

He brings some of Guyana’s rich food cul­ture to Trinida­di­ans, his coun­try­men and food­ies alike at his lo­ca­tion on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, op­po­site the Capt Arthur Cipri­ani stat­ue, near the un­of­fi­cial Diego Mar­tin taxi stand.

Com­muters, peo­ple from all walks of life, school chil­dren, mo­torists, and taxi dri­vers all stop to buy from Mon­day to Sat­ur­day. Apart from egg balls and pud­ding, he sells a wide se­lec­tion of de­li­cious pies and gen­uine man­go sour/chut­ney.

Egg balls and white and black pud­ding are quin­tes­sen­tial Guyanese snack foods and are sold by many ven­dors in the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

The pop­u­lar Guyanese snacks take skill to make and James, who on­ly gave his first name, has mas­tered the culi­nary tech­niques. He is as­sist­ed some­times by his wife and son.

When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed James on the Prom­e­nade, the in­ter­view was con­duct­ed with in­ter­mit­tent breaks for the pop­u­lar ven­dor to serve his steady stream of cus­tomers.

James said “Egg ball can be de­scribed as the health­i­er Guyanese ver­sion of the Eng­lish Scotch egg, their boiled egg is wrapped in sausage meat, coat­ed in bread­crumbs and then baked or deep-fried.

Egg balls

“The Guyanese egg ball us­es sea­soned cas­sa­va to wrap around the boiled egg, then deep fried un­til gold­en brown, and a good chef makes sure that the cas­sa­va is soft, tasty and melts in your mouth while the egg is not over­cooked.

“White pud­ding orig­i­nat­ed in Ire­land, Scot­land, then spread to Great Britain. Guyanese made white pud­ding their own, and in­stead of us­ing oat­meal or bread­crumbs, we use rice, sea­soned with a lot of fresh herbs like big and small leaf thyme, and some­times onion.

“An­oth­er dif­fer­ence be­tween Guyanese pud­ding and Trinidad pud­ding is that it does not in­clude blood; co­conut milk is sub­sti­tut­ed for the blood, it’s cut up and served with man­go sour (chut­ney) that is paired with most Guyanese street food and is re­al nice.”

He said Mar­tinique al­so has its ver­sion of white and black pud­ding, called Boudin Blanc and Boudin Cre­ole that us­es what the coun­try has in abun­dance; seafood.

James said that the Mar­tini­quan white sausage is made with­out blood and is stuffed with ei­ther prawns, crabs, conch, fish or veg­eta­bles while the Boudin Cre­ole is sim­i­lar to the Trinida­di­an black pud­ding made from pork, pig’s blood, onion, bread­crumbs and herbs.

He learned to make egg balls, white and black pud­ding and pies from home eco­nom­ics school, and the fam­i­ly used to have a cook shop run by his un­cle in Kit­ty in George­town, Guyana.

While many ven­dors raised their prices long be­fore the lat­est in­crease in flour and oth­er in­gre­di­ents, James on­ly re­cent­ly raised his pie prices from $5 to $6. How­ev­er, some­times he has spe­cials on his pies for peo­ple who are ‘short’ on cash or hard up, chil­dren and when it’s get­ting late.

James said that he tried to make a small prof­it as he is aware that peo­ple are strug­gling and he tries to put him­self in their shoes.

Re­gard­ing the crack­down on vend­ing in the city, he said that he was out there on the streets sell­ing his prod­ucts for sev­er­al years. He wished that Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez could reg­u­larise most ven­dors will­ing to pay a min­i­mal fee to be able to sell in the city as he be­lieves that they can as­sist in keep­ing the cap­i­tal clean.