Grenada and the Nutmeg

When I found out that Grenada was the second largest producer of nutmeg in the world I became obsessed with picking my own nutmeg from the tree!

As part of our island tour we stopped at the Gouyave Nutmeg Processing Plant.  From the outside an ordinary shabby building not holding much promise of the size and enormity of its position to process this special little spice used all over the world and held in such esteem with home cooks and professional chefs alike.

As we entered the air was permeated with the faintly familiar smell that would conjure up all sort of mind pictures of mum and grandma baking or a rice pudding in the oven for Sunday tea time. 

I knew that mace was a spice directly associated with nutmeg and that it grew around the nutmeg but I never knew that nutmeg and mace grew inside a small apricot looking fruit.

Mace grows around the outer shell of the nutmeg but inside the nutmeg fruit.  I had only really used mace in pumpkin pie and other pumpkin baked dishes but didn’t know much more about it.

A visit to the Guaye Nutmeg Processing Plant put things into perspective and was really educational.

A nutmeg tree takes up to 30 years to reach maturity so imagine the destruction and devastation caused in 2004 when hurricane Ivan swept through the Caribbean and quite out of character passed through Grenada.  The whole island was devastated and in really rough shape and the nutmeg trees decimated. It has taken a long time for them to recover.

Since then (2004) the island has worked really hard to rebuild their nutmeg producing status during the long slow process back to production.

A lot of farmers have nutmeg trees on their land and they collect the nutmeg and bring it to the processing station in large amounts to be dried and processed.  The farmers remove the mace and bring that in a few weeks later in large bags of the bright red ranging to yellow spice.

The nutmeg is laid out in long multi-tiered trays and left to dry in the open air which takes about a month.  They are turned regularly to ensure the drying is even.

 

At the processing station there are bags and bags of nutmegs at different stages in the process.

 

We also saw bags of mace waiting for processing and bagging up for shipment.

When the nutmeg (which is still inside its shell) is dry enough it is sent by hoppa to the ladies that crack the outer shell, leaving mountains of cracked shell discarded on the floor.  All over the island hotels, restaurants, cocoa farms and more sprinkle the cracked shell on the ground or around trees and shrubs.  The shells act as a sort of mulch, breaking down in time to feed the soil underneath.  One of the side effects of scattering the shells around is the crunch and smell of nutmeg as you walk over it.

 

The ladies cracking the shells sit and chat to each other quietly as if humming a secret song.

 

The nutmegs are sent around the world in large bags, each stencilled with the destination country where they are going.  

The bagging station has loads of stencils that seem to have a history and story of their very own.

I bought enough nutmeg home with me to last a life time.  In fact if fresh and in the shells it should last around 10 years and cracked open about 3 years.  How long has the nutmeg in your cupboard been there?

What to use it for, sprinkle liberally on top of rice puddings and other milk puddings is the most traditional way. In Grenada they use it everywhere, puddings, stews, drinks all have a background of nutmeg.  They make a sticky sweet nutmeg syrup to pour into drinks and over ice cream and even use the fruit that the nutmeg comes out of for jam and jelly!  

I had wanted to pick my own nutmeg from the tree and would get to do this when I was a cocoa farmer for the day so look out for that post coming soon.

I was a guest of the Grenada Tourist Authority. All opinions and photos are my own. 

Grenada; Island Paradise - part 2

Grenada is an island paradise that I was invited to visit and to blog about upon my return home. The southern tip of the island lies along the line 12oN of the Equator offering it a pretty stable climate averaging around 23oC/80oF year long making it a perfect place to grow chocolate!

I was there, along with Mr R and a group of journalists and bloggers for The 2nd Annual Grenada Chocolate Festival. Chocolate Festival host hotel, True Blue Bay Resort was the setting for the opening of the 2^nd annual Grenada Chocolate Festival. Last year was such a success that Mexican born Magdalena Fielden and her British husband Russ repeated the event which although mostly based at True Blue Bay Resort also had events taking place at other locations on the island.

The opening ceremony was attended by Grenada's dignitaries such as Grenada Governor  General Daime Cecile La Grenade, Hon Minister of Culture Mrs Brenda Hood and Minister of Implementation Hon Mrs Alexzandra Otway-Noel as Magdalena welcomed everyone and declared the 2^nd annual Grenada Chocolate Festival open!

The events included Yoga Chocolate Meditation Session, not my cup of chocolate; 

True Blue Bay have a micro brewery on the premises and they had a chocolate beer especially made for the festival.  Mr R really liked it but he is a beer drinker.  I tasted it and the chocolate flavour was subtle and inviting - you sort of looked for the bowl of chocolate!

Healthy Benefits of Chocolate Hands on Workshop where we got to meet and listen to Ana Rita Garcia Lascurain who had travelled from the MUCHO-Chocolate Museum in Mexico City to share her passion and immense knowledge of chocolate with us and getting some of the audience to participate (yup, you guessed it I did help!);

A chance for the energetic and fit to participate in a Chocolate Hash. I thought this was food but in fact it is a run high into the rain forest and back and you get to eat chocolate at the end.  I didn’t feel this was for me so Mr R and I chilled out at the pool and the bar – that’s a surprise!

One of the highlights of the Chocolate Festival was a day at Belmont Estate with a bean to bar tour, fantastic chocolate lunch and cocoa & chocolate tasting worship.  Belmont Estate grows the cocoa beans that The Grenada Chocolate Company turn into fine grade chocolate which is available to buy at select retailers in the UK!  Belmont Estate and The Grenada Chocolate Company will be talked about further in a future post – there is too much to fit in here.

Dinner at the renowned Calabash Hotel, one of the luxury hotels on the island, whose restaurant menu was designed and is overlooked by Chef Gary Rhodes.  Director Adele Garbutt, daughter of the owner of Calabash Hotel treated us to unique island food and great hospitality.

The final day of our first week (most of the group were only staying one week but Mr R, myself and one other blogger were staying for a second week) we had a chocolate tasting conducted by Mexican expert Chocolatier Ana Rita Garcia Lascurain, learning how to eat chocolate and appreciate it as it is meant to be appreciated. None of this unwrap the Mars bar and eat it in three bites stuff!

We made our own lunch under the guidance of the well known Grenadian chefs, Esther and Omega and sat down together to eat our Curried Chicken Stew with Chocolate.  Delicious and really interesting as you wouldn’t necessarily know it contained chocolate just that it was an intriguing flavour.

Then with the sun overhead we waved goodbye to the members of our group who were heading home, went to the bar Doggy Dock and planned to have a pizza for supper.  We had eaten more in the first week than normal and were full to the gills!

Already I had unique experiences but it was to be next week that would change my life – keep an eye out for the blog post of my day as a chocolate farmer and a visit to a local primary school.

I was a guest of the Grenada Tourist Authority.  As usual all opinions and photos are my own or taken by Mr R unless otherwise stated.

Grenada; Spice Island Paradise - part 1

When I was invited to visit Grenada by the Grenada Tourist Authority I really didn’t know what to expect. Grenada is one of three islands along with Carriacou and Petit Martinique. Grenada is also known as The Spice Island and this was a dream of mine to visit and pick my own spices.

I had been to The Caribbean before, visiting Barbados many times which is why I expected it to be more or less the same. It was similar but nowhere near the same!

I had been told by friends who had been there before that it would be a life changing visit and how they were right!  I want to give you a brief account of my visit and will go into greater details about some of the places we visited in subsequent blog posts the subjects of which are highlighted in red below (hopefully you will be waiting with baited breath for the next installments!).

Time seemed to stand still whilst we (Mr R was able to come with me) waited for the day to arrive for our trip and the prospect of a long flight was not a pleasant idea but you have to experience some of what you don’t like to find paradise and Grenada is truly an island paradise.

The main purpose of our trip was to experience all the island had to offer and coincided with The 2^nd Annual Grenada Chocolate Festival, however we arrived a few days before the festival started which gave a chance to experience more island hospitality.

We were greeted at the airport with platters of Grenadian chocolate and a hint of the smiles and hospitality to come.

The first three nights we stayed at Blue Horizons, a stunning property owned and managed by a family whose roots were in the hospitality business for many years.  The Blue Horizons is a series of detached and semi-detached self-contained villas.  Ours was up a path, quite steep for my liking, but you are rewarded when you got to the villa by spectacular views of the surrounds.  We stayed for three nights enjoying a breakfast menu which highlighted the fresh fruit and local ingredients we would get so used to by the time we departed the island.

One evening the owner, Mr Arnold Hopkin, entertained us to a meal at the restaurant on the premises, La Belle Epoque.  Arnold kept us entertained with stories of island life including the hurricane Ivan in 2004 which almost decimated the island.

Our itinerary was jam packed, and on the day following arrival we embarked on an island tour that even the most intrepid travellers would have been exhausted at the end.

We visited Concord Waterfall, nestled on the way up an extremely windy, narrow road.  Concord is one of 7 natural waterfalls on Grenada.

Second stop was the Gouyave Nutmeg Processing Station.  Grenada is the second largest producer of nutmeg in the world and one of the main reasons I was excited about this trip.  I wanted to pick my own nutmeg off the tree which I would get the chance to do in our second week.

First all of the farmers send their nutmeg to the processing station followed a few weeks later by the mace.  Mace is a lesser known spice that grows around the nutmeg inside the nutmeg fruit but more of that later in the nutmeg blog post.

I have never seen so much nutmeg in my life (in fact I usually only see a row of 6-8 bottles of 4 nutmegs in the supermarkets at any one time!) but here was hundreds and hundreds of thousands of nutmegs in one place and from only one month’s harvest!

Back to our transport and a tour of Crayfish Bay Organic Farmers Enterprise awaited us. Owner Kim Russell and his wife Lylette welcomed us to their property and Kim took us on a slightly shortened tour as we were running late, giving us cocoa farming in a cocoa shell (small joke there) and finishing with a drink of cocoa tea and the most chocolatey chocolate cake I have ever tasted!  

I planned to return to Crayfish Bay to take part in the Bean to Bar – be a cocoa farmer for a day program later on in the chocolate festival which I will go into detail later.

The next stop was the River Antonine Rum Distillery, a rum plantation still extracting, fermenting and distilling in the old fashioned way and producing the strongest rum I have ever tasted.  

The 75% abv was so strong that you cannot export it as the airlines won’t accept anything that flammable on board!  They make a slightly weaker product 63% abv for export although most of their rum is consumed on the island!

All this and it was still our first full day on the island!

The following day we set out for the Aquatics Grenada Dive Centre to depart to the Underwater Sculpture Park we would spend the morning snorkeling around.  The water was warm, beautiful blue and so clear we could see loads of local fish on our way to the sculptures.

Lunch stop was in the centre of St Georges, the island capital, at BB’s Crab Back, sitting right on the waterside with a pleasant off-shore breeze to keep us cool.  The food was great and I want to go into more detail on my restaurant round-up so please forgive me for not indulging you with photos of our delicious lunch.

After a quick shower and change we departed our hotel, for dinner and a chocolate buffet at Sandals La Source Grenada.  Sandals, a luxury couples resort well known in the Caribbean hosted us in their Japanese Teppanyaki restaurant Kimonos where we were treated to food theatre Japanese style and where the audience got to eat the theatre creations!

The chocolate buffet is a Thursday night entertainment feature of Sandals where the guests are asked to wear white if possible.  I was lucky enough to have loads in my wardrobe to pick from – my mother always insisting that we have a white collection when we traveled to hot climates!  Mr R and I had lovely chocolate martinis which the photo shows we were enjoying immensely!

Our next stop was a visit around St George’s and it’s environs before returning to our hotel to make the transfer to the Chocolate Festival host hotel, True Blue Bay Resort.  The afternoon we chilled our in our nearest pool then got ready for the opening of the 2^nd annual Grenada Chocolate Festival.

I was a guest of the Grenada Tourist Authority and was not required to write a positive review, only to enjoy myself.  As usual all opinions and photos are my own or taken by Mr R unless otherwise stated.