Cassava pone takes me right back to my childhood in Trinidad. It’s something I remember eating at my grandmother’s house and when we went visiting family at Christmas and, in my late teens, sleeping over at old school friends’ houses and having Sunday lunch after waking up late due to us being out ’til all hours the previous night.
Our local Morrisons supermarket recently underwent a refurbishment and as part of it extended their fresh fruit & veg ranges to include much more exotic fare. Incredible Edible might be rubbing off a bit! Along with things like white asparagus, samphire, 7 kinds of mushrooms and 3 kinds of aubergine, they’ve started stocking cassava! One of our favourite mantras is, “Use it, or lose it”. We don’t want Morrisons thinking that the people of Todmorden aren’t interested in their new & improved selection and revert to the bad old days where there was just stacks of potatoes & carrots. I bought some cassava this week to have a go at making pone for the very first time.
Cassava pone
Ingredients
- 3 cups grated cassava
- 1½ cups grated coconut
- ½ cup grated pumpkin
- 1½ cups granulated sugar
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon or mixed spice
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1½ tsp black pepper
- 3 cups milk or water
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/Gas mark 4
- Mix cassava, coconut and pumpkin in a large bowl
- Add sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and black pepper
- Add milk to ingredients and combine well
- Pour into a greased shallow pan 30cm x 20cm x 5cm
- Bake for 1-1¼ hours
- Allow to cool before slicing into squares and serve
I followed the recipe from a book I bought on our last trip to T&T entitled, The Multi-Cultural Cuisine of Trinidad & Tobago & the Caribbean. Instead of using a hand grater I chose the easy option and used my food processor with its 4mm grater attachment – a mistake! The bits of coconut were too big and the texture of the pone was coarse and a bit chewy. The flavour was great though. Next time, I’ll use the 2mm attachment – or bite the bullet and do all that grating by hand!