The Gentle Winds of the Caribbean - Part I

Caribbean cooking is, in my opinion, crap. One of the few exceptions I know to this rule is Jamaican food, which is delicious across the board (more on that later, perhaps). It is a pity, because we live in northern Manhattan, in a neighbourhood teeming with Spanish-speaking Caribbeans, mostly Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, and of course with their food. Most of the Dominican food I have had has been monotonous variations on the theme of beans, rice, potato-like cassava, deep-fried plantains and animals that met their death in hot oil. Since the fundamental purpose of this fare is to keep alive a poor primary producer hoeing a stubborn patch of land, a white-collar worker slumped at a computer can eat it once a year at most, unless she wants to devote herself to sculpting her backside with a Jennifer Lopez style fitness ordeal.

A couple of years ago, on a winter holiday in Puerto Rico, we tried very hard to fall for the local food, but the only positive local experience was the lechonera stalls that Taikinapoika tracked down, where suckling pig was served straight off the grill. The rest of the time we were nourished by soulless American chain restaurants - though I still think wistfully of the chimichurri at an Argentinian restaurant in Ponce.

But as I was reading the Finnish food blog Polkkapossu and its hymn to the coconut, one more good food memory from Puerto Rico, or rather a drink memory, came back to me in the manner of a madeleine. It was our visit to the Bacardi rum factory in the suburbs of San Juan.

Bacardi is marketed, at great expense, to blue-rinsed cruise passengers on the time-honoured concept of drink this and you'll f*** more. While we waited for the multimedia-intensive mini-train factory tour, we were poured generous rum-based drinks, one of which has stayed in our permanent repertoire. It consists of a couple of ice cubes and a splash of Bacardi Coco. The glass is then filled with guava juice, the pulpier the better. From the internet I cannot tell whether Alko, the Finnish state liquor shop, sells this particular spirit, but a dash of oh-so-kitsch Malibu will presumably do the same job.

Guava juice can be found in nearly every bodega in our corner of town, in heavy Goya tins, and in Finland too, at Stockmann at least, if I remember rightly. Failing that, pineapple juice will stand in for guava, since Columbus first ran into the pineapple on one of Puerto Rico's neighbouring islands.

Unlike with many other tropical fruits, I really do know what kind of tree guavas grow on. One drowsy afternoon in Brazil I was languidly watching a tropical bird peck at a guava. In the next blink of an eye it had squirted my hair full of bird droppings very rich in guava. I had no proper handkerchief with me, so the kindly Brazilians were able to admire, for the length of a long and sweaty bus ride, how handsomely purple bird poo sets off fair hair.

Puerto Rico's other coconut-laden gift to the world is the piña colada, a dessert of a drink that easily replaces a meal. Some twenty permutations of the theme, adapted to Scandinavian tastes (and uses for the rest of the Malibu), can be had from some keen Danish bartenders.

To go with either drink I recommend some vintage television entertainment, as escapist as possible and preferably from the seventies or eighties. Flashdance has already been watched, so I can hardly wait for the postman to bring the DVD edition of the soap opera Dallas. Tom Cruise's Cocktail works too.