Squash Talkari

My family are from the Caribbean, but I can't say I'm very familiar with Trinidadian cuisine. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been all too creative with my recipes recently, and I’ve found myself sticking to my staples. It’s simply been out of convenience but being busy shouldn’t be an excuse to not try more of what I love. So, after a bit of digging, I found a recipe for pumpkin talkari, a Trinidadian classic, often served with a side of roti. I hadn’t heard of it beforehand, and it looked a bit different to any sort of stew style dish I’ve made before.

Unfortunately for me, there was no pumpkin about, so I had to compromise with butternut squash. How much of a difference using pumpkin instead of squash would have made? I’m not sure, but I am keen to have another go at this one to make it perfect.

The recipe I followed was by Cooking with Ria, as you can find below:

https://cookingwithria.com/2013/11/trinidad-pumpkin-recipe.html

The ingredients really are as simple as:

• 1 large pumpkin (I used butternut squash)

• 9 cloves garlic

• 1 medium onion
• 6 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1 scotch bonnet
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. sugar

I served mine with coconut milk flatbreads, so I had some milk leftover, which I added to the talkari. I also decided to add 1 tbsp. all-purpose seasoning, which I’m sure took away from the authenticity of this dish, but nonetheless tasted amazing.

In reflection, I probably could have mashed up my squash a bit more. I noticed my chunks were quite large and there was still a bit of a bite. From what I’ve seen, there seems to be more of a mash consistency with a lot of the recipes. Regardless, I’m still deciding to share my take on this recipe as it was something new and it came out a success. I’m definitely excited to learn and try more Indo-Trinidadian and Tobagonian inspired meals in the future.