San­coche Bhagee is more than a dish, it’s a melt­ing pot. To­day when we hear “bhagee” we think of dasheen bush and lit­tle else. But Pe­ter Pariag, who wrote about East In­di­an cui­sine back in 1975, de­scribed bhagee as con­sist­ing pak­choi, mus­tard leaves, poi leaves, dasheen leaves, young sweet pota­to leaves, young cas­sa­va leaves, young pump­kin leaves and more! Yet such a lush blend­ing of var­i­ous veg­eta­bles was not born from rich­ness, but re­source­ful­ness.

Ne­ces­si­ty is of­ten the moth­er of in­no­va­tion and so the moth­ers and house­wives of the hum­ble bar­racks of old Trinidad would for­age to­geth­er what­ev­er was avail­able to feed their fam­i­lies. While some may look at bhagee as par­tic­u­lar­ly un­re­mark­able, like many Caribbean meals, it is steeped in the tri­als of our colo­nial past. It demon­strates the enor­mous in­ge­nu­ity of Caribbean peo­ple who quite lit­er­al­ly had to make the most out of the lit­tle they had. At some point they must’ve re­called the word san­coche, the name of a soup made from var­i­ous veg­eta­bles and ground pro­vi­sions and as­so­ci­at­ed its mean­ing with “con­sist­ing a va­ri­ety or pletho­ra of in­gre­di­ents”. This makes the name san­coche bhagee a mis­nomer since san­coche ac­tu­al­ly comes from Span­ish san­cochar – ‘to par­boil’ and has noth­ing to do with a mix­ture or va­ri­ety.

The recipe here is for a sim­pli­fied San­coche Bhagee us­ing on­ly three dif­fer­ent leaves: dasheen leaves, pump­kin leaves and spinach. Dasheen Bush, al­so called Taro leaves, are com­mon across Trinidad and To­ba­go for mak­ing bhagee, callaloo, sa­heena etc. They are an ex­cel­lent source of di­etary ni­trates that help main­tain healthy blood pres­sure and are high in fiber.

Lo­cal Spinach, usu­al­ly of the va­ri­ety ama­ran­thus which is more rugged than im­port­ed va­ri­eties and may be iden­ti­fied by the oc­ca­sion­al splash of pur­ple on their leaves (Na­tion­al Herbar­i­um of Trinidad and To­ba­go). These are high in an­tiox­i­dants that boost eye health and mi­cronu­tri­ents like man­ganese and mag­ne­sium.

Pump­kin Leaves, these are more com­mon­ly eat­en in Africa and Asia and are a del­i­ca­cy in Italy. Pump­kin leaves are abun­dant with iron to boost your im­mune sys­tem and potas­si­um for a healthy heart rate.

San­coche Bhagee Recipe

IN­GRE­DI­ENTS

5 cups of dasheen bush (chopped)

10 cups of spinach (chopped)

5 cups of pump­kin leaves (chopped)

Young leaves are prefer­able since you will have to de-string the tough fi­bres from the stems of more ma­ture leaves.

8-10 gar­lic cloves (minced)

1 medi­um onion (chopped)

2 tb­sp oil

Hot pep­pers and salt to taste

DI­REC­TIONS

1 Heat the oil on medi­um heat

2 Sauté the gar­lic and onions with salt and pep­pers.

3 Add all the chopped leaves and mix to­geth­er so the oil dis­trib­utes even­ly.

4 Cov­er and cook on low to medi­um heat un­til soft.

5 The leaves should pro­duce a lot of wa­ter so cook un­til most has evap­o­rat­ed. How­ev­er, if you sus­pect it is too dry you can add a lit­tle wa­ter.

6 Serve with roti or white rice.

Ar­ti­cle and Recipe by Noor-ud-din Mo­hammed

Noor-ud-din Mo­hammed is a lin­guis­tics and com­mu­ni­ca­tions stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. Mo­ti­vat­ed by his pas­sion for healthy liv­ing, Noor shares de­li­cious recipes and ar­ti­cles fo­cused on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s di­verse cul­ture and cui­sine.