Party time in Guyana to celebrate Mashramani.
Mashramani, or Mash, is the most colorful festival of the year, that celebrates Guyana becoming a republic on Februrary 23, 1970.
The word “Mashramani” originates from an Amerindian language, translating to “the celebration of a job well done.”
Mash begins with the chutney, soca and the Calypso (junior and senior) competitions, followed by the children’s Mash activities, masquerade and steel band, media jump up, concert for the elderly, and the bright up Guyana competition. (Caribbean Blue Book)
Lots of great recipes to choose from this week. Pretty meat-centric, so I whipped up a few seitan loafs, using the chicken marinades in the seitan dough. Love this technique and you can expect to see some more unique seitan flavors in the future.
I made a curry chicken with imported Guyanese spices, and also a Guyanese style fried rice. Angela made chow mien, and Ann made a chickpea curry. Another delicious week. We may have to do Guyana again soon because I’ve got a ton of their seasons and spices now.
Guyanese Chicken Seitan
I made two styles of seitan this week with the marinades from the recipes I chose. The fried rice chicken called for a green season (which I made fresh, link here), and cassareep. Cassareep initially was looking as it was going to be hard to find. I called all kinds of West Indian grocers, and all of them didn’t know what I was talking about. I googled Guyanese restaurants here in Orlando and found one. Called there for a suggestion and she said to try Caribbean Supermarket over in Pine Hills. Well, now I’m in love with another ethnic grocery store, and hope I can try everything on their shelves! The hot sauce selection, oh my.
So this is what my seitan looked like after a good kneading.
I planned to add both the green season and the cassareep to the liquid mixture of the seitan, but I forgot the cassareep! So I took about a tablespoon of it and rubbed the raw loaf with the sticky goodness, then folded it in. This marble is the result. Quite beautiful.
I also made the chicken for the curry chicken with the marinade suggested. With this one I made a “milkshake” out of onion, garlic, habanero, and thyme. Queue Simon and Garfunkel.
I also added some curry powder and garam masala imported from Guyana. This blog that I got the recipe from insisted that the spices had a different blend, so I took their advice and bought some even though I had Indian versions of both. I use enough of both that they surely won’t go to waste!
Tossed these bad boys in my instant pot for 45 minutes and they came out perfect. Love that Instant Pot!!
I’ll throw the recipes for both the seitans on the bottom of this page.
Fried Rice
So, besides making my own chicken from scratch without having to kill any sweet little birdies, I followed this recipe for Guyanese Style Fried Rice.
Curry Chicken
Chicken and potato curry with all those imported spices. This one had a heat that snuck up on ya. The sauce came out really thick, which made it look a little, well ugly. Kind of a ‘duh’ moment when heating up leftovers, I just added a little water and it reconstituted into a lovely gravy again. Woops. Live and learn.
So that’s all I made, here are some more photos of some of the other dishes made this week by some of my lovely guests. Click the photos for a link to their original inspiration recipe.
Click this link below to see the Instagram feed from Mash. It looks like one hell of a party. Gorgeous costumes, beautiful women, dancing. Check it out!
- 1.5 cup vital wheat gluten
- 1/4 cup chickpea flour
- 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 1 tsp poultry seasons
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 3 tbsp green seasons
- 1.5 cup cold water
- 1 tsp chick'n broth powder
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp cassareep
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Whisk all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
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In a 2 cup measuring cup, add 3 heaping tablespoons of green seasons. From there, fill the cup up with water until you reach 1.5 cups. Add a heaping tsp of bouillon and 2 tablespoons oil, and whisk together. You can also add the cassareep here if you desire. I had planned to but forgot, rubbed it on afterwards and got a nice marble effect.
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Pour the wet ingredients into your dry bowl and mix together until the bowl is clean. At this point move to a cutting board and knead for 2-3 minutes keeping a rectangular shape.
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Let rest for about 10 minutes, then cover with cassareep and give it another quick fold and knead.
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Divide into 2 loaves, and wrap in aluminum foil. For these I did a flat loaf and folded the sides.
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Add a cup of water to your pressure cooker and steam for 45 minutes, then natural pressure release. If you don't have a pressure cooker, but steam it on your stovetop.
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Let the loaves cool completely before cutting if you want thin shavings.