pom rising.

Image stolen from Wikipedia.

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I've been putting off an in-depth pom post for gee almost two years now because I just know it has the potential to be a time-consuming suckhole, but apparently it's Go Time because Surinamese food is somehow enjoying a bit of a surge in press coverage, more than just the annual Kwakoe reminders. Pom is everywheres all of the sudden. I could just spit.

I would say that maybe it's that the widespread explosion of food writing on the internet is just finally reaching us here, and many foodies in our little neck of the woods are interested in our local version of Caribbean food...but, there are two new Surinamese/Indische cookbooks out this year, just about doubling the number of readily available Suriname cookbooks on the market. So what I'm saying is...it's not just 'net writing.

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I was pushed (and kicked, frankly) into starting this post last week when, while flipping channels during an idle moment of waiting for Mara's pain medicine to kick in, I bumbled across a Pom Cook-Off in Amsterdam on AT5 that I knew nothing about (it was on a cooking program called etenmetbianca, there should be a video from that episode up soon). That's seriously stupid, since pom is where my interest in Surinamese food began. It's as if someone dreamed up an ideal food event just for me and then didn't tell me about it.

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Let's backtrack for the uninitiated or previously uninterested. As detailed here in earlier posts, pom is a well-known oven casserole party dish from Suriname (formerly Dutch Guyana), made from chicken parts, citrus juices, and a root vegetable called pomtajer in Dutch, or malanga or new cocoyam in English. It has its roots in the cooking of slaves on Jewish sugar plantations in Suriname. According to at least Debra from Culiblog (and who knows where she stole this information from)(i'm totally kidding), Pom is "reminiscent of an Ashkenazic potato kugel". The slaves, not having access to their own potatoes, grew tubers on the sly, most successfully when it was a tuber their owners had no interest in, such as....the pomtajer.

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The most remarkable thing about the overall sensation of eating pom is that, for such a simple homestyle dish, it has a complex flavor that doesn't really remind you of any one thing. The first impression is an intriguing mixture of sour/tart citrus with a rich, sweet buttery note from the, well, butter...combined with a bit of earthy smokiness from the zoutvlees or spek. And the pomtajer itself is terrific, with a texture kind of something like soft polenta and a taste that's hard to pin down. When I first had it, it was on a toasted baguette with pickles and a swipe of scotch bonnet sambal...the much-maligned broodje pom. Anyway, I was smitten from the first bite.

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When I first became a pom stalker, I scoured the internet for information, and folks let me tell you it was slim pickins. Maybe 10 pages total. That was back in 2003 or so. Cut to veritable pom press explosion in progress: Culiblog's post on pom was the first time I realized that there was "new pom work" afoot. Which led me to Karin Vaneker's Pom op het menu. Which led me to Pom in Nederland. Which is leading me to all kinds of other places. Eventually, though, I hope that all of this will lead me down to the Bijlmer during my eGullet foodblog week, where I can visit Imagine IC and the Pom op het menu exhibition in person.

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