Inner-views

Southern American’s are familiar with eating pickled pigs feet. However, way, way down south on the island of Tobago you’ll find a delicacy most lovers of fine cuisine love to munch on. Chicken foot souse.

 Have you ever wondered where your chicken’s feet went after the popular leg, breast, wings and thighs make it to your dinner plate? Well, my friend, they trot on down to Tobago where chicken foot is boiled and marinated in what the locals of Trinidad & Tobago call “souse.”

I imagine chicken foot is an ingenious food of enslaved Africans, as is the beloved and delicious so called weed of the American south, known as collard greens. Chicken feet being the only part of the chicken the Africans were allowed to take away from the big house. Today, I sure do love what the locals do with the chicken’s feet or “foot” or to be really down on the local chat…”trotters” as I was humorously corrected by a Tobagonian friend. All I know is that T&T cooks, sure can make them chicken feet (s) (more than one foot) dance!

So give me everything but the toe nails please…because I love T&T chicken foot souse!

As a youth growing up in North Philly, I enjoyed sucking and crunching on vinegary pickled pigs feet. The corner store sold them from a huge glass jar for a nickel. My mother never cooked pig’s feet or chitterlings in our home. She was from Louisiana and we thrived on spicy creole cooking, plenty of rice, well seasoned meats, fish and our traditional dish, gumbo. My mother did not cook or eat the throw away parts of the pig. Only the roast and ham was her choice. 

It was at the block parties were I able to seek out my friendly southern neighbors whose  roots were rooted and nurtured in “colored folk’s cuisine” so to speak, and I, the only one in my family, would enjoyed sitting on the stoop eating a deliciously marinated pickled pig feet along with my little rascal crew of playmates. 

I first found out about Chicken Foot 10 years ago. Every Saturday a lady would stand behind a table, in front of the Penny Saver market and sell pig souse and blood pudding. I also enjoyed the pickled pig souse until I found out I had a pork allergy. I don’t eat blood or want it in a pudding even if it looks like a sausage. I know it is enjoy it in many parts of the world, even my kinfolk in Louisiana eat it. But this story is about Chicken Foot. 

Years ago a friend showed me chicken feet souse in a white Styrofoam drinking cup. She held it like it was a cup of gold and offered me to try it. I was like, what is that and why? "It’s a souse, like pickled pig feet but with chicken feet."

So I gave it try, but as I gazed at the bony knuckled toes, I cringed and closed my eyes as I couldn’t bear seeing  THE FEET, so ugly, torn up n’ tattered. I shut my eye and nibbled , then crunched one little foot joint at a time, and ever since, I’m a chicken foot fanatic! With several chicken feet digested without any serious illness or stomach problems, I’ve become a chicken foot connoisseur.

On the island of Tobago, every Friday, Ms. M. fills orders and makes her rounds delivering her homemade chicken foot souse. The first time she dropped off my own, the driver side of her car floor was filled up to the seat with loose bills of TnT money. Her grandson sits in the back making sure the goods don’t spill over. Melva has plenty customers for a reason.

I looked for the recipe in Trinidad & Tobago’s very famous “Multicultural Cuisine of Trinidad & Tobago & the Caribbean Cook Book”, compiled by the Naparima Girls’ High School. Published in 1988 it’s still a number one best seller in T&T. No kitchen in T&T is worth its Palau or curry without a copy, brought or borrowed. Most woman who cook, use lots of fresh herbal seasonings.  Most woman and men cooks don’t use a cook book at all. Cooking is an intuitive art form handed down, generation to generation. Chicken feet souse recipe?

A simple recipe for pig souse is found in the appetizer section of the book. Chicken feet have yet to trot into the pages of an upscale gourmet cook book. So you substitute with chicken’s feet instead of pigs. “Trotters” as our friend Winston humorously calls them are my favorite finger food, for real. I dig in with my finger and can’t help eating the cucumbers, onion and maybe a nip of the scotch bonnet pepper that floats in the spritz of lime marinated juice. Yummy.

A pint size is only 25TT that’s about 4.50US. Sis. M. honked her horn this afternoon and her teenage son, handed mine over through the car window. I tell Ms. M I hear she makes cassava pone…she hands me a full pan of pone…cassava pone…wow…eating is a high art form down here. The smells and taste of everything called food that is here in T & T is out of this world! She charged me only 25TT for the pone, since don’t have a million dollars to give what it’s worth. Munching on these delicious little feet, got me chattin’ like a ‘bagoian already!

Yeah bouy! Once you get past the look of actually SEEING the three long little bony toes protruding out from a fleshy mini palm with a tiny toe on the side, it’s like chewing into a limey/salty delicious rubbery texture as you crunch into the fragile bones chewing and sucking the juices and gristle. Some bones you chew small and down they go…larger ones you suck dry and spit out into a napkin or the container top.

Hey, this must cure cancer, arthritis or something because it cure my cravin’. Plenty people love chicken feet. You either love dem feet’s or hate em….toes n’ all! Years ago, when I first saw chicken feet it was raw and packaged in the grocery store, like my other favorite delicacy, turkey necks…but to see the little feet I was like…uggg…what in the world does one do with those? Now I know! Liberian’s eat them and once at my local Chinese buffet in the states, they had them brown roasted in one of the buffet trays. I tried one, as my girl friends looked at my plate said “What the heck is that?”  I prefer Tobago’s Caribbean style.

Ms. M.'s chicken feet are marinated seasoning with chopped green onions, (scallion) cucumber and tiny chopped scotch bonnet pepper, in a lime base, absolutely fabulous!

I especially love the cucumbers and green onions floating around in the juice.

This time I didn’t eat in one sitting, she must put about 8 of them trotters in the container. So I put the rest in the fridge to keep. The liquid jelled. When I went for my “snack” I let it sit for an hour or if I really get desperate, I hit it up in the micro for about 50 seconds to thin out the liquid. 

Last night, (earlier that day I had finished the last of Ms. M's chicken feet) we had a girl friend get together at my house and Patsy from way up country, brought me and Claudia, (another American chicken foot fanatic) her version. The marinated juices are filled with cilantro, and all the finely chopped green seasoning herbs you can imagine. I put Patsy’s in the fridge and the next day the liquid was thin and runny as in pickled juice. Patsy’s was delicious also. It was free and every time I come home to Tobago I call Patsy to hook me up. The only difference is Ms. M's has a pepper kick, while Patsy’s kicks up the Shadon Beni (Cilantro).   

To stay in good graces with both of my friends, I hereby split the “Chicken Foot Souse Award” straight down the middle to Ms. M. & Patsy!   

I can’t wait to get another order on Friday from Ms. M. and get a free will offering from Patsy of Tobago’s finest Trotters!

I know they will be scrumptious…especially as I munch n’ crunch with my eyes shut.

Mmm mmm. *!*

(c) 2013 Oni Lasana