WHERE’S THE BEEF?

Cré Olé’s Plat de la Semaine is a weekly feature (changing every Saturday) in which we ask the chef of one of Trinidad & Tobago’s well known restaurants (not necessarily a fine dining one – we love all good food at Cré Olé) to select for your palate’s delight an appetiser, entrée & dessert he or she might himself or herself order;Cré Olé asked chef Ronford Henry of Pelican Reef restaurant, Milford Road, Crown Point, Tobago, to choose the dish of the week.

Though Pelican Reef is best known for its meat dishes, Henry, a “90 per cent” vegetarian, selected a hugely tasty vegetarian menu for his plat de la semaine.

His appetizer was vegetable risotto cakes – julienne vegetables and risotto sautéed and allowed to simmer down before being rounded into small cakes – topped with carrot shavings and served on a bed of fresh green salad with his own Creole sauce.

For his main course, Henry served a vegetable mélange, the foundation for the mélange laid on polenta and the mortar coming in the form of “Creole” vegetables: eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and onions, served in layers, sitting in a vegetable marinara sauce.

Dessert was a local specialty, banana coconut pie, topped with fresh coconut flakes and served with enough cream to worry any GP worth his salt.

THE REVENGE OF THE VEGETARIANS – Chef Ronford Henry explains his choices. “The appetizer I chose because I find we have, on the island, a lot of people doing the same things,” said Henry. “The seafood, the fish, the steaks. I’m from Boston and I wanted to do something different, something people could come to Pelican Reef for. The risotto is brand new here. I specialize in vegetarian meals so, even though Pelican Reef is known for its meat and we have a variety of meat dishes on the menu, I really wanted people to be aware of a really tasty vegetarian option. A lot of people are into healthier lifestyles and I wanted to promote vegetarianism since I’m a 90 per cent vegetarian myself. The ten per cent I can’t give up is fish! The dessert came to mind because I was sitting in the (open air) dining-room, thinking that I wanted to do a dessert that would represent Tobago. and I looked up and saw the banana tree. What could be more tropical than banana and coconut?”