Haiti, Where <i> Lam </i> Is a Major <i> Viv</i>

Haiti, situated right in the middle of the Caribbean, shows all the cultural influences that have played over the area. For instance, the Haitians speak Creole French, but they get their words for goat and eggplant from Spanish --kabrit and berejen , respectively.

The most distinctive elements come from West Africa. A favorite snack is akra , a sort of bean-and-taro falafel originating in Nigeria; the New Orleans rice fritters known as calas may be related to it. For that matter, the national dish of Haiti is red beans and rice, just as some form of beans and rice is a favorite dish everywhere else around the Caribbean.

A taste for starchy staples came over with the African slaves--even some of the starch plants themselves, such as plantains and various kinds of yam and taro. Starches are still the center of the meal in Haiti, as they are in West Africa. They’re called viv ( vivres alimentaires, in formal French), which roughly means “victuals.”

One of the starch sources came all the way from the South Pacific. Five years after the famous mutiny on the Bounty, Capt. William Bligh finally accomplished his aim of delivering a couple of thousand breadfruit trees to Jamaica, and Haiti is one of the Caribbean islands that enthusiastically adopted this versatile vegetable-like fruit. The Creole word for breadfruit, lam , is simply l’arbre , the French word for tree. On Haitian restaurant menus, it’s spelled out as l’arbre veritable , perhaps to distinguish it from lamapen (l’arbre a pain), or breadnut, a sort of breadfruit grown for its seed.

Haitian cuisine is not particularly spicy, but it does have a sauce of onions, garlic, lime juice and chiles known as ti malis (Creole for petite malice , little malice). Ti Malis is also the name of a mischievous, crafty figure in Haitian folklore.