For the Love of Caribbean Saturday Soup
The founder of the Radiate Festival Wendy Cummins shares her love for her culture.
We are here putting together reflections of life & experiences growing up as a blend of Caribbean & British cultures, why not share yours too. Send your stories to info @ radiatefesitval.com
The reason that it is called Sa-ti-deh Soup is because it was traditionally cooked on a Saturday. Split Pea / Saturday Soup is a great option to feed the family or even just yourself if you want to stretch food for days.
The base of Mummy’s Saturday Soup was yellow split peas which she used to soak overnight. We would sit down on a Friday evening either at the dining table or in the front room and ‘pick out the peas’. Picking out the peas is a method that isn’t really practiced the same way today since much of this process of picking out bad peas is done mechanically at factories. But we used to sit there for a while and use it like a game to find all the bad ones. It’s amazing some of the things that have contributed to creating a valuable skill set as a child. I’m sure not many can test my attention to detail as an adult, I will say that much.
On Saturday morning we used to get up and go shopping in Lewisham ‘Black Market’ and Catford Market for all the provisions for the soup. After a long morning shopping we used to get back home about mid afternoon and mummy used to start the pressure cooker going for the peas to cook which is the beginning of the soup. I always remember the whistle of the pressure cooker coming from the kitchen and the ingredients being added bit by bit. If Mummy forgot to ‘put on the peas’ Friday night, she would put them on in the morning on a low fire whilst we went off to do the shopping. That meant that the next few hours were spent frantically rushing about South London to get everything we needed shopping wise for the week ahead. All of this was with the constant reminder of her saying ‘We need fi hurry cah di peas dem is on & mi nah want di house ketch a fire’. Sometimes, the timing was perfect, other times not so much so, but soup di still mek!
Once we finally got back home, we would go out on the estate to play with our friends, some of their parents were also cooking soup and we would pass them waving as we ran by their kitchen windows. Those from West Indian households who were not a part of the Saturday soup culture missed an entire masterclass in cooking ‘whole day’ - like seriously the cooking went on for what seemed forever. Every so often we would pop back to the house to ask if it was done yet… with a sharp “No” and a side eye we would bundle on back outside.
When it was close to being finished sometimes we would join Mummy in the kitchen to make the dumplings to be added to the pot. They could be spinners or clickers depending on what we chose, if there was time we would make all manner of shapes. Dropping them into the bubbling mixture and watching them bob back up to the top and float. Dumplings were my favourite part of Saturday soup. When we sat down to eat these bowls of steaming soup it would be like the story of the Three Bears with the variety of soup bowl sizes from large to small eyeing up the meat to dumpling to provision to soup ratios in perfection. There would always be complaints from me about why ‘they’ always got more even though my eyes were always bigger than my belly.
One of the best things about Saturday Soup is the next day glory of all those complex flavours. I would sometimes sneak down early on a Sunday morning to quietly open the pot to steal a dumpling and a few cold golden spoonfuls of the most delicious creation fit for the gods. Sa-ti-deh Soup it was no longer, now it was next-day soup a whole new damn good dish with not enough left to feed everyone.
So stay at home during this period of Quarantine and make everyday Saturday with this great Caribbean dish.
Thank you for being a part of my look back - for now, please Stay Home, Safe, Healthy & Sane
Signing Off: #togetherweradiate
Wendy xox
