Ducana is a Caribbean dessert made with sweet potatoes, coconut, flour, and spices. It is wrapped in foil or banana leaves and steamed or boiled. It is often served with salted fish and tomato sauce and is a popular dish for Good Friday.
An unusual dessert, ducana is a type of dumpling made with sweet potatoes and coconut. Popular in Caribbean islands like the Grenadines, Antigua and St. Vincent, this dessert shares similarities with bread pudding. Cooked by wrapping the ingredients in foil, banana leaves or cloth and steaming or boiling it, Ducana is quite easy to prepare. It is usually served with stewed or salted fish.
As a dessert, it goes very well with pineapple salad topped with a little pineapple syrup. The main ingredients are grated sweet potatoes, flour and coconut. Cooks also use raisins, sugar, salt and some spices such as cinnamon or nutmeg. To add extra flavor, they add some vanilla extract. Variations of the recipe include ingredients such as granulated sugar, cornmeal and butter, and cassava.
To prepare the ducana, cook grated coconut and sweet potatoes. Sometimes they use a blender or grate it by hand. If using a blender, they can add a little plain water or coconut water or milk to speed up the grating process. They mix the grated ingredients with sugar, flour, raisins and spices in a bowl. The consistency of the batter should be thick enough to evenly coat the back of a spoon.
Cooks cut the foil into the desired size or use pieces of cloth or banana leaves as the wrap. They spread the dough over the wrapper and fold it securely so that it completely covers the mixture. They make sure the batter doesn’t leak out of the wrapper.
Rolled up in sheets or banana leaves with string, ducanas look like small flattened cylinders. Cooks dip them in boiling water and cook them until firm. This can take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour. After removing them from the water, cooks set them aside to cool for about 10 minutes before unwrapping them.
For many Caribbean islanders, the dish is a staple eaten with salted fish and tomato sauce. Some restaurants serve it with cod and a local combination called chop-up. Chop-up is a combination of okra, eggplant and spinach. This dessert can be cut into slices and served lightly fried or eaten cold.
It is sometimes made on days when islanders traditionally avoid meat, such as Good Friday. These days, they mostly prepare seafood and dishes like ducana that go well with fish. Ducana and saltfish is a favorite combination of many Caribbean descents and is a must for tourists traveling through the islands.
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