Suriname, like its neighbors Guyana and French Guiana, has a very rich and interesting cuisine - quite different from the rest of South America.
Suriname was a Dutch colony until the 1970's, and the Dutch brought Indonesian and East Indian laborers to work on their plantations. These workers made their favorite dishes with locally available ingredients. Their cooking gradually blended with the native and European dishes (there's Chinese influence too), and all of this together became modern Surinamese cuisine.
Suriname is tropical, and coastal, so exotic fruits and seafood feature highly in the cuisine. Other basic ingredients include cassava (tuber-like root of the manioc plant), rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lentils, plantains, and tayer (another tuber).
Some typical Surinamese dishes include:- Pom, a chicken dish made with tayer
- Pastei, a creole-style chicken pot pie
- Dhal, a lentil stew
- Roti - grilled flatbread
- Curry Dishes
- Vegetables with Peanut Sauce (gado-gado style Indonesian dish)
- Bakbana - fried plantain with peanut sauce
- Goedangan - mixed vegetable salad with coconut dressing
- Coconut Desserts
- Bojo cake - made with coconut and cassava
- Phulauri (fried lentil or chickpea balls)
- Mango Chutney
