On Saturday I went to the open-air market at Blaakplien which is (one of?) the largest markets in the city. It is massive and they sell all kinds of things: you can buy fruit, vegetables, cheeses, furniture, lingerie, electronics, toys, trees, candy, and just about anything else you can think of. Also fish. Lots and lots of fish. Really, really fresh, almost-still-wiggling fish. Parts of the market smelled better than other parts. I just walked through the market in a large loop, going up one main aisle and back down another and not even reaching at least one main aisle and dozens of little side aisles and it still took me over an hour to get around.
They had all kinds of food:
There was Vietnamese food--it looked really tasty, kind of like small, deep-fried pasties and egg-rolls so I am going to have to look it up to see if I should try it.
There was Greek food--which smelled really good, except for the stands which also had heaping bowls of olives--those smelled kind of olive-y.
--There was Turkish food--I know that this is good because I already tried some of it.
--There was Dutch food--which, as far as I can tell consists solely of different kinds of fish--raw, salted, pickled, dried, and smoked--and large cones of french fries covered in mayonnaise.
--There was also some other kind of food stand, the geographic origin of which I cannot place but which I am guessing is Indian or Indonesian, or South-East Asian of some kind although the flag looked kind of like the Suriname flag. I walked by it two times just because it smelled so delicious and next week I might plan on going there for lunch. They had "hum burger" which looked like meatballs mixed with sauteed peppers and onions; and "lam" (which is "lamb" of course) which also looked like meatballs mixed with sauteed peppers and onions. I am pretty sure I could smell garlic and tumeric as well and it smelled wonderful, and I wasn't even hungry! At church on Sunday I talked to someone who was from Guyana and who spent time in Suriname and she said that the food is excellent but very, very spicy, so I will have to see how brave I feel. On a sadder note, apparently grilled guinea pig is a typical Surinamese dish. My informant said that she didn't eat guinea pig and 'though she had tried iguana she wasn't that thrilled with it.
I ate lunch at the Blaak Markt at well. On the advice of a class-mate I tried some Kibbeling. Kibbeling is heerlijk! Which is Dutch for "Kibbeling is really delicious!" Kibbeling is a traditional Dutch fish dish. It was, traditionally, deep-fried cod cheeks. Now-a-days, it can be cod-cheeks or cod-bellies, depending on where you get it. I don't know what kind I got. It was really flavorful but not at all fishy, which was perfect. It is prepared in a walleye-type batter, deep-fried, and then sprinkled with garlic powder, and served with garlic mayonnaise. It was really, really good.
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