Pickleez with a Little Bit of Sass
Pickleez with a Little Bit of Sass
Portland - Oregon
Elsy Dinvil originally came to Oregon to study food science, but she stayed so she could bring us the food of Haiti. She makes the island’s ubiquitous, all-purpose condiment, the spicy pickled cabbage called pikliz, although her Creole Me Up brand uses the helpful phonetic spelling, pickleez. The lime juice-marinated mix of cabbage and other vegetables gets its heat from habanero chiles, known as Scotch Bonnet peppers in the Caribbean. While pikliz helps cut the richness of fried foods like griot, Haitians eat it with almost everything. A little sass means hot but not blistering. The tangy blend of cabbage, carrots, onions, green onions, shallots, and habanero chiles gets a citrusy flavor from lime juice, a nod to the Haitian tradition of using sour orange juice instead of vinegar.