Cooking The World: Bahamas 🇧🇸
Monday, May 04, 2026
Eleven countries down, all starting with the letter A. Thankfully the alphabet has many more letters, and the world is even bigger! This week I'm starting countries with the letter B — and it's a longer list than A, with 17!
For this first country on the B-list, I go back to America to cook something from a country made up of islands: the Bahamas!
Country
That's right, The Bahamas — officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas — is made up of 3,000 islands, cays, and islets, and is located within the Lucayan Archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, just north of Cuba.
The Bahamas became a crown colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy. After the American Revolutionary War, the Crown resettled thousands of American Loyalists there.
The Bahamas became an independent Commonwealth realm, separate from the United Kingdom, in 1973. Nowadays, the Bahamas maintains King Charles III as its monarch; the appointed representative of the Crown is the governor-general of the Bahamas.
Cuisine
Being a country made up of thousands of islands in the Caribbean, it's no surprise that most of the food includes seafood such as fish, shellfish, lobster, crab, and conch (pronounced "konk"). There are also many tropical fruits, rice, peas, pigeon peas, and pork.
Popular seasonings commonly used in dishes include chilies, lime, tomatoes, onions, garlic, allspice, ginger, cinnamon, rum, and coconut.
And for drinks, the most popular choices are coconut water on the non-alcoholic side, and rum on the alcoholic side — obviously.
Chosen Dish
This week I had to go to my backup dish because I wanted to prepare something with conch, as it's the most popular ingredient and one of the easiest to find in the Bahamas. That last part being the key: easy to find *in the Bahamas*… not in Mexico 😢.
I searched for conch everywhere I could, even at my ol' reliable local farmer's market — all with no luck.
This situation forced me to look for another ingredient that's popular AND easy to find in my city, and that also has a place in Bahamian cooking: lobster!
So this week I prepared cracked lobster with a side of rice & peas… which, surprisingly, were also hard to find.
Getting Ready
In past dishes I've had some difficulty finding ingredients, but I've always been able to push through. Sometimes I had to go to my local farmer's market, where it's easier to find more natural ingredients; other times I had to order through Amazon, and the longest I ever had to wait was two days. Even last week's dish called for pomegranate, and I was able to use powdered pomegranate to get the flavor!
But this week it was impossible to find two of the main ingredients: conch and pigeon peas 😔😢.
And even after I decided to swap conch for lobster, getting it wasn't easy either. I ordered my groceries online, and when the delivery arrived, the lobster tails were cancelled because they were out of stock. So I had to run to my farmer's market — and even then, they had to order them and had me come back to pick them up. Luckily, they were ready in less than two hours.
As for the peas… these aren't your regular green peas. Pigeon peas are bigger than lentils but smaller than regular peas. There were none at any of the markets I checked, and the fastest Amazon delivery would've taken a week and a half 😵.
Finally, after admitting defeat and doing some consulting, I was suggested to use split peas instead. I was able to find a 500g/1.1lb bag of dried split peas.
Ingredients
For the rice with peas:
- 1 can pigeon peas
- 2 small Roma tomatoes
- 1 onion
- 2 tsp thyme
- 1.5 cups long-grain rice
- ½ cup tomato paste
- 2 strips bacon
- 3 cups water
For the cracked lobster:
- 3 lobster tails
- 1 lb / 450g flour
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 egg
- 1½ cups heavy cream
- Hot pepper flakes to taste
- 1 tsp Cajun seasoning
- 1 tsp paprika
- Parsley to taste
Prerequisites
If you're using pigeon peas or split peas that are dried (like mine), soak them in water for a couple of hours before cooking so they're tender when it's time to use them. If your peas are canned, you can skip this step.
Preparation
For the rice & peas:
- Dice two strips of bacon and cook them in a pan over medium heat until golden brown.
- Dice two small Roma tomatoes and one onion, and mince two teaspoons of fresh parsley. Add these to the pan with the bacon and sauté until combined.
- Add the pigeon peas, along with salt and pepper to taste.
- Add approximately ½ cup of tomato paste and 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil.
- Once boiling, stir in 1.5 cups of long-grain rice. Cover and cook on medium-high heat for about 14–15 minutes, until perfectly cooked.
For the cracked lobster:
- Cut open your lobster tails down the middle and remove the meat from the shell.
- Cut the lobster meat into small, bite-sized pieces.
- Place the pieces in a bag and pound them — this is exactly why the dish is called "cracked."
- Add the dry seasonings: salt, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, Cajun seasoning, crushed pepper, and black pepper.
- Add a little oil and rub everything in well.
- Squeeze some lime juice over the lobster, then pour the heavy cream over it.
- Rub everything again so it's all coated, and let it marinate for about one hour.
- Pour the flour into a bowl and season it with a bit of salt and pepper.
- Chop a handful of parsley and mix it into the flour.
- Add one egg to the marinated lobster, then lightly coat the pieces in the seasoned flour.
- Heat oil over low-medium heat and fry the lobster until light brown, turning as needed.
- Take out of the oil and let it rest on a rack to let the excess of oil to fall off.
- Plate and serve hot — optionally with sauces like tartar, mayonnaise, or mustard.
The Result
This was an interesting week because it was the first time in this challenge that I cooked something from the sea — and also the first time I've ever worked with lobster.
But the real question here is… was it good?
😏
You know the answer. Yeah, it was good!
Although, to be honest, I'm happy with the result and my girlfriend and I had a great meal, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with my rice & peas — mainly because I couldn't find the pigeon peas used in the real thing, so I can't really call it a 100% Bahamian dish. On top of that, I didn't soak my dried split peas thinking they'd be small enough to soften while cooking. They did soften — just not quite enough.
In the end, the rice had a great taste, but not a perfect texture… if that makes sense. I'd love to give the rice & peas another shot someday, ideally with an actual can of pigeon peas!
As for the lobster — yeah, that one was perfect! Great seasoning, great coating, great flavor. While it wasn't my first time *eating* lobster, it was my girlfriend's, and I'm happy to report she loved it and now wants me to do more seafood dishes along the way.
What Did I Learn
I've been lucky so far to find the ingredients I need, or land on an approved substitute. But sometimes ingredients are just hard to get.
They're not impossible to find, but some things require more lead time for shipping or tracking down the right store. I think what I need to do is plan a bit further ahead, or even accept that not every dish on my list will be 100% authentic — because no matter how hard I search, there will be ingredients I simply can't find where I live.
On the bright side, this gave me the chance to work with lobster tails. Overall it was manageable — they're like a big shrimp and don't take long to cook — but that shell? Hard. Very hard.
For a moment I thought my knife needed sharpening because the shell wasn't budging… but even after sharpening, I still had to use some real brute force to crack it open!
Now I know how to crack a lobster for next time. And honestly? I hope there is a next time.
This is how I wrap up the first country with the letter B. Next, it's a trip to the Middle East to cook something from: Bahrain!
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