Mama Seasoning

Mama Seasonings using fresh herbs is quite simple. My mother goes to the market every weekend and she buys fresh herbs (once every two months - she buys quite a bit so it would last a few weeks) of her choice like a few bundles of chive and thyme, 2-3 heads of garlic, 12-14 pementos, 5 onions. When she gets home she cleans the herbs - take the skin of the garlic and onion, wash the chive and cut off the ends, cut the top of the pementos, cut them in half and de-seed them.

Pememtos are not really hot, they just mildy spice your food. Combinding red pementos with the other green herbs,give a nice combination of colour.

The next step would be to place all the cleaned herbs in a food processor and blend together. In the days before the food processor was invented, we would use a hand mill as seen in the video. After this is done, she adds some salt to the blended herbs and then put them in bottles.

She keeps the bottles of blended herbs refridgerated.

In Trinidad and Tobago, Shadow Bennie or Shado Bene is actually derived from the French Patios term Chadon Bene meaning Blessed Herb. The Indo Trinidadian population in Trinidad and Tobago call this herb Bandhania which is derived from the Hindi word Dhania which is a coriander seed. One sauce made from Shadow Bennie is traditionally served over Bake and Shark and is a mixture of white vinegar, garlic vegetable oil, habanera peppers and Shadow Bennie.