A Curaçaoan cornmeal-and-bean mash — cornmeal cooked thick with black-eyed beans, a little coconut, and sugar into a dense, faintly sweet side, served alongside fish, stoba, and stews.
Tutu is a Curaçaoan side of cornmeal cooked with black-eyed beans and a touch of sweetness — a dish of clear West African heritage, sharing its very name with Brazil's tutu de feijão across the old slave-trade world.
Spoon up tutu and it is dense, soft, and faintly sweet, the cornmeal studded with creamy black-eyed beans and rounded with a little coconut. Bite: comforting and starchy like a sweet funchi, the beans earthy, the sugar and coconut giving a gentle sweetness that plays against savory fish or stoba. A West-African-rooted island side.
Cornmeal cooked thick binds the black-eyed beans into a dense, sliceable mash; a little sugar and coconut give the characteristic gentle sweetness (the West-African-Caribbean signature) that contrasts with the savory mains it accompanies.
Variations
With brown sugar (darker). Less sweet (savory). With more coconut. With raisins. Firmer. Fried into wedges.
On the Palate
Where Tutu sits in the Curaçaoan flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
8 steps · 25 min active + 20 min waiting
- 120 min
Cook 200 g black-eyed beans until tender; drain (reserve liquid).
- 24 min
Bring 500 ml water (with some bean liquid) and a little coconut milk to a simmer.
- 34 min
Rain in 200 g cornmeal slowly, whisking to avoid lumps.
Watch outRain the cornmeal in a thin stream while whisking hard — dump it and you get lumps you can't stir out.
- 42 min
Stir in the cooked beans and 2 tbsp sugar.
- 512 min
Cook, stirring, 12 min until very thick and pulling from the pot.
Watch outCook until it's thick enough to pull away from the pot sides and hold a spoon standing — that's when it'll slice clean once cooled.
- 62 min
Stir in a knob of butter and season with salt.
- 73 min
Press into a bowl and turn out as a mound (or spread and cut).
- 81 min
Serve as a side with fish, stoba, or stew.
