(upbeat music) (bright intro music) (uptempo music) - I like to think of myself as a little silent ambassador for the Caribbean and for Trinidad and Tobago, and this is my way of being an ambassador.

(bright tropical music) My name is Sarah Chan.

I am the owner of Calypso Kitchen, a small catering business here in Bellingham, Washington.

We emphasize on creating Caribbean flavors using fresh, local ingredients.

I also operate a non-profit, PNW Plateful.

And with PNW Plateful, we emphasize on food insecurity and providing meals to the vulnerable in our community.

We are located in Whatcom County, Bellingham, to be more specific.

I love being able to share the flavors of the Caribbean with people who may never be able to experience it for themselves.

My relationship with food started at a very young age.

(bright guitar music) I grew up in the Caribbean on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, but my maternal grandmother, she is East Indian, Trinidadian East Indian, and we grew up a very simple life.

She grew everything in her backyard.

She grew her chickens, her ducks.

She planted her garden, so we ate fresh out of the garden.

We also had a ton of fruit trees in our backyard.

I was constantly at her side, her eldest grandchild, just watching every single thing that she did, and I got the first taste of outta the pot whenever she cooked and I was there.

One of the other things that I learned from my grandmother just by watching what she was doing was that aspect of whenever you create a meal in your home, you're creating a meal for your family, there was also a little bit extra that was made so that if a visitor came knocking, also they didn't have to knock.

The door was always open.

There was always a hot meal to be had, to be shared with somebody if there was somebody in the community that was sick, if there was a relative that was sick, if there was a neighbor that was sick or needed, you know, a hand up, a meal was sent out to that person.

So instinctively, when I created Calypso Kitchen, I knew that if I had a catering and there was a little bit extra leftover or whatever was leftover, we would create meals that would go out to families in the community.

Before it was even a nonprofit, we were doing 50 to 100 meals, and very quickly afterwards, we were doing 250 meals.

As of this week, we will be doing 750 individually packaged meals that go out to different food banks in our community, as well as other small nonprofit organizations that we work and collaborate with.

It's not necessarily fine dining or gourmet, but I want people to get a little bit of home to feel a little bit of the love that you feel when you eat a good home cooked meal.

That's the experience that I would most like to impart when people eat a meal from Calypso Kitchen.

(bright guitar music) Today I am gonna show you how to make one of my favorite childhood recipes, and it still remains one of my favorite recipes today.

It's called a fruit chow.

And a fruit chow is basically a fruit salad, but it's a savory fruit salad.

So you're gonna get fruits that are easily available to you.

These are what I have here in Whatcom County, pineapples, mangoes.

We're gonna use some strawberries.

We're using some gooseberries and we're using some oranges.

We are also going to be using some culantro, which I got at our local Asian supermarket here, and some habaneros that I got at a local market as well.

The habaneros offer the heat, the culantro is the herb that takes this into a different flavor profile, something that you're not really familiar with.

It's similar to cilantro, but it's like cilantro on steroids.

So you wanna cut your fruits into bite-sized pieces.

And what we've done is we've taken our culantro and we've broken it down.

We have also broken down our habaneros.

The other ingredients that we're using today is our coarse ground black pepper and Himalayan pink salt,.

A bit of salt, some black pepper, some culantro.

And these ingredients are all to taste.

However much you feel you need in this, you add to it.

And we will add some habaneros because we like a little bit of heat.

So there we go.

All our ingredients are in here.

And now all that's left to do is to give this a really good toss.

So fruit chows are really good right away.

As soon as you make it, it's a little better an hour later.

But you definitely don't wanna make this recipe overnight.

You wanna make this recipe as fresh as possible to get the most vibrant flavors out of it.

So once you give this a really good stir, there you go, your fruit chow (bright guitar music continues) - [Narrator] Made There was made possible in part with the support of Visit Bellingham, Whatcom County.