bammy

Bammy is a traditional Jamaican cassava flatbread descended from the simple flatbread called casabe, eaten by the Arawaks / Taínos, Jamaica's indigenous people. Variations of bammy exist throughout the Americas. It is produced in many rural communities and sold in stores and by street vendors in Jamaica and abroad. ==History== ===Origin=== thumb|Taíno (Arawak) women preparing casabe (cassava bread) in 1565— grinding cassava/yuca roots into paste with a metate and mano, shaping the bread, and cooking it on a fire-heated burén. thumb|Casabe (cassava bread) preparation in 1791— with stone mortar and pestles, wooden frame guayo, matapi on a tree and burén. thumb| Fried bammy in Jamaica Bammies have existed since pre-Columbian times, and they originated from the native Arawak / Taíno people. They are made with cassava (also called yuca or manioc) indigenous to Mesoamerica, and was a staple crop of the Arawaks / Taínos, which they cultivated in conucos. Cassava was also integral to their existence, as it featured prominently in their worship. Yúcahu, a major Taíno god, whose name has been translated to ‘spirit of the cassava’, was the god of cassava and the sea. A minor Taíno god related to growing cassava, the process of life, creation and death, Baibrama, was worshipped for his assistance in growing cassava and curing people from its poisonous juice.

===Arawak / Taíno's traditional method=== According to the curator of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, Ann-Marie Howard Brown, the Arawaks / Taínos used a small, sharp, flat stone (celt) to peel and cut the cassava, which they would then grate on a guaio / guayo, a wooden frame embedded with small stones and pieces of coral or a stone grater, until it was reduced to a pulp. They would then place the pulp in a large funnel-shaped basket called a matapi, which was hung from a tree for extraction of the juice. Once the desired consistency was achieved, the mixture was placed on a stone structure called a metate, and a smaller ground stone called a mano, was used like a modern rolling pin to grind to the consistency of cassava flour. This would then be moulded to circles in the desired size, and baked on earthenware griddles called buréns.