Salade de Christophines (Chayote Salad)

For almost a decade I knew that if it was mid-August, it was time to make my annual trek from Martha's Vineyard down to the Caribbean with my suitcase filled with more than the usual amount of gold jewelry, eyelet slips, traditional Creole dresses and Madras head ties, along with the business-related notes and other impedimenta that are a part of my life. First, there were meetings in Barbados, where I consulted for a hotel chain. Work done, I was off on an island-hopping flight to Guadeloupe for the Fête des Cuisinières.

Guadeloupe's annual feast of the women cooks is like nothing else in the region: a daylong celebration of the glories of French-style Creole food and the women who cook it. The day begins with a high mass at the cathedral with all the members present of the Association des Cuisinières and the Mutuel Cuistot: two century-old mutual aid organizations that are guardians of Guadeloupe's culinary patrimony. The women, who range in age from their 20s and 30s to nonagenarians and centenarians and are the true guardians of the island's culinary heritage, are all dressed in full Creole finery complete with aprons hung with miniature whisks, pots and pans. Their aprons are decorated with a grill, the symbol of St. Lawrence, their patron, who was martyred on the grill.

Following the mass, the crowd troops through the streets of Pointe-à-Pitre celebrating and carrying a statue of St. Lawrence. The parade ends at a schoolyard, where the cooks, their guests and those fortunate enough to have obtained tickets gather for a lunch that begins with ample rounds of the lime, rum and sugar cocktail known as ti punch.

Soon, the political speeches are over, and the meal is served. Usually there are codfish fritters and other traditional nibbles to start the feast and the main dishes are an assortment of curries (called colombos in Guadeloupe) served with rice. I always hoped to find the summer-perfect salad of the shaved squash that is known in Guadeloupe as christophine. (It is also known as chayote in Mexico and parts of the U.S., chocho in Jamaica, xuxu in Brazil and mirliton in New Orleans and elsewhere in Louisiana.) The slippery coolness of the salad is always the perfect counterpoint to the spiciness of the curries and a welcome antidote to the heat of the day.

After the rum has flowed, it's off to the dance floor for an afternoon of dancing the beguine, the music and dance that was at home here long before Cole Porter heard it. All too soon, the party is over and it's time to head to my girlfriend's home to fix another ti punch and worry about where to go for dinner.