Moksi Alesi Strey

Last week was the first break-through in my food critic path. I got invited to the 'Moksi Alesi Strey' organized by the Suriname Chefs Association.  It was a real honour to have an inside peek into the judges' job. From here out I'd like to thank Michael Hermelijn and Marieke Visser for this awesome invitation. Before I start with anything, let me introduce to you what "Moksi Alesi" really is about.

Literally moksi alesi means mixed rice. Its existence dates back to the slavery time when all the slaves got was some rice, a handful of veggies and hardly any meat. Everything got mixed together, so that every one could at least get something out of the ingredients with their rice. But nowadays, it's a favorite among many locals and tourists. The best combination is enjoying such a dish with a glass of ice-cold ginger beer and listening to some great songs of our late King of Kaseko, Lieve Hugo.


It is even said that this dish is quite national, because every ethnic group has its own moksi alesi. And indeed, I remember whenever my mom  had some meat and veggie leftovers, she would mix it with old rice to make it some kind of a fried rice. But even that can be considered moksi alesi.

Back to the Moksi Alesi Strey = Mixed Rice Competition.
The cooking would start at 11 am, so I was there already at 10:50. Probably too excited to see what's all going to happen, but of course, way too early. Some participants were already busy with preparing their mise en place (is a word commonly used in commercial kitchens for washing, cutting and preparing the raw ingredients ).

Like I said before, it's my first time and I really didn't know where to go or what to do until the participants were done cooking. Luckily my invitor walked  towards me and introduced me to some of the key persons of the association as well as the organizers. Where initially I was wondering how I was gonna fill up my 2 hours, walking with the judges makes these hours hardly noticeable.

There were 7 participants: Krasnapolsky, Thuksa, Waaldijkschool, 2 x family Lont,  Heave, Berg en Dal.
The first thing that I noticed was how big the difference was in heads per team. It was funny how one team had only 2-3 members and one with more than 10 members trying to make it work in a 3x3 space.

From all the participants, there were some who really stood out.  These are my opinions:

- Krasnapolsky had the best decoration compared to the other participants. The orange cloth really pop out and they decorated with lots of fruit and decor items. It showed that they really put effort in making a professional but yet stylish appearance.

- the group Thuksa had some memorable accents. They had an old coal pot, a natural fruit bowl and the old Surinamese flag. These features would really pop out if they'd put them on a wooden stool or art piece together. And not to be forgotten, the lady cooking in the creole traditional dress, koto.

- the Lont family cooked as if it's one of their weekend family cook-outs. The atmosphere was relaxed and what was really a nice feature was that they had a print-out of their dish with a little history of moksi alesi, a small description of their dish and the uniqueness of it.

After some observation, there were some things that the organizers might take into consideration for their next event.

• For such a street event, the numbers of visitors might be huge, so it would have been helpful if portable toilets were arranged.
• I saw first aid medical assistance, but haven't noticed other emergency units like the fire department and police. It's always better to be safe than sorry.
• Extra garbage bins would have been helpful or assigning persons to empty the street garbage bins.

There were 2 groups of judges: the floor jury and the tasting jury. The floor jury had the job to observe, oversee and evaluate the participants on:

• hygiene
• organization of the activities
• originality and decoration of the stand

That means that the jury had to really use all their senses (except their taste) to evaluate how everything is going. And I do mean it. They have to oversee what everyone is doing, smell if anything had an irrelevant smell, hear how the team members are communicating with each other and feeling the hot sun on their skin since it's held in the middle of the Domineestraat.


And if you think the tasting jury had a nice job, think again. I had the chance to also take part in tasting the submitted dishes. And seriously, I never thought I would find a disadvantage for becoming a food critic and I actually found one. Being part of the tasting jury also means that you really need to taste all the dishes and give it a score. Doesn't sound that bad, right?? Believe me, it does if you have to judge 8 different kinds of dishes and some even looking totally different than what you ever imagined of moksi alesi.

The criteria for the tasting committee were: appearance, creativity, taste and originality.
For the tasting part, I'm gonna give my opinion about some groups but in numbers like it was in the blind tasting. It'll be the only way I can give my honest opinion and not let some groups feel offended. In Suriname, we're a very small community, so I'd like to prevent putting some people in an awkward spot.

#1- they gave 2 dishes. One with bokking (red herring) and one with pork ribs. From one of these, the rice was obviously burned. The stench of burned rice was so overpowering that I only took a bite because it was part of the experience of being a jury. The other one was better; really had the nice aroma of bokking, but still didn't impress me.

#2- the presentation was good, but it smelled sour to me and the texture of the rice was mushy

#5- this group presented a well-balanced dish. The rice was not too dry, it tasted good and had BBQ chicken and liver sambal on it. However, the sambal did make me think of a Javanese dish with BBQ on it.

#7- I don't hope the ones who can find themselves back in this dish will feel offended, but this one was really the worst. The whole dish was mushy. The texture was somewhere between porridge and soft rice. It was a mixture with black-eyed peas and some kind of fish. It didn't look appealing let alone smelling and tasting it.

So for those of you who thought a tasting judge's job is fun and easy, you really should reconsider.

However originality is one of the criteria, but secretly I had hoped that one group would still stick with the authentic Creole Moksi Alesi.

Which Moksi Alesi would really make your day?