I’ve never been a big casserole person. For some reason I have a mental block when I see them pop up as a key dish for a particular country. In my mind, I envision that they are always incredibly heavy, possibly with a cream of mushroom/chicken/something mushy element (yuck!), and put you into a food coma pretty quickly. However, Pom (the national dish of Suriname) surprised me as it didn’t seem to hit any of those marks and the flavor was SO DIFFERENT (Matt’s favorite description for some of the dishes I’ve forced on him throughout this process).

The ingredients that went into this dish seemed very random but I think it reflects the various cultural influences found in this small country near the top of South America. A small, tropical country just north of the equator in South America, a little over a quarter of the population is Indian. This explains some of the flavors in the dish from coconut milk to coriander that brings a slightly sweet taste to the casserole which also boasts chicken, tomato, onion and a shredded potato topping that benefitted from a bit more time under the broiler once I’d reached the cooking time.

Recipe I used: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/pom/

Overall Level of Effort: 3

Skill Level: Intermediate

Would Make It Again? Probably not.

Additional Notes: I selected “intermediate” as the skill level for this (along with a 3 for overall effort) as it did include some techniques that work a bit cumbersome, including grating onion and potato for the topping. For a simpler version, you could probably just add hash browns and save yourself some time. Also, I felt that there was a bit more liquid in this than there should have been after nearly an hour in the oven. Just a flag as something to watch for if you choose to make this dish. Lastly, while this was a casserole I could get behind, I didn’t find the end result quite worth the effort I put into it.