Chicken baked inside a wheel of cheese

Keshi yena means "stuffed cheese." The traditional version is a whole hollowed round of Dutch gouda filled with spiced, shredded chicken and baked until the cheese collapses around it. Most restaurants today build it in a dish lined with sliced gouda, which works out the same on the plate.

The origin is the interesting part. Dutch cheese arrived in the Caribbean in wax-sealed wheels, and when the household had scooped out the cheese, the hollow rind was left over. Kitchen workers and enslaved people filled that rind with whatever meat was available and baked it: a dish invented out of what other people threw away, which is now the thing the island is proudest to serve you.

For a child, the negotiation is the filling. The spiced chicken usually carries raisins, olives, capers, and sometimes prunes, a sweet-and-savory combination that some kids love on the spot and others regard as a personal attack. Ask whether the kitchen can serve the extras on the side, or order one portion for the table and let everyone try a forkful of the cheese-and-chicken part first. Split that way, it almost always goes well.

It is a rich, substantial dish. One order genuinely does feed a small child alongside whatever else you have.