Creole
Telo: fried cassava with salt cod
Telo is fried cassava, usually served with bakkeljauw, salt cod soaked and fried, and sambal. A portion on the street in Paramaribo costs roughly SRD 40 to SRD 100.
Flavour and texture
Firm and starchy, cut by the sharp saltiness of the cod.
Street price, indicative SRD 40–100
The cassava is boiled soft first and then fried, which gives you an outside like a thick chip and an inside that is crumbly and slightly fibrous.
The classic pairing is bakkeljauw: salted cod soaked overnight and then fried with onion, tomato and pepper. Salt, fat and cassava, that is the entire idea.
Cassava is the oldest ingredient in Surinamese cooking. Indigenous peoples, among them the Lokono and the Kaliña, grew the root long before European colonisation and developed the processing that makes it edible: grating, pressing and heating, because raw bitter cassava carries cyanogenic compounds. Everything that later came to be cooked in this country sits on that base.
The fish beside it tells the other half. Bakkeljauw is salted, dried cod from the North Atlantic fishery, shipped to the plantation colonies as cheap protein that kept without refrigeration; the word comes from Portuguese bacalhau. Telo is an Indigenous root with a colonial trade good on the side, for SRD 40 to SRD 100 on the street.
Telo is eaten as breakfast as readily as late at night. It is one of the few dishes that is normal at any hour.
Frequently asked questions
What is telo?
Telo is fried cassava, usually served with bakkeljauw, salt cod soaked and then fried with onion and pepper. In Suriname it is eaten both as breakfast and as an evening snack.
What is bakkeljauw?
Bakkeljauw is salted, dried cod, soaked at least overnight to draw out the salt and then fried with onion, tomato and pepper. The word comes from Portuguese bacalhau.
Where does telo come from?
The cassava comes from the Indigenous peoples of Suriname, among them the Lokono and the Kaliña, who grew and detoxified the root long before colonisation. The bakkeljauw beside it is salt cod shipped to the plantation colonies as cheap protein.
Is telo vegetarian?
The cassava is, but telo is nearly always served with bakkeljauw. Ask for telo without fish and you get fried cassava with sambal, at the lower end of the SRD 40 to SRD 100 a portion costs.
What does cassava taste like?
Neutral and starchy, somewhere between potato and sweet potato, with a slightly fibrous core. Fried, telo eats like a thick chip; the same root is also the base of bojo, the Surinamese cassava cake.