Christmas for me growing up in the Caribbean was not as much about gifts and the shopping madness that seems to take over the spirit of the season in North America. It was more about food, family and fun times. The lovely aroma you’d get Christmas eve all the way past Boxing day as homes…
One of the best things about growing up in a multi-racial country is the amount of different dishes you’re exposed to. Not just that we share in everyone’s culture (like around religious holidays etc) we also experiment with each others food. This resulted in dishes that are uniquely Trinbagonian as we’ve added our own touch…
What would Sunday lunch (the biggest meal of the week on the islands) be without a healthy serving of Callaloo, rice, stew chicken, macaroni pie and slices of fried plantains? Not to be confused with Jamaican callaloo, callaloo is an actual dish and it’s not made from the bush/plant that our Jamaican friends call callaloo….
My early years in Canada saw me falling in love with pita, as it was the closest thing to sada roti that I could get. Hamilton in those days had 1 or 2 Caribbean restaurants, but none of them served any type of roti. The same can be said today, except the two that I…
My grandmother seems to posses the “sweet-hand” for making a killer coconut sweetbread and though I’ve never formally asked her to share it with me, I’ve been playing around with developing a recipe to try and match hers. However with her 94 years of experience, I doubt I’ll ever be able to come close to…
Growing up in Trinidad, dhal meant salted meats like pig tails or beef and either curry chicken or tomato choka on the side with rice. My mom would put pieces of salted pig tails or beef into the dhal as it slow cooked that gave it a very unique taste. However, traditional split peas dhal…
The absolute only way I would engage in any dish with ochro (Okra) growing up, was callaloo and in some of the soups my mom would make on a Saturday. However that didn’t stop my mom from cooking fry ochro with and without saltfish (dry salted cod). We had a small garden (aka kitchen garden)…
Dad it’s getting black! Yup that’s what I heard the last 2 times I purchased plantains with the intention of sharing the simple recipe for fry plantains. I grew up eating fry plantains as a side to many dishes, but my absolute favourite was making sandwiches with these as the filler. I still recall my…
Channa and aloo or “chickpeas with potato” cooked in curry and stuffed into “hops” bread was a fav of mine growing up. I would visit my uncle who was a teacher at Marabella Junior Secondary school and just outside the gates were vendors selling all sorts of local street food. Including channa and aloo sandwiches…
Very rare will you find a post on here that’s not a recipe, but after speaking with Chris from Food & Drink Caribbean I felt compelled to share the amazing work they’re doing promoting the cuisine of islands such at Antigua, St Kitts & Nevis and Dominica. I always tell people that if when I…
Looking back at the difficult time we (brother and sisters) gave my mom due to the food she would prepare for us, I was overcome with a terrible sense of guilt. There were times we would refuse to eat even though she was making the most of what’s available, as well as trying to make…
Couple weeks back when we were on vacation in Trinidad we took the drive “down south” (San Fernando, the second largest city in Trinidad and Tobago) to enjoy some BBQ. Last February when we went down for Carnival I had mentioned to my sister that I felt like eating some good island BBQ so she…
