From the category archives:

Vegetables and Sides

Taking the Cure: Pineapple Chow

July 22, 2010
Pineapple Chow

When I feel a cold coming on, nothing sets me right faster than a searing dose of scotch bonnet peppers, the more incendiary the better.  Chicken soup is a fine cure, to be sure.  But what I crave when the fog of a summer cold sets in is a good hot Trinidadian chicken curry.  Served with a stinging hot choka and [...]

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Cheesy Grits Casserole

March 23, 2010
Cheesy Grits Casserole

Bones and I have what you might call a mixed marriage.  I, being a born and bred Southerner, love grits.  Bones, being English, does not.  Sometimes a girl gets homesick and requires an infusion of grits and is willing to subject her husband to grits, no matter the outcome.  In such cases, I always break out [...]

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What’s In A Name?

March 3, 2010
Caribbean Ratatouille

Or to rephrase the question, when you’re making a “traditional” recipe, how far can you stray from the original and still call a dish by name?  Like most cooks, I set my own (often shifting) parameters.  And my parameters may waver more than yours because of my location and the unavailability of certain ingredients and equipment.  I’ve run across more [...]

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Kitchen Doodads, Gadgets and Gizmos

February 26, 2010
Kitchen gadgets

Do we really need lots of specialized equipment and gadgets to be good cooks?  I find the more time I spend in the kitchen, the less of my clever gewgaws I actually use.  I sometimes open the utensil drawer in the kitchen and wonder what I was thinking.  What compelled me to buy these things?  I have not one, but two of those weird claw-like [...]

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No Resolutions

January 13, 2010
Caribbean pumpkin with lime

Healthy dinner

Just to be perfectly clear, I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions.  I mean, really.  Has anyone ever in the history of New Year’s Resolutions ever followed through on one?  Go to any exercise class at the beginning of January and it’s packed.  It annoys the regulars but they don’t worry overly much because they [...]

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Lovely Leftovers

October 19, 2009
Curry Buffet

It’s St. Ursula’s Day here in the B.V.I. so there’s no school for Audrey, which means a lazy day for both of us.  She’s been reading all day and I’ve been working with the blog and listening to the go-fast boats racing in the channel (damn they’re loud).

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Oven-Baked Ribs

October 12, 2009
Oven-baked ribs

It never fails.  If Bones leaves Tortola, I will get a flat tire or run out of propane or break my leg.  None of these things ever seems to happen when he’s around.  I think my neighbor, Julian, knows more about my car than Bones does.  After all, he’s the one who always seems to [...]

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Benano Barbecue

August 28, 2009
Benano barbecue

I remember you.  So said the extremely attractive lady manning the counter at the butcher shop in Torre Alfina.  And Bones is certainly memorable.  For starters, he is six and a half feet tall.  This makes him a good foot or so taller than most of the population of Torre Alfina.  Then there is his Italian.  Bones’ [...]

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Mango Season

July 2, 2009
Thumbnail image for Mango Season

 
 
 
“The flavor is as though nightingales were singing on the palate.  The texture is like cream melting on the tongue.  What the gods gorged on, on Olympus, is called nectar and ambrosia, but mangoes are plainly meant.”  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

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Tomato Choka

June 27, 2009
Tomato Choka

Devica plays fast and loose with her recipes, doling out vague measurements like handfuls, mounds and “as much as you want.”  On the other hand, she guards the names of her food like state secrets, not to be entrusted to the likes of us.  She’d been making roti for us for years before I learned that the plain breakfast roti are sada roti, [...]

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Grilled Pot Fish and Fried Plantain

June 25, 2009
Pot Fish

The last time I saw an old wife or a grunt I was snorkeling.  Until this weekend, when I found them both at the BVI Fisheries Department fish market.  I was looking for a snapper to put on the grill but, as we say in the islands, “snapper finish.”  I looked over the mostly unfamiliar pot fish on offer and didn’t know what [...]

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Pink Pachadi

May 7, 2009
Beet Pachadi

Bones loves beets.  He comes home at least once a week with a bag of beets but because he’s so busy these days I usually end up cooking them.  I like to roast beets whole; then peel and cut them into chunks and dress them with olive oil, a little lemon juice and a sprinkling of fresh dill.  [...]

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Baigani

May 1, 2009
Baigani

Devica, our nanny/housekeeper/savior/friend, is a never-ending source of surprise.  I’ve known her for eleven years and it was only yesterday that she let slip that she cooked for a living back in Trinidad.  We’ve been raving about her food for years and now I find out she’s a pro.

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Eggplant Choka

April 30, 2009
Making eggplant choka

Every so often I am overcome with an overwhelming urge to grow something.  Usually it is best to ignore such urges because I am, it seems, cursed with a brown thumb.  Or perhaps a yellow thumb.  Moviene Fahie grew the beautiful purple, eggplant-colored eggplants above.  I, alas, grew the urine-colored yellow specimen…yet another gardening failure to add [...]

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Gray Day

April 28, 2009
Pumpkin Risotto

Partly cloudy.  Scattered showers.  Breezy.  That’s our weather forecast today.  Hmmm.  At our house on the hill, it’s gray, cold (well, cold for here) and pouring with rain.  The “breeze” is blowing a steady 10-15 knots with gusts up to tropical storm force.  The wind is howling across the balcony and threatening to rip all the [...]

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