Hi Everyone, This has been a delicious, adventurous, educational year in the kitchen for me. I’ve perfected the art of making some things. I’ve experimented with some tried and tested favourites, and more importantly, I’ve learnt to make some of the foods I love but never made before, and in some cases, I’ve ventured out into the unknown, making and trying certain things that I’d only heard of but never tasted.
I’ve had (and will continue to have) a challenging and exciting time interpreting the cooking measurements given by those phenomenal cooks whose cooking vocabularies are void of words such as cups, ounces, tablespoons, teaspoons or inches. For most of them it’s a pinch of this, a little bit of that, a handful or a good set of something. Don’t even get me started on the cooking times.
Let me hasten to add that I love this fluid creativity when it comes to cooking but because I write about food and part of the feedback is the request for recipes, I have to ensure that measurements, cooking times and instructions are carefully thought out, tried and tested as accurately as possible.
In this my final column for the year, I want to reflect on the things I made for the first time. What I took away from each venture is that one of the main ingredients required is a healthy dose of self-confidence. Something I like to call, “trusting your inner chef.”
Making mauby for the first time and brewing it to success is an achievement I’m very proud of, especially since I have my mother’s mauby-making reputation to live up to. I’m not cocky about it though, each time I set out to make mauby, I’m filled with a little self doubt that never goes away until the moment it is ready for tasting.
Ginger beer on the other hand proved to be easy, set it and forget it for 72 hours.
As you know, eggplant is not one of my favourite vegetables the only way I enjoyed it was as a choka. However, I was delighted to discover that I can make a dry-curry with the roasted flesh as it is the smokiness from the fire-roasting that lures me. I learnt to like and make biganee (thinly sliced eggplant dipped in a spicy split peas batter).
Staying in touch with my multicultural roots, I ventured into making roat and parsad. Now I can enjoy those dishes any time and don’t have to wait for a particular occasion such as a religious holiday to have either of them.
I even took a trip around the Caribbean in my kitchen with my bakes-making, channelling the Vincentians, Bajans, Guyanese & Trinis. Making the Bajan bakes is so quick and easy, I don’t know why people don’t make them more often.
Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread caused me some anxiety with the temperature in the house dropping because of rain and me feeling silly for not having plastic wrap to cover the bowl. But I needn’t have worried so much as the bread turned out just the way it was meant to, crusty and chewy.
Making the guava cheese was another nerve-racking experience. I stirred that mixture for so long and second-guessed myself throughout the entire process and no one was more surprised than me when the mixture firmed up once cooled, turning into guava cheese.
I think one of the biggest revelations for me this year is using spices and various combos in ways I had never done before. In September, I learnt from one of my many friends online about a coconut-ginger-mustard seed paste, all toasted and ground together and added to boiled green plantains as they are saut
