For years I’ve wanted to know if I could curry chestnuts in the way that people back home curry chataigne. As it’s autumn, you can’t miss chestnuts in the supermarkets. Most people roast them or buy them already peeled for use in any number of sweet and savoury dishes.
But chestnuts look so much like chataignes and in fact, the French word for chestnut is chataigne. I’ve also seen the chataigne we eat in Trinidad referred to as Guiana chestnut.
One of my favourite delicacies is curry chataigne, which I first ate at a traditional Indian wedding many years ago. I remember my mother urging caution as I ripped off a strip of roti skin, grabbed up some of the delicious nutty curry and shovelled it into my mouth. In her very proper way, she whispered, “don’t eat too much, it will make you pum plenty”.
That’s the main problem with eating chataigne, too much and you’ll be flatulent – violently so.
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I had the joy and the honour of being allowed behind the scenes to watch some top class roti makers at work. I paid a visit to Roti Joupa in south London where Vash Mathura and his team churn out some of the finest roti around.
Vash is an affable guy from Penal, south Trinidad who’s been making roti since he was a child. He told me he learnt a lot about Indian cooking from his grandmother who ran a shop in Port of Spain.
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Last week, I went to Nottingham to see the making of a British classic - the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie.
Ian Hartland, one of the three brothers who runs Mrs King’s Pies invited me up to visit the factory and while I was there, he gave me some tips on how to make a pie to suit West Indian palates.
I buy pies from Ian at their Borough Market stall and I was thrilled to see how this traditional food was made. This is just a sneak preview, there’ll be more about pies in a forthcoming post.
Click here for more pie photos.

I had the most delicious venison the other day, but it happened quite by accident.
We booked our team Christmas lunch at The Cow, a popular pub in west London, but when we got there, weren’t satisfied with the accomodation provided for our group of ten and the attitude of the gentleman who claimed to be in charge was quite stink so we moved across the road to The Westbourne.
At The Westbourne, we were welcomed and treated very well. The restaurant’s atmosphere was better than the other place and there was the added bonus of a being seated near to a huge black and white photo of Trinidadian cricket legend Brian Lara being saluted by his team mates after he broke his first batting record in Antigua in 1994.
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Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson has been hailed as one of the best books ever written about cooking with offal. I don't have the book myself, but I had a look at it once and it seemed extremely comprehensive.
I should have bought the book then, because I really needed it a few nights ago when I was taking apart a pig's head that I bought at Borough Market.
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The BBC Good Food Show is like the mecca for foodies in the South East of England. It's one of the year's biggest food events and this is the third year I've gone.
The way to get through this huge event is to adopt a hard stance against the things you DO NOT need or you'll spend a lot of money, and when you get home, you'll be wondering why you bought half the stuff you did.
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Hello fellow foodies.

Many apologies for my absence. It's been a while. We've been encountering some serious techincal issues but now we're almost back on track. Soon enough, you'll be reading about my food exploits. We're going to be concentrating on Christmas! It's in the air again.

The time has come for the great oil down day. I've been itching to cook breadfruit oil down since March, when a completely unscientific poll on this blog revealed it was the dish that Trinis like best. When I ran the survey, I promised to cook whatever people voted as their favourite. And since the summer seems to be disappearing quickly, I thought I should do it before the weather gets totally rotten.

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Today I discovered a great blog from another Trini foodie, Petit Careme, who I assume is a woman! I found her blog when she made a comment on my last entry so I had a look at her blog and at once became green with envy because she was showing off Crix biscuits and Chee Zees fresh from Trinidad. I get more envious when I saw the spread she laid on for her friends over the weekend for which included stew chicken - Sylvia Hunt style! Check out her blog for details.

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My search for a recipe using strawberry vinegar as a key ingredient has taken some interesting twists and turns. At first, I thought about doing seared scallops and gurnard with strawberry vinegar and shallot dressing, but after tasting the strawberry vinegar again, I felt it would be too tart and mask the delicate flavour of the scallops and gurnard.

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