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.

Foodies in the UK can read about Trinidad and Tobago’s cuisine in the February edition of Sainsbury’s magazine. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t appear on the web so if you’re not in the UK and really wanted to read Colin Dunne’s story, you’d have to get someone to send you a copy.
In The World in Your Hands, Dunne tries to illustrate how our food has been shaped by our many historical and ethnic influences.
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Early this morning, fellow blogger and Caribbean podcasting pioneer Georgia Popplewell left a short comment about Chino-Cubano food on the blog. What I’ve seen so far on the interweb about it has been extremely interesting like this excerpt from the Plate of the Day blog about La Caridad 78 restaurant in New York.

“Ever had black beans and spanish yellow rice with chow mein? La Caridad 78 is where Cuba meets Chinese. That’s because the restaurant owners are ethnic Chinese born in Cuba.
The origins of Cuban-Chinese cuisine goes back to the late 1800s, when Chinese men arrived in Latin America thanks to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1847.
Many settled in Cuba as well, and by 1940 the Chinese population was well over 30,000 in Havana alone. In Cuba, Chinese immigrants found a wealth of new ingredients to which they applied Asian cooking techniques, such as stir-fry, thus creating Cuban-Chinese cuisine.
The communist revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959 forced many Cubans of Chinese descent to move to Miami and New York. These Cuban-Chinese then went on to open restaurants offering their new hybrid style cooking. La Caridad 78 is one great example of such a restaurant.”

Now that’s what I’m talking about. A totally new set of dishes based on the ingredients of Cuba and the cooking style of the Chinese!
Every day is a school day. Thanks Georgia!

I was chatting with a friend in Trinidad about our classic dishes and I rattled off a list that included Pelau, Oil Down, Roti, and Curry Crab and Dumpling. After a moment silence on the phone she said, “but you didn’t mention any Chinese dishes.”
I was a bit surprised, but it wasn’t the first time the question about the place of Chinese food in our cuisine has come up. A few months ago when a group of us were talking about Caribbean food, Khary, a Jamaican, said he didn’t consider the Chinese food we know and love at home as part of our cuisine.
At first I thought he joking but he was quite serious. Some of the group vehemently disagreed with him but I wasn’t actually sure what to think.
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“Don’t be afraid of cooking, as your ingredients will know and misbehave.”
Wise words from Fergus Henderson, chef and author of Nose to Tail Eating, one of the books that’s taken me to cookbook heaven in recent days!
You see, Messrs Henderson, Hix and Lawson, have caused me to ditch my new year’s resolution to get to bed early because I’ve been up until the small hours reading their fantastic books.
When I’m done, I’ll write a couple of reviews and give you a few recipes but in the meanwhile, I highly recommend that you get these books off the interweb or at a bookstore near you.
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