My good friend Charlie just brought me a cute little recipe book from Antigua called The Cool Caribbean Cookery Book. This little gem (it’s only 48-pages long) compiled by artist Gilly Gobinet is a riot of colour and it’s got some interesting recipes by top chefs from Antigua, St Lucia and St Kitts & Nevis.
I’ve often said I hate cartoony interpretations of Caribbean cuisine but that’s entirely different from the amazingly detailed watercolour illustrations that accompany the recipes in this book.
English-born Gobinet is an accomplished artist who has lived in the Caribbean for many years, and an article describing her work says, “her brightly colored paintings embody the essence of Caribbean life and the varied themes of her work never fails to excite the eye and seduce the emotions.”
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Yet again, I’ll be missing out on Taste T&T Food Festival in Port of Spain.
I was just reading the ad for it on the Internet and also saw fellow blogger Lilandra urging all the food bloggers around to meet up at the event which takes place on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 at the Jean Pierre Complex.
I was eyeing up the Sunday evening demonstrations by chefs Andre Rocke (the very handsome and very funny) and Bernard Long (I want him to do a Maori hangi for me). Andre’s going to be cooking Plaintain Crusted Snapper fillet with a cucumber, papaya and mango salsa accompanied by grilled vegetable napoleon and sweet potato fries and Bernard has me seriously jealous with the Geera Crusted French trim rack of lamb with spicy tomato. Yum!!
I wonder if I could wrangle some recipes out of the guys somehow? Anyway, if you’re in Trinidad do check out this event, it’s got very good reviews in the past and it’s a fantastic showcase for the country’s culinary masters.

Biscuits are a staple of every culture, it’s said they are among the earliest foods cooked by man, more than 10,000 years ago. Back then they were simple mixtures or grain and water that were baked on hot stones.
This explanation for how biscuits became such a common part of our lives comes from the book Cookies and Crackers. “The development of cookies and crackers from these primitive beginnings is a history of refinements inspired by two different impulses - one plain and practical, the other luxurious and pleasure-loving. Savoury crackers represent the practical and may well have been the first convenience foods: A flour paste, cooked once, then cooked again to dry it thoroughly, becomes a hard, portable victual with an extraordinarily long storage life - perfect for travelling. For centuries, no ship left port without enough bone-hard, twice-cooked ship’s biscuit - the word biscuit comes from the Old French biscoit, meaning twice cooked - to last for months, or even years.”
I always pick up Jacob’s Cream Crackers at the supermarket. In fact, I’m having a few with cheese as I write this; they’re just so convenient when I’m feeling peckish. But it’s a pity that I can’t have my favourite biscuits, the ever-enduring Crix biscuit from Trinidad and Tobago.
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I had the pleasure of sharing my passion about food blogging with a group of food writing students at City University last week. Saying no never entered my mind when I got the speaking invitation from course lecturer Guy Dimond but as I made notes the night before the session, I became very, very nervous.
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There’s an interview in The Guardian with British food critic AA Gill who is known for his sometimes ’splenetic’ reviews.
Legend has it that if AA Gill gives your restaurant a bad review, you better prepare for bankruptcy, because your establishment will crash and burn soon after his review comes out.
But Gill’s an excellent writer and I truly admire his turn of phrase especially because he suffers from severe dyslexia and he has to dictate all his work to copytakers.
I thought I’d share this one with you where he describes the cuisine on offer at a restaurant he’d reviewed and liked.
“Like every restaurant at the moment the food was a bit of everything: Indian, Malay, Thai, Singaporean - what I call Jabberwocky cooking. You read the menu and don’t have the faintest idea what any of it is.”
It’s a good thing he liked it!

I just thought I’d let you know that you are reading a blog that’s been banned in Dubai.
Apparently Can Cook, Must Cook is not consistent with the morals and values of the kingdom so it’s been banned. I’m not joking, my friend who works in Dubai tried to access the blog but got a warning that the website cannot be viewed. He’s only able to see the site when he takes his laptop to a free zone where the Internet isn’t censored.
I was really surprised to hear this, but it’s actually quite funny that my musings on food are offensive to some people in the Middle East.