Keep the Hershey’s, forget the cheesecake and don’t even bother with the ice cream, they are nowhere as tempting as a dish of sugary, crispy kurma!
Kurma is a sweetmeat that’s usually served at Indian weddings in the Caribbean and it’s a huge favourite among the non-Indians as well.
In Trinidad, I used to buy kurma in the supermarket that was nice and gingery but it was literally rock hard. It was so hard that you had to suck on it first to avoid damaging your teeth.
I then found what I thought was the best kurma in the world from an Indian lady at the San Juan Market but then about three years ago Bonnie came back from a holiday in Trinidad bearing her Mom’s amazing kurma.
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Baking is a task to which you must give your full and undivided attention. Not that I didn’t know this but it hit home last weekend when I took my eye off the ball after putting two Roquefort and walnut fougasses in the oven.
It was in the small hours, I was tired and more concerned about enjoying a glass of whisky and shooting the breeze with two friends in the living room. You know how it is when girls get together!
The old talk was so sweet, that by the time someone passed by the oven and shouted that one of the breads looked a bit burnt, it was too late. After a few hours rest, I tried with the remaining dough and the result was rustic, tasty bread that was perfect for a grey day and a bowl of cream of broccoli soup. I loved the mix of flavours of textures - and thought this bread could also go well with a bowl of callaloo.
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For this post, I’m drawing on a blast from the past - an interview I did a couple of years ago with Gregg Wallace, one of the UK’s top fruit and veg experts.
As a supplier to many of London’s top restaurants and a judge on the BBC television programme Masterchef, Wallace is at the forefront of trends in the food industry.
And when I listened to this interview again, I was amazed that everything he said two years ago is still very applicable now.
He was very upbeat about the prospects for Caribbean food in the UK and believes there are gaps in the UK markets that Caribbean farmers can profitably exploit. “What you’ve got to do is find a good cash crop and something that’s expensive,” he said. “What you have to find is something that’s specialist to the islands, something you do exceptionally well, and something that is not well known at the moment over here, and then market it as best as you can.”
In this regard, Wallace thinks Caribbean fruit would do particularly well in the high end of the UK food market. “You cannot buy decent imported fruit in this country. You can’t get decent pineapple, mangoes and pawpaw because they’re all picked unripe.”
Listen to the entire interview with Gregg Wallace here.

I got really excited when my friend Heather brought me the latest edition of Gourmet magazine from the States.
Gourmet isn’t widely available here and although the information’s all online, there’s something kinda special about thumbing through the magazine to see what foodies across the pond are speaking about.
This edition is devoted to southern cuisine and I was intrigued, as I’ve always heard people compare southern cuisine to Caribbean food.
It’s easy to think that the two cuisines are similar, especially as they have both have a strong African influence. But from what I’ve read, it seems the biggest similarity is the use of offal - like pig trotters and pigtail - as slaves in both regions had to make do with the leftovers from the plantation house. I might be wrong, but from reading Gourmet, it seems that is probably the only similarity.
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Pitta bread is an extremely versatile bread, however, I don’t like a lot of the commercially made stuff from the supermarket that tastes more like cardboard than bread.
As with all other bread making, it takes a bit of patience but the end result is totally worth it.
I particularly wanted to learn to make pitta bread because I’ve been looking for lunchtime alternatives since I don’t always feel like cooking everyday, but I do want to eat healthily.
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One of my New Year’s resolutions is to become a better baker. How can I claim to be an accomplished cook if I don’t know how to knock out a decent loaf or a tasty cake?
My determination to seek baking nirvana grew stronger yesterday, after an attempt at ginger cake failed spectacularly.
I used the wrong sized tin and fell asleep, so what came out of the oven was a burnt mess with the texture of industrial sponge. It was irreclaimable and ended up in the bin.
It’s not that I can’t bake, I simply have a small repertoire of things that I do very well (roast bake, banana bread, black cake for example), and now it’s time to move beyond my baking comfort zone.
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