If I were to play the “what would you save if your house caught fire” game, I can pretty much reel off what is most important to me and there are two items on that list which stand out. One is a bracelet of clear plastic beads with a pink heart, which Adam picked up at a local market for 50p when he was around 4. The other is this notebook, one of many from the much missed Paperchase. I loved Paperchase.
I have lots of notebooks from various times in my life and I’d want to preserve them all, but this one is the most important. It chronicles the first winter I spent in Dominica (in the Windward Isles, not to be confused with The Dominican Republic) – not the first time I visited there but the first time I ended up cooking in a professional kitchen. Some of it is quite painful reading as it traverses the period my first marriage broke up and is full of all the attendant insecurities and uncertainties. But it is also joyful. The revelation of how wonderful travelling on your own can be. The way I can see my confidence coming back through stepping out from under my very extravert husband’s shadow, forming independent friendships and working relationships and focussing on the things important to me.
My love for Dominica and the peace it gave me during a period of great personal upheaval is apparent - which is why I still feel connected to it, despite not having a chance to go back in almost 16 years. Many descriptions of the landscape, the flora and fauna – but most of all the food. The trees heaving with fruit, being able to pick cocoa pods and coffee berries by the side of the road for the thirst quenching fruit inside, mangoes as big as your head. Carambola, sour oranges, seasoning peppers, soursop, nutmeg fruit, sorrel. Meals cooked and eaten, by me and other people, ingredients discussed, local wisdom recorded and absorbed, markets visited and so many recipes. Pages and pages and pages of work in progress recipes.
I was so desperate at that time to write a cookery book! And actually had absolutely no idea how it worked, or how to make it happen. I wanted it to be Caribbean and as when I was in the UK my only cooking source was an Aga, I thought I could do a Caribbean cookery book for the Aga, the rationale being that all the Aga cookery books were pretty much standard British/European in focus, very traditional and a Caribbean one would really stand out in comparison. A really daft idea, unbelievably niche, and one which frustrated my friends who wanted to try some of my recipes and didn’t want to be faffing around with instructions for hot and simmering plates, keeping lids down etc. They quite rightly wanted conventional recipes they didn’t have to interpret. But I would not be dissuaded. Then I moved back to London and parked the Aga idea, and eventually parked the idea of a Caribbean cookbook too. I accepted a long time ago that it would never happen - perhaps should never happen - but I still have all those recipes which do come out in my books when appropriate and many are part of my regular repertoire.
I had a yen for some of them this week. I am going through a period when Dominica connections keep cropping up so it has been on my mind more than usual recently. This is part of the reason I pulled my old notebook off the shelf. It has made me crave some of the food I used to cook. This first recipe is based on a chicken casserole we used to serve a lot in the hotel – a bit like a chicken rundown, and I have gone back to basics with the curry blend I spent months and months trying to get right. I’ve added spinach (in the Caribbean I would use callaloo, in Dominica this would be the spade shaped leaves from the dasheen plant) so it is a bit chicken saag/palak. It is deeply savoury and hot, and fragrant from the scotch bonnets, thyme and allspice. Very comforting.
A Caribbean Chicken Curry
I adapt this recipe a lot. Today I made it with chicken thighs, skin and bone intact, but I might make it with fillets or diced meat. It is obviously quicker to use fillets or diced meat because there is no need to brown first and the cooking at pressure time is much faster. So I have added a slightly revised method and timings in at end for these as well. The benefit of using fillets or diced meat is also that it gives you more options when it comes to what vegetables you might want to add as most of them cook much faster than on the bone meat.
The one thing I usually do when cooking meat or fish in a Caribbean dish is give them a bit of a bathe first. This is something which evolved from the concept of “lime washing” – I wanted to use lime to freshen, but also to marinade, and it needs to be diluted so it doesn’t start cooking/tenderising the meat or fish too much. Over time I started adding garlic and chilli too. I found that it really increased the savoury qualities of the meat/fish. The time I first noticed this particular effect was when making a blackened (with Caribbean spices, heavy on the allspice) swordfish sandwich. I rarely eat swordfish now, because it is hard to find a sustainable source, but if I were to compile a desert island discs list of favourite dishes, this sandwich would definitely be on it.
For the lime wash:
Zest and juice of 1 lime
1 scotch bonnet, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed or grated
Leaves from a sprig of thyme, lightly bruised
1 tsp salt
4-8 chicken thighs, depending on size and appetite
For the curry:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, thickly sliced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp allspice berries
1 tbsp Caribbean curry powder (see below for my own mix, or use shop bought)
200ml coconut milk
100g fresh tomatoes, pureed (you can use tinned instead)
Leaves from a large sprig thyme
1 scotch bonnet, left whole, but pierced with a knife
400g frozen whole leaf spinach
Up to 1 tbsp sherry or rum (optional)
A squeeze of lime
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