Dear LPG, 

After all the dramatics of last month's gastronomic attempts to show a little independence, I have none to report this month.  Although having a West Indian heritage doesn't guarantee a successful meal from the Caribbean, and given my track record in the Independence Day kitchen over the past 6 years, I suspect that readers who have been keeping up with my attempts to follow the recipes and produce the dishes will know that I am not the most gifted cook.  

All that aside, my only serious blunder this month happened at the shops and not in the kitchen.  

There were only two main ingredients needed: breadfruit, and I go back a long way, although I can't ever remember seeing one on a tree.  I was born in the UK, the daughter of Jamaican heritage and I remember seeing a breadfruit roasted in the traditional way during my first visit to the motherland.  I was quite young and pretty ignorant of any other ways of getting things hot apart from an oven and hob at the time, and I remember asking why they felt that it needed a bonfire, but after more than 50 years, I have worked out how to use the oven as a substitute.  

My issue is that when I go to the fishmongers, I cannot tell one fish from another.  To make things worse, they didn’t have any Jackfish on the day I was there and so I thought I would try another fish that looked similar, but something I have never mentioned before is that most of my taste testers are also West Indian, including a native of Saint Vincent, which meant that while it all tasted fine for the most part, my choice of a substitute fish and the cooking of it met with more scrutiny than ever.  So while I thought this would be an easy dish to pull off I learned that there is no fooling an indigenous set of taste buds.   


I think that is all I can really say about October's celebration, but moving on, did you know that Yemen celebrates their independence next month?  That will be my next port of call.  I hope to produce my version of their national dish, which is called Saltah, and it should have a distinct flavour from that part of the world in celebration…  

CB, Lewisham 

 

CB offers the internet's version of her next recipe… 

 

 

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