Review of Chaud Cafe

Chaud Cafe at One Woodbrook Place in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

To my mind, Khalid Mohammed is the best chef in Trinidad.  With his interesting fusion of Caribbean and European foods, he packed in the customers when he was head chef at Batimamselle restaurant, disproving the notion that no restaurant in St Anns can succeed.  With his ultra luxurious, Chaud, at the top of Dundonald Street, he broke a vicious blight cycle on a building in which every business that has made its home had failed.  Chaud is incredibly successful, and despite its prohibitive prices, it always seems to be full or nearly there.

Mohammed has been growing his sophisticated food empire, and now in addition to Chaud, there's Chaud Creole and Chaud Cafe - the latter of which I went to for the first time tonight.  I went with my high school friend, Radha.  We've not seen each other in over a year, and I decided the event was special enough to warrant a trip to the cafe, which, could have been very expensive.

My partner doesn't like going to restaurants with me anymore.  I'm super critical, and I know this.  I look at the service, at the food at the prices.  But it's the price you pay for being a good cook.  When you can make delicious food yourself, it can often be frustrating and disappointing to go out to a restaurant and pay good money for a meal you could have made better.  But I have always relished the rare opportunities for going to Khalid's restaurants, as the food is always delicious and often adventurous.  The service is good but borders a bit on the maniacal as uber efficient waiters whisk your plates away too soon and top up the water in your glass before you've had a chance to ask for anything.  That said, it's a refreshing change from what often prevails in restaurants here where one is ignored.  Anyhoo!  I'm rambling.

Chaud Cafe is nicely designed, and has a large external dining area which I appreciated.  The service is not as efficient as it is at Chaud, but actually, given the afore-mentioned gestapo-type service at Chaud, it's nice to be in a place that in its decor, food and service is a bit more laid back.

Onto the food.  I found the menu overly pretentious.  Why would you, in Trinidad, write "garbanzo beans" on the menu, when EVERYONE says channa?  Even if you're concerned that your ex-pat clientele might not know what channa is, this can easily be clarified by some brackets.  And then, why would you call a banana fritter a beignet?  Again, not necessary.  I don't think calling a fritter a beignet makes it any more interesting, especially when what you end up with is a fritter.

I ordered toast with mushrooms and spinach, Radha ordered chicken liver pate and the two of us shared an order of fried squid.  All of these, by the way, came under their 'small plates' section, and cost between $40 - $80 each.  We ordered exactly the right amount of food.  The portions weren't massive but were ample, and given the prices at Chaud, I was happily surprised by the cost of things.

I'm not a fan of soggy bread.  I struggle with trifles and can only just about manage tiramisu.  So I was a bit disheartened by the utterly soggy slice of bread that arrived in front of me.  That said, the mushrooms and spinach were completely delicious, and I was able to forget about the bread.  Radha's pate was velvety and smooth, with a sweet red onion relish that I enjoyed.  I would have liked it if there had been some slices of fresh tomato on the plate, as I love that combination.  The squid was good but unremarkable.

In terms of dessert, my beignets were ever so slightly burnt and quite lack-lustre.  Radha had a chocolate and coffee mousse which was creamy, light, airy and thoroughly yummy!

All in all, I enjoyed the Chaud Cafe experience, and I'd suggest it to anyone.  I'd also happily go back there again.

When your cup is empty

I've been thinking about writing this post for a long time. But I've procrastinated. I've always thought of blogs as places where people share happy things, cheery things. Certainly not places where people share sadness. And so, even though this has been circling around my mind in various permutations for over a month now, I've been putting it off. (Please, don't feel compelled to read further, if what you're looking for is something cheery and happy - but then, sad has its place too, in the scheme of things.)


Six years separate these two moments on Lady Chancellor hill. For those who don't know Trinidad, Lady Chancellor is a beautiful road that rises close to the crest of a hill and looks out over most of Port of Spain. I have lived there at various points in my life and come to know its twists and turns quite intimately. I also know its seasons very well - that raunchy smell of cedar coming into leaf that means the rainy season has just about started. The red Imortelles that could mean it's going to be a short dry season, or a long, parched and burning dry season. The growing numbers of walkers, pushing their ways frenetically up and down the hill, which means that carnival is on its way. And of course, the arrival of the magnificent pink and yellow Poui trees which always make me smile.

Although at times the hill rises gradually, it can surprise you with a steep twist that gets your heart pumping. And if you decide to walk up and down it all the way, it can take you upwards of an hour and a half.

In 2005, my family was in Trinidad for Christmas - including my father. That Daddy had joined us was a rare treat. Since my parents divorced when I was five, I could probably count on one hand the number of times we'd got together as a family for Christmas. Daddy was staying downstairs with me in my apartment, and Saffrey, Mum and Auntie Libby were in Mum's apartment directly upstairs.

Daddy was in a good place. Four years earlier he'd had triple bypass surgery and in 2005 he was truly well - and he looked it. He was eating well, exercising regularly, and he wasn't smoking at the time. (His love-life, if I remember correctly, was a bit tormented, but then that was often the case with Dad.) Because he was a competitive person by nature, he had got into the habit of timing his walks in Jamaica (where he walked around the Mona campus) each time challenging himself to go a little faster. I remember he had even gone so far as to measure, with the odometer in his car, a distance of two miles exactly, and that was what he would walk. At some point during his stay in Trinidad, he had determined that he qould conquer Lady Chancellor. Now, like me, it was a hill that he knew well. In his youth he would take his dog, Mac, for walks through the Botanic Gardens (which was very close to where he lived) and up Lady Chancellor. But I suspect it had been a good 45 years since he had last attempted the hill.

I think the day was overcast. But he put on his sneakers and socks and an orange t-shirt and declared that he was going. I must have asked if he was sure that was such a good idea (you can always see the approaching weather from Lady Chancellor) but as I said, he was resolved; he was ready to tackle the hill. So he set off. I must have checked my watch to guesstimate when he would be back. If he went all the way to the Savannah, it could have been an hour and a half. I carried on about my puttering, and surely as I predicted, it started to rain. I mean heavy, torrential rain. I thought that Dad would certainly turn around and come back. He would be soaked through in a matter of minutes, and an hour is a long time to be completely soaked. But my watch ticked and ticked and still no Daddy.

About half an hour later, I decided to rescue him. So I threw a large towel into the back seat and tore off down the hill in search of him. Surely enough, there he was - about 25 minutes walking distance from home - pounding the asphalt road toward me. He had a sort of grimace on his face, coupled with the smallest of grins and a twinkle in his eye. The look that said, I'm doing it - soaked as he was, rain still coming down in sheets. I pulled up alongside him expecting him to jump in the car. But he didn't. He shook his head and kept walking up the hill. He arrived home about half an hour later - drenched and so proud. He had conquered the hill - in every way. I still wear that orange t-shirt today, to remind me of him and that moment.


Saffrey and Daddy at Maracas Beach, Christmas 2005










As I mentioned earlier - six years separate these two moments on the hill. About three weeks ago, I went walking on Lady Chancellor. For months now, maybe even years, my personal resources of strength, courage and even happiness have been depleting, and I have been struggling; no, fighting, to find a way to put something into the cup that is my life. On this day, I was sitting in a chair at my mother's apartment thinking nothing. Blank. Empty. Staring. To try to lift myself out of the moment, I put on my sneakers and walked up the hill, determined to flee that void of feeling. But as I walked, I found I couldn't. Because there was still nothing. I sat on a wall beneath a cedar tree and wondered how I would get back to Mummy's, even though I was only five minutes away.

And two angels walked up to me.

"Ain't you is the lady who does make that show Sancoche?"
"Yes," weak smile.
"Like I ain't see you in a while."
"I know - sorry, the show stopped a couple of years ago."
Then, "Keep going, dahlin'," one of the ladies said. "You almost reach."

I smiled at her and thanked her. It was a slightly stronger smile. And like Daddy, I got up and walked down the hill - further than I had done in years. And then I walked back up again. I think I poured a few drops into my cup that day.

None of these days - possibly not since my father died - has been easy. Surprisingly. they seem to get harder. But I am finally beginning to understand this thing my father seemed to know - you have to have something in the cup. For him, solace could be found in sailing, in reading, in his dogs, in his lifelong friendships, in his time at Leslie, in his workshop sessions. We all have to find places of solace in our lives... somewhere where we can rest. My father's house was one of those places for me, but there are others, and I must make use of them.

As for you Dad, I don't know when the pain of your death will ever pass or ease, but what I do know, is that as much as you would empathise with me, you would insist that I live - that I walk the hill, that I earn my place, "through this sometimes vale of tears". (Those were his words.)

Glorious Bamboo!

I have always loved bamboo. A few years ago I did a writer's workshop in Grande Riviere during which I spent hours by the river everyday, listening to the bamboo swish and groan in the afternoon breeze. In Jamaica, the hillsides are covered in huge bamboo patches that look lacy and feminine from afar.

This weekend I went with my friend, Michele, on a trek to the three pools in Blanchisseuse. She was taking a group of boys that had been participating in the YMCA programme, Shoot to Live, and the idea was that we'd hike and take photos. Well, it's been raining very heavily recently, so we didn't get very far. But I was still able to take some photos I really like - of the glorious bamboo!

Review of Taryn's: The Panyol Place

A plate of pulled beef with white rice and black beans, fried plantain and avocado pear.

A couple of months ago, Richard brought some arepas home for me to try. They weren't what I was accustomed to: these were round instead of crescent shaped, and the corn patty had been sliced open and filled with various things. Then my friend, Chris, mentioned it to me. He said they served proper milky coffee and real rice and beans from Venezuela. So I decided to give it a try myself.

Taryn's has a fairly unprepossessing facade on Mucarapo Road (opposite Hotte Shoppe and next to Creole Cuisine), which is a shame, because it means that if you're walking along the street, you're likely to pass it straight (as I have been doing for several years now). But, if you make it through the door, you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's a bright eating spot, decorated unpretentiously with bits of Venezuelan bric-a-brac and a handful of dining tables, which are generally decorated with little vases of fresh-cut flowers (score big points from me!).

Taryn's serves a variety of simple South American eats including empanadas, arepas, rice and beans, fried plantain, pulled beef and flan (the ubiquitous creme caramelesque desert). The first time I went, I ordered coffee and an arepa with crispy pork. The arepa was made out of white corn - it was firm and creamy, and the crispy pork wasn't bad at all - a little dry, but tasty none-the-less. Of course, what made me very happy were the two thin slices of avocado pear Taryn added! Yum! And Chris was right - the coffee was great - fresh, strong and milky (far superior to, say, Rituals).

Taryn herself was a delight. It seemed to me that this was her passion - that she enjoyed looking after people and feeding them. She greeted everyone with a smile of welcome which was very endearing.

I've been back to the Panyol Place a couple of times now - each time I've tried something different, and been generally pleased with the results. I do have a few critiques, though. When Taryn is not there, the service doesn't match up. The rest of the staff aren't as warm or friendly and it can take much longer to be served. I also find the price point generally on the high side. When I consider that the dining experience is not too far off what pertains at the Breakfast Shed, I'd say you pay at least $15 more per plate at Taryn's. For example, my lunch of rice and black beans, pulled beef, fried plantain and avocado was $60, when a similar lunch would have been $45 at the Breakfast Shed.

But I'd definitely go back - if for the coffee alone.

Review of new roti shop: Hurry Kurry

The ubiquitous roti is something I’ve steered clear of writing about since I started this blog. Like shark-and-bake or doubles, it’s something every self-respecting Trinidadian has an opinion on – who sells the best version of the said delicacies. But, given that the opening of a new roti shop in Port of Spain is such a rare thing, I decided to delve into the partisan world of our country’s favourite portable, eat-on-the-go, lip-licking curry wrap.

For every roti shop there is in Trinidad, there’s a gaggle of people that rambunctiously and defiantly swears it’s the best! People who love Shiann’s, for example, will almost never go anywhere else, they doh care if they have to stand doggedly in line for 45 minutes while ten people in front of them whip out their lists and recite 15 different combinations of ingredients that their entire office has ordered to the weary girls behind the counter. Other long-time favourites are: Don’s roti in Diego Martin (which, by the way, I didn’t get at all), a place in Boissiere village my friend Chris took me to (again, another huge disappointment, perhaps Chris has a nostalgic connection to the place he’s been going to all his life, so he can’t taste, in the now, how non-descript the roti is), Patraj or Hosein’s, Wings in Tunapuna, the little hole-in-the-wall shop on Belmont Circular Road that I go to for the cheapest goat roti with bhaggi, curry potato, baigan and slight pepper (no channa, mind-you, but the best $18 you’ll spend that day!), and the perennially popular and packed – though I still don’t understand why – Hotte Shoppe. (It was one of those coming-of-age experiences for me – the discovery of Dopson’s on Marli Street made me feel like I was more than just a middle class convent girl who’d gone to Bishops and thought the definition of roti was Hotte Shoppe. Once I tasted a real roti, ergo a Dopson’s roti, I understood how awful Hotte Shoppe’s version was with their insipid yellow and watery curry and perfectly white dhalpuri – not a brown spot to be found anywhere – which invariably bursts when you eat it, squirting the same watery curry all over your clean clothes, and I knew that I was one step closer to being a ‘real’ Trinidadian.) Even today, I maintain that the best paratha you can buy comes from Dopson’s (long-since relocated to the bottom of Maraval Road). It’s buttery, soft here and slightly crispy there, with lots of brown/ toasted patches. Yum!! And the best curry bodi comes from Shiann’s on Cipriani Boulevard: it’s never soggy or overcooked, and always treated like a vegetable that should require teeth and crunching to eat! As to curried meats, I’m not so polarised on the matter. I really like Wings by the highway side of Tunapuna for the fact that you can get huge portions of geera pork and paratha with a little curry pumpkin.

Anyway! I seem to have gone off on a tangent here. Back to the original subject of this post – the new roti shop, Hurry Kurry, in Royal Palm Plaza, Maraval. Firstly, it’s in a brilliant place. Considering that you can get seemingly every kind of fast food on the Saddle Road in Maraval, it took a LONG time for someone to figure out that a bright, clean and well-signed roti shop would be a good idea. So congratulations to the owners on that epiphany. (Hang-on, I’m having a vague memory that before there was Ellerslie Plaza or Mr Burger on the left, there was a roti shop. It’s way too fuzzy in my mind though!) Next, the staff are actually friendly – a kind of freakish thing when you think of the generally sullen, sour, and scowling people you normally find serving you at a roti shop. My third point is the reason I’ll go back to Hurry Kurry: it has the best relishes, pepper sauces and chutnies of any roti shop I’ve been to, AND slices of fresh cucumber with a little garlic to-boot! There’s regular pepper sauce, fresh kuchela, mother-in-law, and (the piece de resistence!) a scotch bonnet choka that is gorgeous! It’s smoky and mild when it first hits your palette, and has a wicked sting on the back end. Although neither the curry nor the dhalpuri was particularly noteworthy (still, in my mind, both were better than Hotte Shoppe) the complete package, along with cucumber slices, pepper choka and kuchela, was very satisfying. I happily recommend it.

A potted garden of veggies and herbs

In June 2009, I visited the inspiring eco-friendly country, Costa Rica. Coincidentally, I was reading Barbara Kingsolver's, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" at the time. Some of the food I ate in Costa Rica was incredible, and utilised vegetables and products that are available in the Caribbean too, but which we would never choose to prepare in the way the Costa Ricans do. For example, peewah featured deliciously in dips and salads. Meanwhile, in her book, Kingsolver describes the choice her family made to eat only food they had grown or slaughtered, or that came from the immediate vicinity of their Virginia home. Although parts of the book were irritatingly earnest, in general, I was inspired to try, in some small way, to change some of my own food buying practices - to try making things from scratch, and to attempt to grow more or buy more that was grown locally. Hence the requests for a pasta-press and yogurt maker. And too my revived interest in growing herbs and vegetables.


















I wouldn't say that I have a particularly green thumb. My grandmother and aunt in England both had gorgeous gardens which they tended with lots of love and attention. And although I enjoyed helping them when I was at their homes, I could never really muster the drive to create similar gardens where I've lived. And now I live in an apartment with no garden at all! But the good news is I have a roof "deck". It's really just a concrete square, but I've had friends over for dinner up there, and I decided to try some potted plants to see how they'd fare. The trouble is, it's a concrete roof, which means it gets super hot in the day. And with this dry season we've had, well, trying to keep any plants alive these last few months has been a huge challenge.

None-the-less, I bought a little ficus, and a miniature bamboo plant, which have already started providing some shade for less hardy plants. I planted a variety of seedlings: rosemary (in the direct sun, because it can take the jammin'); regular and purple basil (these can also handle lots of sun); dill (in the shade of the ficus); chives, mint and local lettuces. And you know, they're doing really well. I trim and harvest almost daily to add to my salads and cooking. And the thrill of picking your own freshly grown, pesticide-free herbs is quite something. And having the garden in pots means that it's much easier to tend - easy to weed and water and easy to access.

Next I'm going to try the pesky tomato and some wild rocket.

Some of the things I've had success growing are:
rocket
lettuce
basil (probably the easiest thing the grow!)
rosemary
chives
dill
mint

I still have had no success growing coriander - not even from seedlings. What am I doing wrong?

By the way, a really great place in Trinidad for buying seedlings is a little garden shop called Agriflora on Aranguez Main Road. They sell seedlings and more mature plants - lots of herbs and vegetables, and of course, flowering plants and shrubs.

My father's books

I miss my father's home. Although Daddy had lived in Jamaica from 1997 until he died, and I only lived with him there for a year, his home was always my home. It was unpretentious and very comfortable. There were always his hundreds of books on shelves scattered around the house and in his study. His copies of Nabokov and Naipaul novels, his collection of plays and poetry from Borges to Walcott, Tony Mc Neil to Robert Frost, his biographies of famous writers, thinkers and politicians; he had books on the Mayans and Greeks, the world wars and the Nazis. They lined the shelves of every book case of every home I've ever known him to live in. They were always organised by genre and then alphabetically by author. Just like a library, even though he would never have called what he had a library. He would have thought that pretentious. They were just his books which went with him wherever he went.













The bookshelf in my Dad's study.

When my sister and I were sorting through his books after he died, I started considering them a 'collection'. But then, that's not the right word. A 'collection' suggests something that's a deified entity, that is stored carefully and rarely touched - revered for what it represents rather than its actual content and meaning. Daddy's books were very much intrinsic to his creative life. He read constantly. His favourite novels he read several times. And most of his favourite poems he knew by heart. All of his books bore the signs of having been read - they had faded and curling pages, many of them were covered in his annotations and underlinings. Some of them had ancient library stamps and the names of other owners scribbled onto their pages.

Even though no doubt over the years he lent out many books that were never returned, he still lent his books to friends and students, often recommending a particular story or poem that would reveal some truth that was specific to the person to whom he was lending the book.

The way he was with his books was exactly how he how he approached his life. The books weren't precious objects to him. They were only useful in-so-far as they were well-written or interesting. He didn't care a fig if he owned books that were rare or autographed. They were what he used everyday, to learn, to relax, to delight, inspire and to educate.

When my father found out that he was dying, all he did differently was to eat more ice cream and cake. He was exactly himself - writing, reading, teaching, sailing when he could, laughing, agonising: living. He told my sister and I that until you die you're alive. I think his one indulgence was to tell someone, "Fuck you, I'm dying!" when they suggested he stop smoking. His life was not more precious to him than his ability to live it.

Dad's books are all over the place now. They will no longer line the bookshelves of his home. They belong to me and to Saffrey. To his dearest friends and to strangers. There's a part of me that's confused about the dilemma nostalgia creates. Do we keep everything because it belonged to him once? But then, that would be to make those things exactly what he never did: relics, 'libraries' and 'collections'. What's the point of keeping an autographed copy of a shitty book, when there would be less space for something you might actually want to read?

Pollo Tropical - Yuk!

It's not a great feeling this. Knowing that the food was complete rubbish, it's hard to come up with a good thing to say about the new restaurant and drive through, Pollo Tropical, and that's hard for me. Let me think on it....

Oh yes, from the car the interior design of the new building on the south western side of the Savannah looked nice. Oh, and the food was reasonably priced. But the price doesn't really matter, nor the interiors, when you just wouldn't want to eat the food. Talk about bland, tasteless, non-descript!

Richard and I went to the drive-through to pick up food for us and his family. I wanted a combination of different sandwiches on the menu, they didn't have any sandwiches. So I ordered variations on their roasted chicken: with cassava in garlic; rice and beans; yellow rice with veggies; caesar salad; black beans.

It ALL tasted yuk! Bland chicken; soggy and wilted caesar salad (at least the croutons were crispy!); bland yellow rice; mushy boiled cassava with no butter, no garlic, no salt, no flavour! What a disappointment! I can't imagine that I'll be going there anytime soon. Nor would I recommend it to anyone.

A pasta adventure!

My Mum gave me a pasta pressing gadget for christmas. I'd been wanting one forever, and I'd finally remembered to ask. The wrapped present was surprisingly small - for some reason I'd been expecting a food-processor sized box - but heavy. I unwrapped the shiny new thing an put it away in the cupboard behind my blender and cheese toastie grill (never to be seen again, you might think!)

I'd actually seen Jamie Oliver make pasta once on the Martha Stewart show, and there was something about his assertions that it was dead easy that made me think, nah. That looks hard! So the pasta press was languishing in the darkness of my cupboard next to the kitchen aid mixer that I haven't used in 10 years! It was in grave danger of suffering the same fate as the mixer. Until my friend, Franka, posted a pasta recipe on Facebook. I knew it was the signal I'd been unconsciously waiting for, so I printed the recipe and sent an email to five foodie friends, inviting them to come over for a pasta-making lime. (hey - if the pasta tasted like rubbish or didn't do what it was meant to, at least I'd have had a good time with friends!)













My mum arrives first, and I realise I haven't even made up the first batch of dough (which, by the way, is meant to sit and chill in the fridge for at least an hour - crapadoodle!) Having never tried to make pasta in my life, I decide to change the recipe - 4 eggs, 300 gms all purpose flour, 100 gms spelt flour, salt and olive oil all mixed into a dough which you're meant to knead until it's smooth and pliable (it's meant to be quite elastic) and then, like I said, wrap in plastic wrap and leave it to chill in the fridge for an hour.

Be warned, whenever you see the pros mixing everything on a table top and creating a well in the flour into which easily (and neatly) fit the eggs, it's like that because they've practiced loads. On my first attempt, one of the walls of the well caved in and egg quickly ran out all over the counter while I tried desperately to contain it with my hands! The tirck is to start bringing the flour in from the outside to the egg very quickly, mixing all the while with your fork! (My mum, by the way, eyed with with suspicion and amusement as I went through this rigmarole: she, clean as a whistle, me, covered in raw egg!)

Once I knead the dough for a good 10 minutes I put it in the fridge to chill and make another batch, this time using 400 gms of all purpose flour. The women arrive and we spend forever chatting about what we're going to make. The consensus is ravioli in different shapes - circles or triangles depending on whether we're stuffing them with meat or vegetables. We settle on our stuffings. Mine: home made pesto with ricotta and bacon. Nicola's: bhaggi and ricotta. Michele: some exotic asian something with shrimp and water chestnuts.

Lupe assembles the pasta gadget (the only one among us with the good sense to look at the manual!). I get the spelt dough from the fridge (chilling for 45 mins) and we start.

























Guess what. It works!! Plenty hands on deck gently cradle the pasta as we roll it through the press, one notch at a time. Lupe, Mum and Miche are in charge of the pressing, me and Nicola the stuffing, and Gabby is making the tomato and mushroom sauce. We giggle and chuckle and talk rubbish and squeal excitedly: "We makin' PASTA!".

























I boil the delicate (somewhat lopsided) raviolis for about 5 minutes each. And mummy samples. We're in shock. They're delicious. We cook and eat and chat for the next several hours. Richard arrives and beats a hasty retreat to the bedroom (muttering something about Lilith fair)! And the women are completely thrilled at the Lillith Food Fair! Will I be making pasta from scratch anytime soon? Probably not. Was it a brilliant way to spend a night with friends? Absolutely!

Trying something new.

I've been meaning to write about this creation since I made it for Christmas dinner. But I forgot that I'd taken a photo of it (what's the point of recipes without photos?) and only just discovered it a couple of days ago.

In my family, we always make a first course for Christmas dinner, which, more often than not, is a seafood dish. My auntie's favourite such dish is shrimps in marie rose sauce in half an avocado. So I knew I wanted to do something with fish, and had asked my sister to bring some sliced smoked marlin from Jamaica (better than smoked salmon, I swear!) for whatever it was I as going to make. I wanted it to be interesting in terms of eating and beautiful to look at. I'd also spent anarmandaleg buying some smoked salmon here and some white fish. I looked through my recipe books for inspiration and found a smoked salmon terrine.

When sliced it was beautiful, because there were layers of colour: the pink of the salmon, white fish, dotted here and there with green capers and peppercorns.

So I set about making my terrine with caution and trepidation. For some reason, anything that looks like it could have come out of a Cordon Bleu cookery book absolutely terrifies me! Completely intimidating! Instead of using only smoked salmon for the outer layer, I added also my precious smoked marlin, and some inexpensive white fish formed the bulk of the internal layers. The dish was set in a custard of eggs, cream and creme fraiche (just add a teaspoon of yogurt to a cup of fresh cream, leave it to sit at room temperature for an hour or two, and you'll have creme fraiche) and a sprinkling of chopped capers and brine-soaked green peppercorns.

The whole dish was baked in the oven, then left outside to cool. I put two heavy tins of tomatoes or beans on top the terrine and then left it to chill in the fridge until I was ready to serve it. A day later, and I still didn't know how the terrine looked! You have to wait to cut it until you're ready to serve it and waiting is not something I do so well! So I was completely excited when it was time to serve it. With a very sharp knife, I carefully cut slices at maybe 2 inches wide, and the beauty of the terrine was revealed!

It was also, by the way, quite delicious. A good combination of textures and colours and tastes. Not so scary after all, and a definite crowd-pleaser!

Happy hens make delicious eggs

"Breakfast is at 8:30 in the morning," Don said as we were telling him goodnight. Hmmm. 8:30. That might be a bit of a stretch for me considering I'd been waking up routinely at 10-10:30 every day since the start of our holiday. But I resolved to try my best.

It was a cold morning with a bright blue sky. Because we'd arrived in the dark, it was the first chance for me and Richard to take a look around. He got dressed, put on his boots and headed out into the garden early. We were both excited. The snow lay on the grounds of the farm, white and glistening in the sunshine. I could hear people moving around through the wooden house, which creaked and groaned with every step.

The house, the living quarters of Butternut Farm, was built in 1720 by Jonathon Hale. Don Reid bought the property in the early 1970s and immediately set about restoring the building. Reid, a graduate of Harvard, had previously worked for years in banking and then as a school teacher. But it quickly became obvious to me that Don was born to run a period bed and breakfast. He has a passion for collecting antiques - more like an obsession, he admits over breakfast - which he places in each room of the inn. The doors all hang on period hammered hinges; all the rooms are furnished with ancient rugs and beds, sliver and brass objets, antique books, drawings and paintings, and a decanter of sherry, two glasses and little pile of chocolates. Two Abysinnian cats wander freely through the house, and there's a huge variety of stuffed animals and fox pelts leaping off of walls and strewn over the backs of chairs.

I went downstairs to the dining room for breakfast. Richard had come back in, and we were joined by Don and Irving and two other guests - a mother and her toddler. The table was set beautifully with silver cutlery, home made raspberry jam, toast, yogurt, cheese and an enormous yellow omelette.

"Happy hens make the best eggs!" declared Don, and so I tucked in to test his theory myself. There's something truly special about a fresh egg - I mean one that's been gathered and cooked in the same day, as our eggs had been. Their colour is magnificent; taste rich and decadent.

Don - like me - was a bit of a foodie. He'd even cooked for the famous Jullia Child and her husband, Paul, in the mid-70s. When I asked him about it, he was sufficiently vague. "You run a bed and breakfast for long enough and all kinds of people will come through your door." I liked his quiet humility. Both he and Iriving had a grace about them that made it easy to spend time with them. They spoke easily and without guile about their lives. They were curious about me and what I did and where I came from, but somehow managed, without any apparent effort, to not seem intrusive or prying.

Over the next couple of days, Richard and I would explore Glastonbury and go to Real Art Ways. Whenever we returned to the farm, we were greeted by Don or Irving or both. We ate fresh eggs every morning for breakfast and noted that the snow on the lawn had started to melt. We were at the end of our holiday, and on our final day we packed our things into the jeep and readied to leave for the airport. Don gave me a jar of home made jam. I said I'd better pay you now, lest I forget. "I feel so comfortable here, I might just walk out the door and forget all about money. Don felt similarly - that it was strange to be accepting money from friends. I was happy to pay him, though. It had been such a special few days, due in no small part, to the place itself and to its gracious proprietors.

Don't judge a place by its website

"You decide where we stay and make the arrangements," Richard said when I started to get excited about our trip to New York. We were going to be heading to Connecticut for a screening of my film at the Rockstone and Bootheel exhibition and I'd decided that it would be a gentle denouement to our New York trip, if we spent some time at a cozy inn or bed and breakfast. I got to searching on the internet - Bed and Breakfasts, Connecticut - and almost immediately came upon Butternut Farm. Here's one example of not judging a place by its website! The site was fairly dreadful - low-res photos, badly laid out. But I read through the entire site, realising that it was still run by owner, Don Reid; it was full of antiques, had been lovingly restored, was affordable and within 15 minutes drive of Hartford.





























There wasn't an e mail address for making contact, so I called instead. Don answered the phone - the quiet voice of an older man. I told him who I was and where I was calling from. I gave him the dates I'd like to come. He asked why I was coming and I explained my film was going to be screened etc. I told him my boyfriend was a designer whose work was part of the exhibition. He seemed interested to learn more about us, but explained that he hadn't decided if he was going to be in the US in January, so could I call back in mid-December? I have to admit: I was a bit irritated by his request. Didn't he want my business? Why did I have to call him back, why couldn't he call me? Didn't he know there were a million other places I could stay instead of his?

"Okay," I said. "But could you make a note of my name and the dates?"

"Sure," he said. I gave him my information and decided I would wait till December to call him back, rather than search out other accommodations. I can be very impatient when I feel like it, so accepting the delay was a leap for me. But there was something about the dated website, the grainy photos and the reticent Don on the other end of the phone that made me decide - paradoxically - that this was the place for us.

And let me tell you - I was absolutely right! When I called back in December, Don answered the phone with, "Hello Mariel!" He'd remembered me and kept my number. He'd decided not to go anywhere in January (by this time it had become abundantly clear that it was going to be a hard winter) and he'd be delighted to welcome Richard and I on the 15th. Every time I called him after that, he spoke to me with a gentle familiarity, as though we'd known each other for years. So much so, that when Richard and I ended up staying longer in Salem than I'd expected, I called Don to let him know we'd be late - just in case he had errands he wanted to do.

It was cold and dark when we arrived at the farm. The settled snow was a strange pale blue in the night, and it muffled the sounds of Main Street just beyond the garden. Don and Irving greeted us warmly at the door, and we walked into probably the loveliest guest house I've ever had the pleasure to visit.

Photos taken by Richard Rawlins and Mariel Brown, with the permission of Don Reid.

Simple pleasures, at home and away

The snowcone. A combination of shaved ice, sickly sweet syrup and sweetened condensed milk. It's been part of my food landscape all my life. It was always my Dad who used to take my sister and I round the savannah for a snowcone. Guava syrup, pine syrup, milk, and if we were lucky, the vendor would put two little ears on either side of our snowcone globe. It was pure happiness: the first few sucks on the straw brought the sweetest, most concentrated mouthfulls of syrup. Then, as the ice melted, we would dig our straws down into our cups, trying to force the syrup into the ice to make the sweetness last longer. Saffrey, I think, was gifted at making the syrup last right to the very end - just like she was the only one at the table who would save her meat for last! Of course, me, with my inability to delay gratification, would always end up with a half-cup of bland and flavourless ice having sucked all the sweetness out of it. (For the first time in my life, I actually managed to keep a lot of my syrup for last, when I had a tamarind snowcone round the savannah last week. That's when I discovered that I preferred my way of doing it - sucking the ice dry of syrup. Because for me, the triumph of the syrup in the bottom of the cup was kind of ruined by the fact that I felt a little sick and there was no ice chaser left to balance off the sugar! Go figure, the grass is always greener...)

When I went to Costa Rica in June, my friend Rachel and I were amazed (although why we were, I'm not sure) to come across a snowcone vendor at one of the pretty green squares in San Jose. He didn't have a machine for shaving the ice. He used a little metal scraper attached to a box to catch the shaved ice. It was a pretty labour intensive activity for him. But the end result was much the same. A beautiful, sweet pleasure that makes you smile and never fails to remind you of simpler times, when a styrofoam cup of shaved ice with syrup and a trip to the savannah were such a source of happiness.

Here's Rachel just before she tucked into hers...

My favourite snowcone spot (and I'm sure it's predictable) Is Lil Prince on the western side of the savannah. And tamarind is my syrup of choice!

A little lime zest

Until I moved into my new apartment (where I have no cable and no rabbit ears for my tv) I was an unabashed Food Network peong! I could sit and watch Ace of Cakes and Barefoot Contessa, not to mention Next Food Network Star (swearing all the time that that coulda be me!) and Secrets of a Restaurant Chef for hours at a time. Whole sundays would be given over to watching Guy Fieri drive from one diner to another eating the most fabulous and no doubt heartburn inducing things! There's something both sexy and comforting (an odd combination, I suppose) about watching other people cook.

In addition to watching the famous people, I've also been a food adventurer all my life. This has led to some unmitigated disasters (in which the only rational response would have been to throw the food in the bin) and some quite special and memorable concoctions. What I've learned about cooking food (from my own explorations, and from my hours of watching Food Network) is that good food starts with good ingredients and a knowledge of how those ingredients work. I think learning to cook is really about learning an ingredient - what it works with; what it's a disaster with; what makes it shine; whether it can stand alone or whether it provides good support to something else. It's the latter that I'm going to dwell on today - those special ingredients that move food from ordinary and okay, to special and interesting and exciting. They're things that all of us know about, yet few of us remember to buy, and use when we're cooking. Fresh herbs; ginger; different varieties of pepper (fresh peppers like seasoning peppers and scotch bonnet, jalapeño and chilli); nuts (pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds, pecans and sunflower seeds); peppercorns - green ones, red ones, black ones; different kinds of salt (taste salt - and you'll understand that there are different varieties) lemon and lime zests (or even grapefruit and orange).

Today I was making pancakes out of the box. I'm sorry, but I've never been able to make a pancake from scratch that's as good as a pancake made from Aunt Jemima's or bisquik pancake mix. And while I've always been quite content with following the instructions on the packet to the letter, today I decided to add some lime zest to the mixture. Not too much, just about a half teaspoon. And when I tell you, those little curls of zest elevated the packet pancake to something special and elegant. It wasn't overpowering. It just teased my taste buds: here a bit, there a bit - light citrus with good butter and runny maple syrup. Yum! (I'm threatening to have pancakes for dinner too!)

I've also taken to adding a little lime juice and zest to soups and salad dressings and those things are more special and interesting for the addition.

Pelican Bar, Treasure Beach, Jamaica

Earlier this year, I was in Jamaica for a protracted period of time. I had been working hard and was tired and quite worn down. My sister, who lives in Jamaica and is a lover of all things from the land of wood and water (Usain Bolt especially) invited me to spend a weekend in Treasure Beach with her with a couple of her friends. Saffrey had been doing a job in Treasure Beach and had come to know it quite well. So I borrowed my Dad's car, and set off from Kingston through the shockigly unsigned wilds of Clarendon and Mandeville.

Saffrey was staying in a cottage on the beach, and after some hesitation on my part, she managed to convince me to take a pirogue out to Pelican Bar with her and her friends. We were to have lunch there, and really, I just HAD to see it.

Treasure Beach is a strange sort of place. There's the gorgeous hotel, Jake's, run by the Henzell Family, and from what I could tell, not a whole lot more. It's at the bottom of a very steep and precipitous hill. In places it drops sharply into the sea over craggy rocks, and in other spots there's sandy beaches that slope gently into that archetypal blue Caribbean Sea.

It was a gorgeous day - the sea so blue, the sky so blue. Saffrey in a good mood, me - kind of waiting to be impressed; Kimmy and her boys in a state of excitement. And soon I understood why. It seemed that it was impossible to go to Pelican Bar without coming upon a school of dolphins. Now, to me, dolphins are like fireworks and steelpan - I never tire of experiencing that giggly grinning and skinning thrill of being in the midst of squeaking, speeding school of dolphins! They stayed with us for several miles, I think. And then there, off in the distance, in the middle of the sea (as far as I could tell) appeared some sort of shack - the kind of thing you would have seen on "The Blue Lagoon", or some Hollywood movie about castaways or shipwrecked sailors.

As we got closer, I realised the structure wasn't quite in the middle of the sea - it was in a sort of shallow area that extended like a sea peninsula out from the mainland behind a reef. But that notwithstanding, it was still magical. Very Robinson Crusoe.

Truth be told, though, the food was kind of junky. Regular Jamaican by-the-sea fare. Brown stews, steamed or eshoveitched fish and lobster with rice. Red stripes and tings and pepsis. I wouldn't bother to go there for the food. It was more expensive than I would want if you factor in the cost of the boat ride (nearly an hour each way). But you know, you just can't beat the novelty of the whole experience - the blue sea, the sky, the dolphins, the Robinson Crusoe shack in the middle of the sea. Make a day of it and pretend you're a castaway living in a rickety driftwood shack lapped by the waters of the Caribbean Sea!