At the farmers market in Elora

My friend Shivaun took me on my first trek out of Toronto. We went to the enchanting town of Elora, which is just outside of Guelph. While we were driving in, she spotted a farmers market and declared excitedly that we had to go. I was all for it. Although there was no need for me to buy anything, I've always been impressed by the idea of these informal gatherings of people who grow and make things for the purposes of selling.

One of the very exciting things that's been happening in North America recently, is a shift towards buying local produce. I think the idea is to buy fruit and vegetables that have been grown within 100 miles of where you live. And farmers markets are an ideal place for making such purchases. They seem to be run by people who are either farmers for real, or people who love to grow things. The market in Elora was nothing fancy - just a few temporary tents with about 10 to 15 people selling seasonal fruit and vegetables, honey, home made sausage and a variety of baked goods. Shoppers and their children browsed the stalls. Shivaun bought a huge selection of gorgeous looking fruit and vegetables.

It's the sort of thing I wish we could really get off the ground in Trinidad. Both because it's great to support the idea of local growing and consuming, and because we are such food lovers in this country. Although the Central Market, and other markets like it, continue to be huge hubs for the selling of fresh produce, it's becoming increasingly difficult to guarantee the provenance of a lot of it. Plus there's the problem of vast quantities of pesticides that many farmers here use. And while there are one or two places where it's possible to buy a limited amount of organic local stuff, it's prohibitively expensive, and remains, by and large, the realm of the upper middle class and ex-pat community.

So for now, I'll continue to buy veggies from my local stall and hope that one day the idea of the farmers market will truly take root here.

A neighbourhood coffee shop

I have to reveal one of my dreams: to own a small restaurant or coffee shop; something that's affordable and friendly; a place where people can hang out with their friends and families where the food and service are excellent but unpretentious.

I'm in Toronto at the moment, staying with my friend, Sharon. She lives close to Greek Town and on Saturday we went for one of those lovely, long, city walks. It was a gorgeous, balmy day. Our walk took us to one of her neighbourhood coffee shops - a really cool little place where people from the area gather to catch up, drink some great coffee and lime. It's called the Rooster Coffee Shop. It's my dream made real! Here are some photos:

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 dollop of aioli

I love that TV show, "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations". It's an unpretentious tour of the world of food and Bourdain is as likely to find himself at some dodgy street food joint as he is a 5-star Michelin restaurant. The other day I watched him visit Provence and eat some of the simplest yet most delicious-looking food. Fish or poultry with vegetables and a heavenly aioli (garlic mayonnaise) made by one of the town's grannies in a mortar and pestle. It reminded me that it's been years since I've made mayonnaise from scratch. Doing so requires patience and courage. Forcing egg yolk and olive oil to emulsify can be a tricky thing, particularly because the two elements just don't want to combine. Over the years I've had several disasters with the whole mixture separating.

So last night, when I started the process in my little mortar and pestle, Richard looked at me incredulous. "Why don't you just throw it in the blender," he asked. A good question that I really had no answer to, except to say that I felt like trying to make mayonnaise the way the Provençal granny had. A generous teaspoon of sea salt, a clove of garlic and an egg-yolk. And I start to pound and mix. I add the olive oil a few drops at a time and Richard is even more incredulous. A few more drops. Pound and mix. A little bit of nice mustard. Pound and mix. And more pounding and mixing. Nah boy - this thing hard! And tiring! And... lemme just use the whisk instead!

As I whisked I could see the mixture starting to emulsify and take shape. I tried to get Richard to taste it, but he declined, saying it was too yellow and mayonnaise is white. "It's only white if it's store bought," I told him. I'm using olive oil. It's always going to be yellow. I kept on though. Adding the olive oil more bravely by this point as I knew it would hold together. When I'd got the mixture to about a half-cup in volume I stopped adding oil and whisked until I was blue in the face. Then it was ready! I made salad with croutons, lettuce, parmesan and beefsteak tomatoes. And I stove-top grilled a piece of chicken for each of us.

A dollop of the creamy, glossy mayonnaise on each plate, along with the salad and chicken. It was delicious! So simple and so decadent. I almost licked the plate clean! Yum! Richard, by the way, nearly licked his plate too!

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.