Food & Drink: Cook Book of the Week

What is the difference between Chianti and Chianti Classico? And why are they replanting all those lovely Tuscan vineyards?

TREASURES OF MY CARIBBEAN KITCHEN

By Anne-Marie Whittaker, Macmillan Education, pounds 12.95, 216pp

ANYONE WHO has ever dipped their toes into the warm waters of the Caribbean will know that it is an impossibly addictive place. It's not just the palm-fringed beaches, rainforests or hummingbirds, it's the food. Spicy prawn curries wrapped in rotis, grilled fish, soursop sorbets, banana bread and rum punch. Yet according to Anne-Marie Whittaker, Guyanese but settled in Barbados, such restaurant dishes only hint at the extraordinary variety of authentic Caribbean food which, she states, can only he found within people's homes.

Treasures of my Caribbean Kitchen is her first book, and is based on her experience as an enthusiastic home cook. It is filled with rather unappetising colour photographs, typical of many mass-market American cook books. Do not let such facts discourage you, particularly if you are suffering from Caribbean deprivation. Her book has a satisfyingly higgledy-piggledy structure and is full of exotic recipes and curious facts. Whittaker combines sincerity with a wry, tongue-in-cheek humour as she explains the origins of countless dishes. Cowheel and barley soup it seems, is favoured as an aphrodisiac by the men in Belize, while jug jug (slow-cooked spiced green pigeon peas with ham) is a Barbadian Christmas delicacy.

The recipes are presented as homely family food. Caribbean shepherd's pie made with bread fruit, for example, or Bar-B-Q chicken. Some use ingredients that are difficult to find in Britain. I am not sure that I would want to seek out fresh conch meat or 3lb of ramgoat's disposables! However, adventurous cooks should head for their nearest Caribbean community, where they will undoubtedly find everything from christophenes (chayotes) - similar to a squash - to casareep (made from cassava). This is not a book for the squeamish, but it will be enjoyed by a select few who can't get enough frizzled saltfish, candied sweet potatoes and Johnny cakes.