������̳

Cooking is a family affair

As the nights draw in, we’re spending more time at home, and “Jamaican food is all about spending time with family”, says Craig. “There’s a history to that – what makes the cuisine so special is how the dishes originated. Basically, the foods that were discarded [by slave owners] and given to our forefathers during slavery were forged to make delicious dishes, showing that even through real hardships, beautiful food was still created. Time to eat was often the only time they could create moments with family… because it was the only time they’d get rest from work. Even today, family and food go hand in hand – for example, every year we have a barbecue for my grandmother’s birthday.

“My earliest food memory is being bossed around in the kitchen by our grandmother and mother. We would get food orders from the rest of the family, go back into the kitchen and explain what people wanted… then serve it all up into bowls and take it out. All the jobs that people didn’t want to do were handed down to me because I’m the youngest!”

“There are five common carbs served up when you’re having a traditional Jamaican meal: rice, potatoes, macaroni cheese, bread, and fried dumplings. With a big meal, you’re going to probably have three of those served. It’s up to you to decide which ones you opt for. Choose wisely!”

“When we were writing our cookbook, we spent time out in Jamaica and visited family. We wanted to cook them a big Sunday lunch, but it took a lot longer than you’d think. We got up at 4.30am [on Saturday] to go to the Coronation Market in Kingston. We thought it would be relatively quiet, but it was already packed. We bought fresh callaloo, onions, garlic, ginger and scotch bonnets. We took it all home, seasoned our meat, and prepared our rice and peas by soaking dried kidney beans overnight in water. The following day, we started preparing food at 5am before going to church, then made sure all the cooking was ready for lunch. Including buying the produce, the whole meal took about 30 hours, but just in terms of prepping and cooking it took about 18 hours.

“That isn’t typical though… we know about traditional ways of cooking, but being British born and part of a new generation, we understand people need tricks and tips that can make things much quicker.”

You can mix old and new

“Me and Shaun want to make sure traditional dishes are still used and remain current, so the new generation know about them. But we also like to fuse traditional ingredients with other cuisines. We’re British and have grown up in the UK. So, we’ve got recipes like jerk lentil bolognese, that is vegan and of course references bolognese, which we often had growing up.

“There are so many ways you can mix old with new, and one of our latest is jerk burgers. We grew up loving burgers, but we’d sometimes be frustrated with the blandness of them. Often it was just salt and black pepper, so we added spices that we use in the marinade of jerk chicken to the mince, and it’s delicious.”

It’s made for sharing

“Often you prepare more just in case somebody comes over, but… do not come with your hands empty! If I turned up without anything, my nan would say: ‘You’ve just come over with long hands’, which means because there’s nothing in my hands they appear longer than if I was carrying a dish. You should always come with a dessert or drink, or at least offer to wash up.”

One thing that’s not so good...

“As a child, it was always devastating to go to the freezer, see an ice-cream tub, and take it out only to find it was filled with leftovers from the day or week before – rice and peas or curried goat, frozen food that’s being saved for a rainy day. I don’t know why they don’t just use regular use plastic Tupperware, but it’s always the ice-cream container. If you see a biscuit tin on a shelf and reach in, you’ll be disappointed [too] – it’ll be needles and threads in there, not cookies!”