The last thing immigrants give up is their food.  They adapt to the clothing, the language and the pressing demands of the new societies into which they have been unceremoniously thrust.  In the Caribbean, the immigrants in Suriname , Guyana , Trinidad , Grenada , St Vincent , St Lucia , Jamaica and Belize are in their third or fourth generations.  They speak the language of the country – in Suriname it is Dutch and, in the case of some of the older Surinamese, Hindi.  In Belize , the “coolie” appellation has now been sanitized by general acceptance.  The resentment has gone but the roti remains.  In Jamaica and in some of the other countries of the region, even those where there were perhaps only a handful of immigrants, curry goat is commonplace.  In Guyana and Trinidad where the majority of the population is of East Indian descent, the religions (Hindu and Muslim) persist even though they are fighting against militant Christian sects that see these examples of cultural persistence as pernicious and heathen. 

The purists in music are a minority as “soca chutney” has crossed-over into the mainstream.  There are no value judgments here, merely a pattern that is imposed on the lives of all immigrants.  It is what happens over time and in circumstances over which the immigrants have no control.  They lose their accents, their children, their cultural roots, but not their food.

Kumar Mahabir is a scholar and provides a comprehensive background to the ingredients, mores, folkways and history of East Indian foods in the Caribbean .  He takes me back to my days as a little boy in the Central Trinidad village of Carapichaima where, surrounded by my extended family – a host of uncles and cousins – I was initiated into the food and some of the customs that are part of who I am.  My family worked in the cane fields and early in the morning, having cooked their roti and fry “aloo” (potato), or “bhagi” (spinach), sometimes with a little “salt fish” (salted cod) added would go to work with their food in their “carrier” (generally three white stacked enameled or plain food containers with a handle) or wrapped in oily brown paper.  Dinner was always more elaborate, rice, dhal and some other dish – curry potato with channa (chickpeas) – with chicken on Sundays when lunch was the big event.  My uncle would sit with a hot pepper, an onion and a small radish (called “moorai”) from which he would take huge bites which he interspersed with handfuls of food from his flowered-enamel plate and cup (more like a tankard) of water.

It is this feeling of nostalgia that characterizes my response to Caribbean East Indian Recipes.  However, in addition to its sentimental appeal it is technically well constructed.  It has a much appreciated weights and measures converter worth every centimeter of space that it takes up.  It includes a section on “Prayers Before Meals” and a list of the “Herbs, Spices and Seasonings” used in East Indian Caribbean cooking.  From my experience it is the spices that constitute the critical difference between Indian from India foods and those we cook in the Caribbean .  The process of cooking is generally the same but the spices are the subtle difference in taste and flavor.

My seventy-nine year old mother, who was born in Trinidad but who can speak and read Hindi and loves the movies on the ZEE Television cable channels, does not like authentic Indian food. I took her to an Indian restaurant serving Bengali cuisine and after a taste of the curry, ended up eating only the Basmati rice which she found did not taste as good as the rice she gets at home.

I have always wondered about the lack of a high-class restaurant serving Trinidad or Caribbean Indian food.  I would eat an Indian “aloo-paratha” or roti stuffed with potato, but my mother’s “aloo-puri” is better.  It is less complicated with spices and is easier on the palate and stomach.  We use less oil, butter and other fats.  Our peppers are hot but without the bland taste and long burn of raw chili peppers.

Then we come to the food with names that sing to my soul and spirit.  We call it breadnut or chataigne but my Guyanese wife calls it “katahar” which evokes the spirit of the East but when cooked with local curry powder or masala and eaten with “saada” (unleavened) roti made from a mixture of wheat and ground cassava, is utterly Caribbean.  There are recipes for “curhee” and “daahl”, every roti variation that you may crave, “aloo” and “baigan” (eggplant) choka (mashed and spiced, generally with pepper, garlic and onion), curries, chutneys and sweets.  There is sheer poetry in, “Googanie and Kitchree, Saheena Talkari, Bhaji and Chutney, Paynuse and Jaleebi,” 

Even though the directions are simple, the ingredients generally available and the recipes tested, I don’t need to cook a single dish to get the emotional satisfaction to dispel my worst moods or enhance my best days.  Just browsing through it, indulging shamelessly in the feelings of well-being it invokes, might well be enough for me.  Kipling had said that East and West would not meet, “Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat.”  They have met and this book is a heavenly gift to those who like good food and who want to explore and sample a vital part of Caribbean culinary history.