Sian's Kitchen: Caribbean Comfort Cooking

Just got my book and immediately went to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for the jerk pineapple lobster tail (page 110) and the easy-to-follow recipe have me feeling like a chef!Shawn From LA!

Incredible recipes!

excellent book. Lovely pictures.

I’ve been wanting to expand my palette and having always been interested in Caribbean food this has provided me with plenty of unique recipes to try, from curry’s to sundaes.The recipes are easy enough to understand and I didn’t have too much trouble getting most of what I needed from my usual store (for anything I couldn’t find I substituted them easily enough).In terms of value the RRP is on the higher side for what I would expect, but not so much so that it would put me off recommending (even if won’t revisit the book regularly with my tastes still favouring Italian/Asian).

This is my third Caribbean cookbook and because I only occasionally cook this type of food, it's frustrating to have to prepare green seasoning beforehand. Although this book does have a recipe for that, my first look through found very few that required it. In fact, I only saw it listed in one of them. I went through and marked a handful of recipes that looked good to try and the attempted to narrow them down to three, to get started with. Some ingredients weren't easy to find and others I couldn't easily get my hands on at a supermarket. I had to use pinto beans instead of gungo peas.The measurements aren't consistent throughout the book. As an example, it's 1/2 mango and then 165g mango. Cups are used as well and instead of saying use one bell pepper, it gave the weight. That only made it harder to work out. I tried the quinoa salad, which was good. It was described as being light and definitely left me hungry. Although I enjoyed it, I wouldn't put it on my must have again list. Next, I did the vegan Trinidadian pelau and it was bland. Plus, it had the texture of cardboard. Fortunately, mayonnaise came to the rescue so that it didn't go to waste.