Finding the spice of life
Prepare to be hot and hungry this winter: The Spice Necklace: A Food-Lover's Caribbean Adventure (Doubleday Canada, $33) is a fabulous fusion of travel writing, food lore and island culture. Canadian journalist Ann Vanderhoof and her husband, Steve, cruise the Caribbean in their sailboat, Receta (Spanish for "recipe"). They explore markets, a nutmeg processing plant and a moonshine still. They walk up-river by moonlight hunting crayfish, and sneak into a cruise-ship shopping zone to buy lethal guavaberry spirits. They also befriend locals, all of whom share cooking secrets and their lives with exuberance and generosity — "Let me 'splain you," says Marigot market lady, Olive. Vanderhoof's love of food and adventure bubbles over and is well seasoned with historical details. Each chapter ends with recipes from joyous meals just experienced.
Did you ever imagine becoming this person who lives on a boat?
Never. I've always loved to cook, and I wanted to have what the West Indians call "a sweet hand," where the cooking is so good you want to lick the plate. I also realized food could be a route into island life; a route into culture; a way to meet people, get involved in their lives and start conversations with strangers who would become friends. Being on the boat forces you to do that. My kitchen was travelling with me; we had to go to the local markets, and I'd ask people, "How do you cook this for your family?" Then I'd go away, try it in my galley and it wouldn't work, so I'd go back and talk to them more.
Could I have imagined all that? Not then, but now I cherish the friendships and the way of life.
There are different ideas about how food is prepared, island to island.
It's closely tied to the history of each island. In Trinidad, a huge influx of East Indians came in the 19th cen-tury as indentured labourers after emancipation and brought their own food, spices and cooking techniques. So curry is strongly rooted there, altered with local spices. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, there's a strong French underpinning. There's a lovely story about how the local fritter recipe came to be: The French cook of one of the French plantation owners was used to making apple fritters, but there were no apples. So an African cook recommended using bits of fish, and these didn't suit either. But a third woman suggested adding the herbs she was chopping and this mélange became "accras," one of the standards of French Creole cooking.
You describe coming home and living in a house as claustrophobic; I think a lot of people would find living on a boat claustrophobic....
But the area below deck is only the smallest part of our living space. We're living outside, and whatever island you're anchored off of is essentially an extension of your living space. And it opens up your life too; you never know what the day is going to bring. I thought when I got back I'd enjoy predictable days, predictable ingredients, but instead I chafed under that.
When More readers read this in cold, dark, snow-drifted February, where will you be?
Somewhere in the eastern Caribbean — Carriacou and the Grenadines would be my guess. With any luck, our fishermen friends will come by the boat first thing in the morning, and Steve will go out fishing with them and bring back lobster or fish or conch. He does this for the pleasure of helping, but they'll often say, "You one of us," and give him part of the catch.
Get around: Google's killer travel app, travel resolutions for this year and where to go museum hopping in Amsterdam.
This article originally appeared in the February/March 2010 issue of More.
