WORD OF MOUTH
What was the process for researching your new book, West Winds?
The main body of the book comes from the first time I went to live in Jamaica. I didn’t have the intention to write this book, I was just trying to experience and see as much as I could. It was only when I came back and looked at all the stuff I had — the photographs, notes and memories — that I thought it would be really amazing to try to capture all of this. The food hasn’t really changed much because Jamaicans are really conservative about what they eat. The biggest change is the impact of US culture on the island in terms of the number of pizza places, burger joints and fried chicken that you now see.
What makes this book different?
Sometimes I feel Caribbean food is seen as a bit of a gimmick. In discussions on food trends in Europe and US, Caribbean food is often omitted; it’s only ever really talked about in the summer around Notting Hill Carnival, or sometimes during Black History Month, when in reality it’s just as much a, and I laid out the chapters in a way that tries to insert food from Jamaica into those discussions where I think they rightly belong.
