CARIBBEAN cuisine is anything but monolithic—its story is one of movement: ingredients, techniques and, of course, people. Long before Christopher Columbus landed in what is now the Bahamas in the 15th century, the native Arawak, Carib and Ciboney people of the West Indies were cooking and preserving with chillies, including the Scotch bonnet (named thus in colonial times for its resemblance to a tam-o-shanter). Hundreds of years later, West African slaves arrived with snatched handfuls of okra seeds and memories of dishes such as foo-foo—crushed cassava, yam or plantain —which became the Bajan dish cou-cou.
Much of what comes to mind when we picture a Caribbean kitchen—curries, mangoes, ginger and so on—have their roots in the Indian labourers who arrived to
