Restaurants

If you hear a Trinidadian call you a ‘saltfish’, don’t take offence. Saltfish or dried and salted cod (also known as bacalao to the Spanish and bacalhau to the Portuguese), has been a staple of Trinidadian cuisine since the days of slavery. It’s a relatively cheap source of protein and a very versatile ingredient. It’s such a big favourite that calypso legend the Mighty Sparrow sang its praises in a classic song where he gloriously proclaims, ‘All saltfish sweet’. And if a ‘Trini’ refers to someone as a saltfish, it means they’re well liked and universally popular.

It’s definitely one of my favourites to cook with, and when it’s my turn to prepare the buljol (shredded saltfish with spring onions, chopped tomatoes, hot pepper, sweet pepper, garlic and generous lashings of extra virgin olive oil) for a gathering of fellow Trinis, I head straight to Shepherd’s Bush Market. There I can find not only saltfish, but most of the ingredients necessary to create an excellent Trinidadian meal; but it wasn’t always that easy.
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When I first came to England in 1999, my home was Brighton, which despite its cosmopolitan credentials is not the place to find Caribbean food. I was warned before leaving Trinidad that the food wouldn’t be great in England and that it was not going to be easy to find most of the ingredients I was accustomed to. So with that in mind, friends and relatives chipped in with the ‘essentials’: home-made pepper sauce, rum, saltfish, curry powder and a big bottle of freshly ground seasoning.

If vital supplies ran low, I’d either ask people to bring goodies from Trinidad or pick up things whenever I visited London.

I later discovered London is like a home away from home for Caribbean food-lovers as there are several well-stocked, bustling markets around the capital where, even in winter, the smells and sounds are reminders of the big markets at home. While Brixton Market in south London is the best for all things Caribbean, there’s also Dalston Market in the north, Green Street Market in the east, Peckham Rye in the south and Shepherd’s Bush Market in west London, where one can easily find most of the vegetables, seasonings, fruits and beverages we know and love.

Shepherd’s Bush Market is the place to to find ‘ground provisions’: root vegetables such as eddoes (colocasia tubers), sweet potatoes and yams, plantains, guavas, breadfruit, zabocas (huge green avocados, which are usually much creamier than the more commonly found Hass variety) and the occasional soursop (a large fruit similar in flavour to custard apples) with which to make ice-cream or punch. The fishmongers are also quite good at providing Caribbean folk with much-loved species such as kingfish, parrotfish, cavali, grouper and shark.

I recently bought all the ingredients for a meal for 15 – breadfruits, salt beef, saltfish, scotch bonnet peppers, coconut milk and herbs for breadfruit oil down, another of Trinidad’s top dishes (see What to try) – and still had change from £20.