To­day, No­vem­ber 14, is Di­vali, one of the biggest Hin­du fes­ti­vals cel­e­brat­ed in many coun­tries across the world.

In T&T, in the week lead­ing up to Di­vali, the largest cel­e­bra­tion out­side of In­dia is said to be held at the Di­vali Na­gar.

Jassie Singh

Jassie Singh

Many Hin­dus prayed, fast­ed, cleaned and paint­ed their homes lead­ing up to the fes­ti­val of Di­vali. Cit­i­zens joined their Hin­du broth­ers and sis­ters in light­ing deyas at their homes and com­muni­ties dur­ing the fes­ti­val of lights.

Di­vali's uni­ver­sal mes­sage of light over dark­ness was even more sig­nif­i­cant this year, with COVID-19 be­ing the vi­ral Rawan to be van­quished by mankind.

Hin­du fam­i­lies dressed in their el­e­gant In­di­an fin­ery dis­trib­uted de­li­cious sweets such as kur­ma, barfi, mithai, gu­lab ja­mun and parsad on the joy­ous oc­ca­sion to sig­ni­fy the im­por­tance of shar­ing and serv­ing.

Yogurt made from scratch

In T&T, roti shops went in­to over­drive the night be­fore Di­vali cook­ing tra­di­tion­al In­di­an fare such as roti, buss up shut, pump­kin, chan­na, bha­gi, chataigne, pota­to, plus cur­ry meats, while home cooks al­so put in their best ef­forts.

If you are an am­a­teur chef or would like to in­dulge your pas­sion mak­ing these savoury dish­es, you can try your hand even though Di­vali 2020 has gone. And if you are al­so in­ter­est­ed, you can in­dulge in some Christ­mas fare as the yule­tide sea­son is just around the cor­ner. In both in­stances you can try Chef Jassie Singh's The Culi­nary Her­itage of Trin­ba­go: Our Sea­son­al and Tra­di­tion­al Foods cook­book.

Singh's book has over 380 recipes and more than 20 mouth-wa­ter­ing Christ­mas recipes from ham, turkey, pastelles, paime, stewed pi­geon peas, black cake, sponge cake, jamoon wine, gin­ger beer, ponche de creme, and a sec­tion on cook­ing goat for Christ­mas is for you. Have you heard of a 'fat roti,' lai bhe­li, sattwa, chal­ta, long wa­ter aloo, Cre­ole fried chick­en, bread­ruit tarkari, and cit­rus can­dy? These are just some of the recipes in her new book from T&T's culi­nary cross-cul­tur­al past that many peo­ple do not know about to­day.

Some of the tra­di­tion­al meals are cat­e­gorised by sea­sons such as Di­vali, Christ­mas, Car­ni­val, Man­go/Wed­ding, Gua­va and Lenten sea­sons, with an icon in­di­cat­ing veg­e­tar­i­an fare and links to ac­com­pa­ny­ing food that goes to­geth­er.

The book takes us on an ed­u­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al jour­ney of the in­flu­ences of the First Peo­ples, In­di­ans, Africans, Eu­ro­peans, Syr­i­an/Lebanese and Chi­nese to make what has be­come unique­ly T&T cui­sine.

Table laden with T&T Christmas food

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Singh said "A ma­jor con­cern for me is that the book cap­tures the food we all grew up with and I was hap­py to be able to col­late all these recipes to en­sure that we don't lose them.

"We cook for our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, we may be busy with our jobs and may not be able to cook for them, and they would like to have the food that their grand­par­ents cooked for them.

"They have lost that culi­nary link with their fore­par­ents and want to reestab­lish that link with the food that nour­ished their an­ces­tors. The sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tion Trinida­di­ans in the new di­as­po­ra long for the food we grew up with."

The au­thor of ‘Cook­ing with Ac­k­ee’ in col­lab­o­ra­tion with her nephew Dean Bur­rowes; and co-au­thor of ‘Kunuwa­ton–the Cul­ture and Cui­sine of the First Peo­ples of Ari­ma, Kairi’ with Dr Sat­nar­ine Balka­rans­ingh said the book would not have come about in its present form if not for Dr Balka­rans­ingh's sug­ges­tion to do a book on fes­ti­val foods, which was his orig­i­nal con­cept. But all of the recipes are hers, with con­tri­bu­tions from friends, fam­i­ly, col­leagues and peo­ple she in­ter­act­ed with.

Singh thought it pru­dent to re­search on­line for what was avail­able in what was the largest source of recipes any­where. She said what she dis­cov­ered was quite a rev­e­la­tion as there was so much mis­in­for­ma­tion about T&T's tra­di­tion­al foods dis­sem­i­nat­ed on­line. Her mis­sion was to cor­rect as much of it as she pos­si­bly could, with the task made more ur­gent when some mem­bers of the younger T&T gen­er­a­tion said their com­fort food was piz­za and lasagna. In con­trast, Singh said her favourite com­fort food was the lo­cal cur­ry duck and dhalpuri.

She said what al­so mo­ti­vat­ed her to get the book done was the coun­try's stag­ger­ing food im­port bill which stood at $5.67 bil­lion in 2019.

Singh said she was hop­ing the recipes con­tained in the cook­book can bring peo­ple back to home and hearth and to the pop­u­lar­i­ty or a resur­gence in the tra­di­tion­al T&T foods of our an­ces­tors.

The Culi­nary Her­itage of Trin­ba­go: Our Sea­son­al and Tra­di­tion­al Foods cook­book will be avail­able in lo­cal book­stores month-end and on Ama­zon.

Jassie Singh teach­es cook­ing class­es at her Ari­ma home, was a guest tu­tor for the bread and cake mak­ing class­es at YTEPP as well as the cater­ing class, de­vel­oped ten recipes for Fer­mi­pan In­ter­na­tion­al, the yeast Com­pa­ny from Hol­land, and in­struct­ed veg­e­tar­i­an menu plan­ning and cook­ing at the Swa­ha Hin­du Col­lege in San­gre Grande.