CHERISSE MOE

One look at the hon­ey bar­be­cue chick­en sand­wich­es, dou­ble choco­late ba­nana bread or pep­per roti pies on Joshua Greene’s In­sta­gram and your stom­ach may start talk­ing back.

The 28-year-old self-taught cook has built an or­gan­ic fol­low­ing of over 350,000 loy­al­ists, and his feed keeps pulling peo­ple in - one straw­ber­ry cheese­cake post alone picked up more than 26,000 likes and over 5,000 shares, and it’s still climb­ing. What stands out is that he doesn’t just show the food - he takes his fan base along for a full, step-by-step culi­nary ride.

Joshua is the man be­hind the on­line joint Piz­za Stone, which he launched back in 2021. By No­vem­ber, he plans to open a phys­i­cal store­front, giv­ing cus­tomers a whole new way to ex­pe­ri­ence his slices. Piz­za has al­ways been his first love. He’s a suck­er for a pep­per­oni, moz­zarel­la, ba­con and pineap­ple com­bi­na­tion, but ad­mits, “I al­so like ex­per­i­ment­ing with var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions, so it re­al­ly de­pends on the mood.”

“We’re in the tran­si­tion phase,” he tells Guardian Me­dia in an ex­clu­sive about his cur­rent goals. “I’ve been putting a lot of time in­to de­vel­op­ing the menu, im­prov­ing the busi­ness, and build­ing some­thing that I can be proud of.”

Com­mu­ni­ty, com­fort, and cul­ture

A life­long fas­ci­na­tion with food and com­mu­ni­ty is the im­pe­tus be­hind his gas­tro­nom­ic ex­plo­ration. “I start­ed to love cook­ing when I saw how it brought peo­ple to­geth­er,” he says. “What be­gan as ex­per­i­ment­ing with in­gre­di­ents be­came some­thing I gen­uine­ly looked for­ward to, es­pe­cial­ly when I could add my own touch and see peo­ple en­joy the re­sult.”

When he has the chance, a good tra­di­tion­al Tri­ni Sun­day lunch is what he makes for him­self - mac­a­roni pie with stewed chick­en and pi­geon peas. “The smell alone takes me straight back! There’s noth­ing like it to bring back mem­o­ries.”

He calls his cook­ing style ver­sa­tile and cre­ative. He’s not re­al­ly some­one who sticks to one type of cui­sine “be­cause I love mak­ing all kinds of things.”

Late­ly, he’s been push­ing him­self in the kitchen, try­ing new recipes and flavours like cheese­cake en­cased in cook­ie dough. “I want­ed to do some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and com­bine two desserts I love in­to one. It’s com­plex, es­pe­cial­ly get­ting the dough baked just right while keep­ing the cheese­cake creamy in the mid­dle.”

If he could pre­pare a ta­ble for any­one in the world, Joshua would pick Amer­i­can celebri­ty chef Gor­don Ram­say in a heart­beat. “I’d cook him a prop­er Tri­ni Sun­day meal; mac­a­roni pie, stewed chick­en, pi­geon peas, rice and some good sides. I think it would be in­ter­est­ing to cook for him and in­tro­duce him to the flavours I grew up with.”

Mas­ter­ing fun­da­men­tals and fu­ture goals

As a full-time food con­tent cre­ator, Joshua be­lieves every good culi­nar­i­an should know how to mas­ter the fun­da­men­tals. For him, that’s bread. He ex­plains: “It’s one of those things that teach­es you pa­tience and re­al­ly helps you un­der­stand how in­gre­di­ents work to­geth­er. Once you can make a good loaf from scratch, you can build on that and make so many oth­er things.”

In his kitchen, the one sta­ple he al­ways keeps on hand is a jar of peanut but­ter. It re­minds him of grow­ing up in St James, when his fa­ther would make a large pitch­er of peanut punch for the en­tire fam­i­ly af­ter church on Sun­days.

While the Mara­bel­la North Sec­ondary alum­nus builds on the suc­cess of his hard work and tal­ent, he’s tak­ing things a step fur­ther with the up­com­ing launch of his own cook­book - The Flavour Jour­nal - which will fea­ture up to 70 recipes, con­ver­sion charts and ed­u­ca­tion­al tid­bits about lo­cal sea­son­ings like chadon beni and geera for his in­ter­na­tion­al fol­low­ers.

“I’d love to con­tin­ue chal­leng­ing my­self,” he shares. “I want to cre­ate food that peo­ple can con­nect with. Most im­por­tant­ly, I’m trust­ing Je­sus to guide me through the jour­ney and lead me wher­ev­er I’m meant to go. I just want to keep cook­ing, keep learn­ing, and use the gifts God has giv­en me to cre­ate.”

Joshua Greene’s pop­u­lar buf­fa­lo shrimp recipe

Shrimp

2 lbs shrimp

2 tbs mus­tard

2 eggs

1 tsp black pep­per

1 tsp cayenne pep­per

1 tsp smoked pa­pri­ka

1 tsp gar­lic pow­der

1 tsp onion pow­der

1 pack all-pur­pose sea­son­ing

Sea­son­ing flour

2 cups flour

1 tsp black pep­per

1 tsp cayenne pep­per

1 tsp smoked pa­pri­ka

1 tsp onion pow­der

1 tsp gar­lic pow­der

2 tsp salt

1 pack all-pur­pose sea­son­ing

1 tbs ic­ing sug­ar

Buf­fa­lo sauce

2 tbs but­ter

3/4 cup buf­fa­lo sauce