April 26, 2010
In this sunny cookbook-cum-travelogue. Vanderhoof (An Embarrassment of Mangoes) and her perpetually hungry husband ditched their Toronto publishing careers to sail around the eastern Caribbean ingesting as much of the island cultures as possible. Each chapter finds them coming ashore to sample restaurants and cuisine, visit farms and processing sites, and learn to make exotic local dishes. (Vanderhoof’s kitchen mentors try to keep her away from sharp utensils, but she manages to acquire 71 recipes for everything from stewed goat to “mango chow.”) The result is a pleasant picaresque, as the couple take in Trinidadian herb plantations or a Grenadian chocolate factory or embark on a ribald quest for an aphrodisiac seaweed on St. Lucia. They endure lousy rental cars and encounter rudeness on Guadeloupe, but for the most part they marinade happily in the gorgeous scenery and the ebullient wisdom of friendly island characters. (One Dominican Rastafarian cooks a great stew and also moonlights as a midwife.) The book is a dizzying whirl of tourism and food porn, but Vanderhoof’s breezy, evocative prose makes it pretty tasty.