Bolosier - Creole Kitchen

VANESSA
BOLOSIER

VANESSA BOLOSIER has true French Caribbean Creole heritage half-Guadeloupian and half-Martiniquan, she was born and brought up in Guadeloupe and deeply immersed in the cooking of both islands. She moved to France when she was 17 to study and worked as a professional model. On moving to London, she concentrated on her true love food. Vanessa founded her company Carib Gourmet in 2011, specialising in exclusive Caribbean food and confectionery, including her award-winning Coco Gourmand coconut sweets. She also runs a private cookery school and supper club.

TO PAPA, WHOSE HEART AND SOUL WILL LIVE FOR EVER IN MY KITCHEN.

In Creole Kitchen youll find sunshine and laughter, childhood memories, ancestral stories and recipes that blend traditions and the culinary skills of everyone Ive learned from throughout the years.

Over centuries, the Caribbean islands where I grew up Guadeloupe and Martinique have seen many changes and cultural influences; my food celebrates, honours and remembers those influences, but also innovates, develops and adapts. The food from my Creole kitchen is a rich hybrid, resulting from the meeting of four continents. It reflects the Amerindians love of seafood, the African tradition of using tubers in slow-cooked stews, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and English cooking techniques applied to tropical ingredients, and Asias myriad of spices used whenever possible. In my Creole kitchen you will encounter aromas youve never smelled before; for me, these smells remind me of home and trigger an instant sense of comfort.

I want this book to bring people together around the thing that matters the most when you celebrate life on the islands: food. It includes some treasured memories, such as the first time I was allowed to make a meat stew for Sunday lunch, thereby joining my familys good cook club. It also looks at the traditions and festivals that give Creole cuisine its tempo. For instance, Christmas food was planned months ahead by fattening the pig for at least six months and drying orange peel to make the sacrosanct shrubb rum punch.

Most of all, the food and drinks from my Creole kitchen are easy to make, easy to enjoy, easy to share. The recipes are based on classic dishes from Guadeloupe and Martinique; I have given them my personal touch and you can adapt them to your taste. We are lucky to be living at a time when it is increasingly easy to find tropical vegetables and fruit in supermarkets, Asian and Afro-Caribbean shops and markets, but in some recipes I have also suggested alternative ingredients to enable you to make them wherever you are.

I hope that these recipes will bring your friends and family together in the same way they have mine throughout the years. They will transport you to a tropical paradise and warm your heart and soul or better still, inspire you to visit the islands of the French Caribbean. My Creole Kitchen is for the curious and the adventurous cook, with delicious recipes from my kitchen to yours.

A selection of family photos from my childhood in Guadeloupe.

Growing up in the Caribbean taught me about food: cooking seasonally, using locally grown fruit and vegetables, and identifying whats fresh and what isnt. I would often wake before dawn to go to the fish market with my dad to get freshly caught fish and seafood, still live and wriggling in the fishermens boats. We also bought vegetables from the market ladies, who call you doudou (sweetheart) and always add a few limes or chillies to your bag when theyve made a good sale. Avocados, papayas, guavas, carambolas and many other exotic fruits grew in our garden and we ate them on the spot, under the trees.

Im a self-taught cook. My food mentor was my father. Men in the Caribbean dont tend to spend a lot of time in the kitchen its generally a female affair but my father did. He was the eldest of several siblings, who were considerably younger than him, and he learned to cook at an early age. His mother who outlived him is a market lady. As I write, she still sells anything from ginger shortbreads to vanilla pods, local fruits and rum love potions in the Fort de France market in Martinique. My father spent the first few years of his life with his grandmother, an Amerindian who migrated from Dominica to Martinique. She taught him a few things about food but also how to smoke pure tobacco in a pipe, which he did all his life almost like a ritual after his Sunday nap. I would describe him as a bit of a feminist because of the very strong female role models he had growing up and his belief that women were indispensable, central, crucial to any household, especially in the Caribbean, because of the heritage from slavery. He knew that it wasnt just cooking and cleaning: they could do everything men could do historically in the sugar cane and banana fields and also had to carry and care for children in times when men were moved from one plantation to the other, leaving women to be the poto mitan (cornerstone) of the household. Memories of my father remain alive in my cooking. He was a very quiet man and the kitchen was the place he opened up. We spent so much time together in the kitchen, and this is where he shared family secrets and funny stories, but above all, expressed himself.

I also learned, and still learn, a lot from my mother. Mamoune loves food and she has the sweetest tooth I know which I have inherited. Caribbean food isnt generally known for desserts, but one of the many distinguishing features of Creole Caribbean food is its large variety of sweet things. Mamoune would make dessert on Sunday afternoons. Shes a hands-on cook and always ends up taking the whisk out of my hands. She taught me to cook fast and efficiently; she also burns and cuts herself as much as I do. She was born in the town of Saint-Louis on the small island of Marie-Galante, an island I often revisit for its peace and quiet, and its amazingly fresh Creole fish court bouillon (a tomato-based, very spicy broth in which parrotfish and many other colourful Caribbean fish are poached until tender).

I therefore grew up with an epicurean mother who enjoys fine foods and anything sweet and a father who loved the regional foods of his island and delighted in crafting authentic traditional slow-cooked stews. My approach to food definitely mingles the delicate and the rustic!