Levi Roots’ Reggae Reggae Cook Book
I’m not a huge fan of celebrity chefs. In fact I’m not a huge fan of celebrity. To me, the recognition that the bloke in that film we’re watching was also in that other thing we saw at the cinema, (and I think he’s married to that other girl who was a child actress and was maybe in a couple of episodes of The Bill once - yes, really!) registers pretty low on my radar of stuff that really matters.
But Levi Roots, I have time for. He is not a grasper of the limelight. He does not love the sound of his own voice (except of course when he’s singing in one of his many musical incarnations). No, this man has lived - I mean really lived. He’s crossed the world, been inside, been nominated for a MOBO, brought up a family, been a fixture of the Notting Hill Carnival and of course he’s been on BBC2’s Dragon’s Den with his guitar and subsequently launched his own range of cooking sauces which are now supermarket bestsellers.
So given the similarity between the cover of this book and a bottle of his famous Reggae Reggae sauce, isn’t this book just another cynically executed phase in the commercial plan masterminded by Dragon’s Den Dragon Peter Jones? Well yes and no. Yes - in that it is a paint-by-numbers exercise in which Levi’s child-like style of writing is invoked to bring us his brief autobiography which is then woven quite clumsily throughout the book with sections of Caribbean recipes with bright photographs on colourful pages. Be warned though that the prose themselves are reminiscent of Roger Red Hat, and when recipes don’t fill up a page, a jaunty creole saying - with much-needed English translation - is slapped on in there to keep you going. If you understand them all on first reading, you’re a better man than I, as in ”When yuh neighbour beard catch fire, tek water wet fe yuh - Learn from others’ mistakes”.
And no - in that despite its obvious commercial motivation, I really like this book. It is bright, colourful, inspiring and unyieldingly happy. It gives a simple introduction to Caribbean cookery, which as Levi (real name Keith in case you’ve always wondered) highlights has not really permeated wholesale into British culture. I live in South East London near to Brixton (where he lived with his parents and was caught in the crossfire of the Brixton race riots) and Peckham where every day of the week, shop-fronts are opened-up and piled-high with yams, okra and sweet potato. And yet I have bought more bottles of RR sauce from Sainsbury’s than I have bought rice n’ peas or Jerk chicken from one of those stalls. So in my eyes, he has already made it more accessible by his sauce to us supermarket-shopping whiteys than previous generations were exposed to. It may only be a sauce but it’s a start.
I don’t think Caribbean cooking has really made its way into the culinary heart of our nation. When wondering exactly why, I am brought to mind of an episode of the 90s sit-com Chef with Lenny Henry in which he, for one episode, turned his talents as Head Chef away from the French-influenced modern European cuisine in which he specialised to the dishes of his motherland. In particular, when he produced a spread which included Caribbean favourite ‘cow-foot and bean’. Needless to say it didn’t go down all that well with is wife. Indeed in this book are recipes for cornmeal porridge, Rasta pasta and special coleslaw which don’t feel that inviting to me - but the majority of it looks good. Warming, gentle spices which originated mostly from India are blended with goat, beef, lots of chicken and preserved fish (including the intriguing blocks of saltfish which came about through the necessity of having to preserve food in the hot climes of the Carib). I am looking forward to trying a cook-up of rice n peas with curried goat when the weather warms a little more into BBQ season.
If you want a fun cookbook that will walk you through the basics of rasta-style cookery, I cannot think of one which could do it with more zest for life, enthusiasm or simplicity. It brings a lot more than that though - this is more inspiring in terms of the life story it tells, allbeit demolishable to the average reader in about twenty minutes. Levi’s unsquashable, entrepreneurial spirit should be inspiration to us all and it permeates through to every page. Cheesy at times and occasionally repetitious (with the phrase ‘dragon-slayer’ making a few appearances too many for my liking - we get the pun Keith and it was clearly Peter Jones’s idea to say that anyway), you cannot help but feel encouraged in your daily life by the fact that he used his last tenner to get a cab to the filming of an episode of Dragon’s Den which was to change his life so dramatically. After what had gone before, it sounds like he deserved a break.
If all celebrities were as interesting, full of life, happy and downright hungry for it all as Levi, I might even start reading OK magazine.
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