As the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Marie Mitchell's cooking is motivated by a powerful desire to understand and celebrate those recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation. In Kin, her hotly anticipated debut cookbook, she shares dishes from the Caribbean and its diaspora, exploring the connection food can foster between different times and different places, and between friends, families and strangers. Accompanied by gorgeous photographs, many of them shot on location in the Caribbean, the book's eighty recipes - which include crispy saltfish fritters, rich and tempting aubergine curry, slow cooked jerk pork, zingy lime and ginger cheesecake and sweet Guinness punch - confound the widespread misconceptions about Caribbean food that abound in the West, which draw on stereotypes of intense heat, pungent smoke and a handful of familiar dishes.
But while chilli is certainly a key ingredient and cooking over fire has a long and storied history, Caribbean cookery is also subtle and playful, layering different notes and spices carefully to create delicate, rewarding flavours. Crackling with energy and heart, Kin is a love letter to Marie's Caribbean identity, a journey through the region's myriad food cultures and a tribute to this most resourceful, resilient and joyous of cuisines. Here, Caribbean food emerges as one of the first truly global cuisines, borne out of the violent convergence of African, American, European and South Asian cultures in the long, troubling history of empire and emancipation, its legacy preserved - and, ultimately, transformed - by the kinship of those who share food.
