Writing My First Cookbook: From Coddle to Curry

Those are the recipes I wanted to put into my first cookbook.

Food has always been part of my story. Growing up with an Irish father and a Trinidadian mother of Indian and Lebanese heritage meant that there was never one definition of home cooking. Irish comfort food sat alongside Caribbean spices, and food was always connected to family, occasions and the people around the table.

When I later studied catering in Trinidad and started working professionally, that world became even bigger. I began in a five-star hotel and went on to spend more than 30 years working in kitchens across the Caribbean and Ireland. Every kitchen added something: a technique, an ingredient, a flavour or sometimes just a different way of looking at food.

So why write a cookbook?

Eventually I realised I had built up a collection of dishes that meant something to me.

Some had been passed through family. Some came from travelling and working abroad. Others were meals that kept finding their way back onto my own table.

Instead of trying to make a book about one particular cuisine, I wanted the cookbook to reflect that journey.

That’s really where From Coddle to Curry came from.

The name says a lot about the book itself.

At one end you’ve got the Irish food I grew up around: coddle, stew, brown bread, colcannon and the kind of dishes that immediately feel familiar.

At the other, you’ve got Caribbean curries, jerk chicken, plantain and dishes shaped by Trinidad and the wider Caribbean.

And then there’s everything picked up in between.

Seven chapters, 51 recipes.

The finished book has 51 recipes, covering everything from Irish classics and homemade takeaway favourites to Asian dishes, African and Caribbean food and desserts.

The idea wasn’t to create a book full of food that looks impressive but never gets cooked.

I wanted recipes people would actually make.

Things you could cook for the family, put in the middle of a table, come back to again and hopefully make your own.

“Every dish tells a story.”

More than the recipes.

Putting the cookbook together also made me realise how many memories become attached to food.

A recipe can remind you of a person, a place, a kitchen you worked in or something that was always on the table when you were growing up.

That’s why the stories and little notes throughout the book matter just as much as the ingredients.

Every dish tells a story became part of the idea behind the book from the beginning.

Seeing it finished.

Writing a first cookbook is a strange experience because dishes that have lived in your head and kitchen for years suddenly become something other people can pick up and cook themselves.

That’s probably the part I’m looking forward to most.

Seeing people make the recipes, put their own spin on them and hopefully find a few that become regulars in their own homes.