Last month, Sunrise Bakery a UK-based Caribbean food firm, celebrated their 45th birthday by launching an authentic Caribbean Rum Cake based on their original recipe. Founded in 1966 by Herman Drummond and William Lamont, to service the demands of the growing Caribbean community in Birmingham and the surrounding area, Sunrise Bakery has expanded significantly within recent years. Their full product range is currently in more than 90 Asda stores and 60 Tesco outlets across the UK, as well as more than 250 independent retailers. No small achievement!

Current CEO Errol Drummond, was kind enough to participate in the first installment of my new 2012 series “Five Questions”. He is also going to send a Paradise Estates Rum Cake to one lucky blog reader. More on that though, after our interview…

TG: Dear Errol, first of all let me thank you for allowing me this opportunity to ask you a few questions about yourself and Sunrise Bakery! According to your website you are “the leading producer and wholesaler of Caribbean Hard Dough Bread, Spiced Buns and Cakes in the UK”. I’m sure my readers would love to know a little more of the human story behind your company’s founding. Who started Sunrise Bakery and why?

ED: Sunrise Bakery was established in 1966 by my father Herman Drummond, and his partner William Lamont, to supply the growing Caribbean community that settled in the West Midlands. For the first fifteen years our market was concentrated within a thirty miles radius of the original site in Bearwood, but in the early 1980s we developed new markets nationally.

TG: How has the original vision for Sunrise Bakery changed or evolved since its formation?

ED: Our original vision has remained consistent in that we have always striven to be the premier supplier of quality Caribbean products throughout the United Kingdom, and to bring Caribbean cuisine to the wider market.

TG: What does Caribbean food represent to you?

ED: Caribbean food is an amalgamation of many cuisines from around the world which includes: Native Caribbean, African, European, Chinese, Indian and some Middle Eastern. It is this fusion that has created the great Caribbean taste. Given this historical journey through time and taste, plus our large variety of root vegetables, Caribbean Food is crying out for a larger audience. The challenge for those of us engaged in the industry, at whatever level, is to market and sell effectively.

TG: What are 3 of your favourite Caribbean dishes?

ED: I love Caribbean style soup, it doesn’t matter what the meat is, or whether there is meat, as long as there are plenty of dumplings. I am also quite fond of fish with anything. Stew-peas and white rice tends to hit the spot. I can go on but you did say 3.

TG: in closing, what is one piece of advice you’d like to give readers who may also have dreams of opening a Caribbean food-based business in the Diaspora?

ED: My advice is quite simple. Look at the other cuisines that have achieved success in the marketplace and learn lessons. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. For those looking to go into the Restaurant or Takeaway side remember that you are effectively the gateway to Caribbean Food and as such you need to focus on your core market and the market you are trying to attract and always exceed your customer’s expectations.

TRINIGOURMET’S JANUARY GIVEAWAY – SPONSORED BY SUNRISE BAKERY

One lucky reader will win a Paradise Estates Rum Cake this month. YUM! Will it be you?

HOW TO ENTER:

1) ‘Like’ Trinigourmet’ on Facebook (click the ‘Like’ button below)

2) ‘Like’ Paradise Estates’ on Facebook (click the ‘Like’ button below)

3) Post your favourite Rum (Black) Cake memory to Paradise Estate’s Facebook wall

A Winner will be announced on January 27th. Best of Luck!

Confused by my title? Don’t be This is simply the second in my Nyam series For those who are newer to this blog, Nyam was a series I started last year where I interview the creators of food blogs that capture my imagination and appetite My first interview was with fellow Trini blogger Chennette. This time I shifted my gaze to the far north, Vancouver Canada to be exact. Canada is a country that I have never been to but have always been curious about, having had friends from there, and of course being Trini I know more than my share of locals who have migrated there.

Kslobodian a.k.a Kimberley is a Canadian blogger and as a graduate of an actual culinary program I of course envy her immensely Enjoy our little tete-a-tete

1. What is the above picture of, and why do you feel it represents you accurately?

Who looks happier, the person sitting at the desk, or the one who has just made a bunch of chocolates? I am very glad that I left my administrative job to pursue a different career path and am much happier focusing on food.

2. Describe your foodie evolution. When (and how) did you become interested in cooking and food culture?

Food was a major part of my childhood. Everyone in my family likes to cook and gatherings focused around fresh and plentiful homemade items. As a little kid, I remember feeling shy when I would take lunch to school because mine was always so big! My mom would literally pack me a picnic every time. Despite feeling that way, I savored everything. As I got older, I embraced the fact that I loved to eat delicious food and am not at all shy about eating and enjoying myself.

Exploring restaurants in my late teens and trying to replicate dishes in my own kitchen was a fun challenge for me. I would be delighted when I had the chance to entertain family and friends. Even though some dinner parties were stressful, due to elaborate menus, they always came together and were worth it. I loved operating my home-based chocolate business too. After working a full day at the office, I would go home and start making chocolates. I was always amazed at how quickly the chocolate-making hours went by. It never felt like “work”.

Traveling has influenced my taste buds the most. No matter where I go, how extremely different one culture is from another, I feel I can become connected to it through food. It is a wonderful and personal thing to share with loved ones and with strangers. I am often more interested in local markets and eating food with locals than I am about seeing museums and monuments when I travel.

It finally clicked a few years back that my career path should include food. Sweet or savory, food has always brought me joy. Whether I cook for family and friends, smother them with chocolate, or travel the world tasting and learning about different cuisines, I get tremendous pleasure out of it.

3. Although I only know a few Canadian food bloggers I’ve noticed that as a group you seem noticeably quieter on ‘Canadian’ as a culinary/cultural identity than many bloggers from other countries. Why do you think this is? And, what are your top three favorite ‘quintessentially Canadian’ dishes?

I think it is difficult to have one identity because Canada is known for its cultural diversity, which has an amazing impact on what is available. For example, the Ukrainian mainstays I grew up with were perogies, cabbage rolls, and kielbasa, while my husband would revel in the dishes his mother brought with her from South America. Most of my friends came from different backgrounds too, so Canadians are definitely spoiled with the smorgasbord of choices available to us.

In Canada, specialty foods vary from region to region, and I’m still learning about the ingredients and artisan products that are available around the country. Popular foods in Canada range from fresh lobster in Nova Scotia, poutine and maple syrup in Quebec, salmon from the pacific, and wild game from the across the country. Wines from the Okanagan are world class and vineyards are popping up all over interior BC. Long ago, family vacations would include fruit picking, so I can’t wait to revisit the Okanagan this summer and do the same.

4. What would you say are the top 3 lessons you’ve gained from formal culinary training?

Keep an open mind. Even though I trained in 2 different schools, all Chefs have different approaches and techniques. One method is not ‘the only’ method. Absorb everything you learn and apply what works for you.
For me, personally, I had a bit of an illusion that I would automatically open my own business. Not to say it can’t be done, but formal training helps you to realize the challenges and complexities of undertaking such a task. Everyone in the business needs to be involved for the right reasons and that team can be difficult to find. Nobody is going to love your business as much as you do, unless you give them incentive to.

You can never learn it all but master what you do.

5. Do you have any advice to others about how to choose a culinary school/program? What to look out for, etc.?

I have written a couple of posts regarding my experience in choosing a culinary and pastry school:

?��Ǩ�� How to Choose the Right Culinary School
?��Ǩ�� 25 FAQs on Culinary and Pastry School

My main piece of advice is to job shadow people in the industry. If your goal is to open a café or a high-end bed and breakfast, find the one you love and visit it. Talk to the owner and their employees to find out what it is really like to run that kind of establishment. If you think you want to work in a restaurant, find the one you admire and ask to observe. There is nothing more powerful than talking to someone who is doing it and take notes about what they do well and what they don’t.

That concluded my little Nyam session with Kslobodian I hope you all enjoyed it Now go visit her and tell her TriniGourmet sent ya

In the past few months I’ve gotten to know so many fine food blogs. After a while of reading a blog regularly I find that I also start to become curious about the mind and history of the person behind it. That’s why I decided that I would start a feature that I’m calling ‘Nyam’. ‘Nyam’ is Jamaican for eat/chew, esp. when the consumption is hearty and joyful. By posing some of my favorite food bloggers with the questions that their blog has raised in my mind I hope not only to give my curiousity something to ‘nyam’ on, but also yours

For this first installment of ‘Nyam’ I thought I’d turn the spotlight onto a Trinidadian food blogger who has been really friendly and supportive towards me and TriniGourmet from the beginning I have ‘borrowed’ her pictures more than a few times to illustrate my posts and it seems only fair that I now launch this platform by further highlighting her and her excellent blog Lifespan of a Chennette. Like all subsequent participants will be, she was first asked to submit a photograph that represented her

Silly me though, I never thought to ask her why she calls herself ‘Chennette’ (the local name for guinep)

1. What is this picture of, and why do you feel it represents you accurately?

My picture is sugarcane on the road. This is one of the major roads in my area, all through the sugarcane fields in Central and when the cane is in arrow I always feel for certain that I am coming home. Living in the sugarcane belt in Trinidad, coming from Central, but working and studying in the North (and “East”) and having to commute to home, have all shaped who I am as a Trini. So I love this picture because it speaks to me of home, family and my personal history. Which are all connected to my food history.

2. Describe your foodie evolution. When (and how) did you become interested in cooking and food culture?

I think I have always been a foodie. I grew up being a little server girl at Mom’s dinner parties (Mom is incapable of inviting less than 25 people over). She always cooked with us in the kitchen and she tried new things all the time, we helped to bake cookies and pick seasonings. It was part of my earliest memories being in the kitchen and waiting for goodies. All Mom’s family are good cooks, so I guess it’s hereditary, although they each have their specialties. And Dad (no matter what Mom says) always tries new things you make (with appropriate and sometimes snarky commentary) so there was always an appreciation of good food in the house.

We all love food and growing up with Trini, Indo-Trini and Syrian food cultures and then occasional trips to the US (where we encountered Indian, Arab, African families on various campuses) just widened the appreciation of new foods. Even if we didn’t always actually like them, or know what they were. Of course the actual learning to cook was not as smooth, since Mom, for all her good intentions, is a Kitchen-Comptroller. “Showing” you how to do things the right way all the time, but with great great difficulty letting you get brown spots on the dhalpuri or roll out a square paratha. Great great difficulty. Her mother was clearly a perfectionist as well.

Although I always liked cooking, my actual varied cooking skills came when I was in UWI [University of the West Indies] and was forced to cook without the maternal net. Cook real food, not just cookies and pasta. And I missed the food so much I started to make roti, despite insisting to my mother the year before I was a rice eater and would not need to know how to make roti. My roommate and I tried sada roti, paratha, aloo pies, pholourie etc etc. Maybe that’s why I like cooking with people around more than by myself. Not only do you have company, you also get people to eat all the food you end up making! But cooking as a student means that cooking for me was my relaxation and procrastination. Anyone who’s lived with me knows that I cook when I am stressed, or if I have a paper due that I am trying to work out in my head.

3. The cuisine of Trinidad and Tobago is so varied, how have you traditionally explained it others?

I think coming from Trinidad and Tobago was a big part of making me a foodie – many countries may have a variety of foods from different cultures, but in T&T there’s a enormous level of assimilation and adaptation. Everyone makes pelau, and callaloo and dhal and curry and fried rice and noodles, bake, roti etc. And the foods you crave when you’re away have nothing to do with your ethnic or cultural background. But this, to me, is T&T. I usually tell people that Trinis take food seriously, so there’s no way we are going to marginalise or sideline any food item or culture that could satisfy our bellies. So, if something is good, we make it, we sell it, we buy it. And that has been historically the case. There’s also an aspect to a Trini personality that’s important. It could be good or bad, but we’re relatively easygoing (or fun-loving, see Carnival). When we had no Parliament for effectively a year, there were no riots or serious disturbances; people went about their business like normal. Now, we could do with some more activism sometimes, but does mean we’re not a society that will reject each other violently and certainly not when it comes to good food. So we assimilate and adapt.

4. What are your Top 3 local dishes and why?

This is hard to determine. But I am going to choose 3 by the dishes I make sure to get whenever I touch down after a long absence. There are many more, but…
1. Pelau. I love pelau. I can eat it anytime and it’s as distinctive as its maker. It’s a complete balanced meal in one pot. Mmmm.

2. Doubles.

3. Bake and Shark from Maracas (that’s not just the food I suppose, but the beach eating and the sand and wind)

Is Macaroni Pie a local dish?

[TG Responds: The amount of searches I get a day for Trinidad Macaroni Pie makes me wonder that too. When I lived in the US and made it for American friends none of them had had anything like it, though they said it was such a natural evolution from Mac n Cheese they don't know why they hadn't come up with it too. My (Jamaican) mother usually makes hers in a very un-Trini way, so I do think there is such a thing as a Trini Macaroni Pie and I'll be making that soon, so look out for it!]

5. Your blog entries often mention the celebrations and traditions of the Muslim calendar. Are there any local Muslim dishes and/or traditions that you think of as distinctly Trinidadian?

Sharing sawine [my link is to a recipe called semiya that looks and sounds almost exact in description to Trinidad sawine] on Eid day from glass jugs, a tray with glasses of sawine or buckets to your non-Muslim neighbours (I know my family has progressed to using styrofoam containers for convenience, but it’s based on the same principles). After Eid prayers, making the rounds house-to-house to all the Muslim homes in the village eating and trying out people’s specialities.

As for distinctive Trini Muslim dishes – that’s always difficult, because I don’t know the whole cuisine of India and some of our dishes that I haven’t seen elsewhere may actually be found in some regional Indian cuisines. But our Gulab Jamoon maybe – Barfi with SPRINKLES!! Halwa from rice flour, cream of wheat, or wheat flour – made a bit differently I think than Indian. Goolgoola (banana fritters). Googia (coconut roti or fried coconut pie).

That concluded my little Nyam session with Chennette. I hope you all enjoyed it Now go visit her and tell her TriniGourmet sent ya