We don’t really celebrate Easter in our house. Gorging myself on hot cross buns before they disappear from the shelves is pretty much the extent of it. So as grateful as we are for the extra long weekend, it can get a little boring. To fend off the tedium, I decided to reach for a cookbook I bought a few weeks ago and haven’t had the chance to use yet- Taymer Mason‘s Carribean Vegan. I’d been hearing nothing but wonderful things about the book, but Caribbean food is definitely one of those cuisines that hasn’t quite found its way to our shores yet. This left me a little overwhelmed when it came to choosing somewhere to start.

I settled on the highly-recommended chickpea curry, with spinach rice and roti.

Chickpea curry, spinach rice and roti

This was so much simpler to make than I’d anticipated- I don’t know why I let these recipes scare me for so long. Both the curry and rice were so flavourful, and worked so well together. But the roti here was the standout for me. I used the ‘buss up shut’ roti recipe (that’s Trinidadian dialect for ‘busted up shirt’- the more you know!) and it was so much fun to make. Taymer’s method, involving rolling the dough into cone shapes before letting it rise, is really interesting, not to mention much easier than it seems. I’ll be making this roti for our Caribbean and Indian meals from now on.

The following night, I moved onto something a little more adventurous.

Bajan macaroni pie

Mac and cheese, Barbados style! This has a few elements echoing more traditional mac and cheese recipes, such as a roux base and, of course, nutritional yeast, but with a few surprising ingredients too. The homemade Bajan seasoning sets this apart. Containing spring onions, spices and a respectable amount of chilli (the recipe calls for Scotch bonnet peppers, but they’re like spicy gold around here so red chillis had to suffice), gives this baked pie something unexpected… but definitely welcome! I liked this a lot more than I’d expected, and will definitely be making it again.

Caribbean Vegan gets the thumbs up from us so far! I’m excited to use it more often and push us to try some more unfamiliar dishes and ingredients.

In other news, Vegan Stock Photo, the brand new cruelty-free photo resource launched today! We’ve contributed a few photos so far (one of which has turned up on Quarrygirl already!) and we’re excited to see the steps made towards banishing a few skeletons from the vegan publishing industry’s closet. So have a look, contribute, rate some photos and help to make that difference that everyone’s been calling for.

Go on, get out of here and do it!