Naparima Girls 39; High School Cookbook Pdf Free Download
Adimar Poynter
Car Drakes is a San Diego-based writer who covers travel, Trinidad & Tobago, and cannabis through the lens of identity and culture. Her work has appeared in Cond Nast Traveler, Matador Network, HelloGiggles, and other publications. She also does copywriting, runs a travel blog, and documents her travels on her Instagram.
Today we have a treat from writer Car Drakes, who is here to tell us all about one of her favorite cookbooks: the Naparima Girls\u2019 High School Cookbook. First published in 1988 and reissued in 2002, the Naparima cookbook highlights the vibrant and diverse flavors of Trinidad and Tobago, where Drakes\u2019 family is from. I\u2019ll let her tell you what this book means to her, and so many other Trinidadian-Americans looking for a taste of home. (Plus a recipe for Doubles!) Car, take it away!
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Like most Trinidadian-Americans, I was raised on Trinidadian cuisine. And like many first-generation kids, I was raised on my grandmother\u2019s cooking. My core childhood memories consist of standing on a step stool in the kitchen watching her rifle through cabinets and shelves, looking for nutmeg or bay leaves. She would say, \u201CIt must be behind God\u2019s back.\u201D Whatever she couldn\u2019t find had seemingly been transported to some other plane, a dimension that we knew was real but couldn\u2019t access. Two things she could always find, though: On her stove was her roti tawa, a flat cast-iron griddle, and on her shelf was her decade-old copy of Naparima Girl\u2019s High School Cookbook.
So let me now go back, or rather, south, to another plane\u2014through the undulating hills of Trinidad and Tobago to Naparima Girls\u2019 High School. Perched atop La Pique Hill, this school overlooks San Fernando, the town where my mother grew up. Naparima Girls\u2019 High School (hereby referred to as Naparima) was founded in 1912 to teach girls in tandem with the boys\u2019 school, Naparima College (informally known as Naps). Naps was founded in 1894 and was one of the country\u2019s first schools to educate Indo-Trinidadians, playing a crucial role in establishing an Indo-Trinidadian and Tobagonian professional class.
Naparima\u2019s iconic landmark is its tamarind tree, planted in 1917, which still stands and offers a shady refuge for students today. Journalist Yvonne Webb mentions that the tree, like the school, is emblematic of \u201Cpride and poise.\u201D Tamarinds are plentiful in Trinidad and incorporated in snacks such as tamarind balls, a childhood favorite. It\u2019s no surprise, then, that this twin-island nation\u2019s most beloved cookbook came from Naparima.
The first edition of Naparima\u2019s cookbook was published in 1988 after being conceived of by the Alumnae Association to commemorate the school\u2019s Diamond Jubilee in 1987. The goals were clear: to represent Trinidad and Tobago\u2019s diverse cuisine, to provide recipes for both special occasions and everyday use, and to feature Trinidad\u2019s unique and abundant local produce. My grandmother\u2019s copy was a much older edition than those that can be found today\u2013the tattered cover was hot pink, with a black and white photograph of the school on the front. The second edition, published in 2002, is updated with metric conversion tables for those unfamiliar with the metric system and nutritional facts provided in collaboration with the University of the West Indies and the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute. These updated editions have a photo of fresh produce taken by photographer Harold Prieto on the cover.
Recipes in the book are thorough and straightforward, covering nearly every facet of foundational Trinbagonian cuisine. The book includes recipes for perfect doubles (an immensely popular street food consisting of curried chickpeas couched between fried flatbread and dressed with tamarind, chutney, cucumber, or whatever one\u2019s preference), roti, and pholourie, a fried snack made from flour and chickpeas and served with chutney. There are Syrian/Lebanese dishes, such as libby and sleak. The \u2018Cuisine of Other Countries\u2019 section details Caribbean favorites like Grenada\u2019s national stew oil down, Jamaican beef patties, and Guyana\u2019s national dish, pepperpot. There are even recipes for Indonesian shrimp, and hummus from scratch. Trinidad\u2019s prevalent international cuisines also have their own dedicated sections, such as East Indian Cuisine (which differs from the Indian food typically served in the US) and Chinese cuisine.
Jahquari Greene, a West Indian chef who regularly hosts pop-ups in Portland and New York, also has a copy of Naparima Girl\u2019s High School Cookbook on his shelf. He says that \u201Cthe first time I used the book, I had to be in undergrad. That was when I first tried to get a handle on Trinidadian cuisine.\u201D His menu now includes personalized takes on roti, doubles, and sorrel, the recipes for which can all be found in the Naparima cookbook.
Greene\u2019s favorite dish to make from the book is doubles. \u201CThe recipe for the bara dough that I use is in that book\u2026my grandmother purchased [it] for me on one of her many trips to Trinidad, along with a roti tawa.\u201D While the book hasn\u2019t necessarily shaped his cooking style, like many Trini-Americans, he refers back to it while honing his take on family recipes. \u201CIt\u2019s definitely given me an insight into the cuisine of many, many generations before me.\u201D
As for me, I began cooking out of necessity after I became a flight attendant in my early 20s. Dining in restaurants on layovers cost more than my rent, and delays and cancellations often left me stranded in small towns at night with no open restaurants. I purchased an eBag, the insulated lunchbox flight crews swear by, and started slow: salads of hearty greens, leftover pasta, anything that could keep in an airplane galley\u2019s ice drawer and remain recognizable after crossing time zones and borders.
When I would return from a trip, I began my routine; unpack and sanitize my luggage, wash my uniform, and repack. Amidst all of this, I clocked hours in the kitchen, painstakingly prepping nostalgic meals so that it felt like home no matter where I work took me. I made homes out of Dallas, Tucson, Vancouver and Monterrey by repeating my key phrase to customs and border patrol when they asked if I had food: \u201CYeah, but it\u2019s all nonperishable.\u201D
And so I finally began looking up recipes from the Naparima Girl\u2019s High School Cookbook. I scoured Asian groceries for Malta to drink and Matouks\u2019 pepper sauce with scotch bonnets. I bought flour. I got a rolling pin. Gradually, I started making rice. I started missing roti, yellow curry, and, yes, pelau.
Recently I told a friend in San Diego, where I live, that it was no coincidence that the further I got from home, the better my relationship with my family back in Ohio seemed to become. She observed, \u201CNo wonder, you\u2019re on the edge of the continent.\u201D But I\u2019m also always home, behind God\u2019s back, and somehow, in Trinidad.
Car Drakes is a San Diego-based writer who covers travel, Trinidad & Tobago, and cannabis through the lens of identity and culture. Her work has appeared in Cond\u00E9 Nast Traveler, Matador Network, HelloGiggles, and other publications. She also does copywriting, runs a travel blog, and documents her travels on her Instagram.
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