I have received a free copy of the recipe book Taste of the French Caribbean by Chef Denis Rosembert to review.
This is what it says on the back cover.
Stir up an authentic taste of the Caribbean at home with Chef Denis Rosembert’s first ever cookbook. The St Lucia born restauranteur lovingly curates his favourite dishes — from delicious jerk chicken to spicy mutton curry and sweet golden apple cake — for you to recreate, bringing the unique flavours and exotic aromas of the island — renowned for its seafood and exquisite chocolates — vividly to life in your own kitchen.
At his much-loved restaurant Chez Denis in Norwich, England, Denis Rosembert blends the eclectic cuisines of Africa, Europe and Eastern India that combine to make St Lucian food so rich and so special. His colourful, infectious, easy-to-follow recipes are the ultimate celebration of island life, food and drink and entertaining and will soon have you inviting friends and family round to experience your own taste of the Caribbean.
Regular readers of my blog will know that I enjoy cooking, so I was very much looking forward to reading the recipes in this book and trying some out. I’ve never been to St Lucia, so I was very interested to find out the cooking style. I was certainly expecting to find seafood recipes and jerk chicken, but surprised at the lack of curried goat. Obviously it must be from a different part of the Caribbean. Interestingly there was a big section of soups which I shall definitely be dipping into. I had assumed that soups wouldn’t feature heavily in a hot climate.
Most of the ingredients can be sourced from your local supermarket, but you will need to find a specialised supplier for the more exotic like golden apples. I had wrongly assumed this just referred to the golden delicious variety of apple, but no it is a totally different fruit to the apple we know here.
I really enjoyed reading the introduction and finding out that Chef Denis started cooking at age 6, when his grandmother taught him to grill fish with green bananas on a coal pot. He still enjoys making and eating this dish today.
The book has a detailed section on sauces that are used in other recipes, but unfortunately doesn’t have an index. Also I would prefer it if every recipe had a picture.
Taste of the French Caribbean has just been published and is available on Amazon, currently priced at £25 in hardback and is also available in Kindle format. A lovely recipe book, which has certainly whet my appetite.
I have tried out the Mango and Coconut Flan recipe. This requires either golden apple or lemon curd, so I opted to use lemon, since I don’t know anywhere local to purchase golden apples. You may see how I made the lemon curd here. I found the recipe reasonably straight-forward to follow, although I would say it serves 10, rather than 4 as stated. A quarter of the flan would be an absolutely enormous portion. And I had to skip the step of placing on a cooling rack, as I barely managed to move it from baking tray to serving plate.
Click on the image below and then zoom to see a fullsize copy of this recipe as it appears in the book.
It was really delicious. A very tasty dessert.
About Chef Denis
Denis Rosembert was born on the island of St.Lucia where he started training to be a chef in 1973. After a couple of years he was invited to England to continue his training. Since then Denis has worked in various hotels and restaurants across Britain and America in the role of Commis, Sous and finally Head Chef. In 1989 he moved to Norwich, where after a brief stint working for the Sports Village, he finally realised his dream and opened his own restaurant Chez Denis.
Website – http://www.chezdenis.co.uk/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/Chezdenis1
I’m participating in the blogtour. Do take time to browse round some of the other posts to see what tasty recipes they have tried.
I’d love to hear what dishes you love from the Caribbean?
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Disclosure. This post is a review of a book I was sent for free. All opinions are my own.
Yet another blogging mummy!!! 
I wonder what golden apples are and whether they have another name that we might be moe familiar with.The flan looks delicious.
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I’m not aware of another name
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Sounds perfect -my goal was to be more inventive with my cooking
This looks fun
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I was originally asked to cook one of the golden apple recipes, which would have been very inventive, as I hadn’t a clue where to source golden apples from
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The husband has started doing all the cooking. He loves trying new recipes so this would make a great Father’s day present 🙂
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Wish my husband would cook more than beans on toast or similar. I bought him 3 books over a year ago on the theme of less carbs after he expressed an interest, but he still hasn’t cooked anything from them
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You don’t see Caribbean recipes very often do you, what you made looks rather tasty! Thanks for sharing with #ReadWithMe
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Thank you. Some fab recipes in this book
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Looks yummy
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I like the sound of this; I love Caribbean food. That flan looks delicious!
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Thank you. It certainly was delicious although next time, I think I’ll reduce the quantity, as it was huge
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