Levi Roots - Food For Friends

Published: 2010



Overview: A fair sized hardback book focused on simple recipes with a Caribbean twist, written by the creator of Reggae Reggae sauce.

Review: ‘Food For Friends’ has over 200 pages of delicious recipes, favourite ingredients and an interesting introduction from Levi Roots. His vibrant personality jumps out from the glossy pages, apparent in his colourful recipes and descriptions of his essential Caribbean ingredients. The recipes are arranged in chapter order, with sections such as Lunch, Picnic, Barbecue and Grill, Special Occasions and High Tea, with more in between. I like this layout, making it easy to find a dish to cook that suits the occasion. Some recipes have images, which are all appealing yet homely, some showing Roots and other people making or eating them which gives a laidback, casual feel to the book. The recipe layout is simple and fairly easy to follow, with ingredients that are generally easy to source in local supermarkets. One criticism I have of the recipes is that in some, for example Roots’ version of Spaghetti Bolognese on page 96, it calls for 100ml Sunshine Kit Cooking Sauce, which is in fact a whole recipe in itself on page 123 and contains 14 ingredients, therefore meaning you would need to make this recipe just to make another one. I feel that an alternative should be given, maybe a recommendation to use a bottle of Reggae Reggae sauce would have been better! I do, however, like the recipes, they are user friendly and make Caribbean cookery accessible to the everyday home cook. There is a good balance between sweet and savoury dishes, even showing desserts to make on the barbecue such as Barbecue bananas with passion fruit cream on page 75. The recipes work out to be fairly economical if you are going to be cooking a lot of Caribbean style food as many recipes use the same ingredients such as rum, honey, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, chilli and thyme, which can be bought in large quantities. From reading this book I feel inspired to experiment more with West Indian flavourings and am looking forward to trying out more recipes from this book such as: Pumpkin and spinach gratin (p35); Sweet potato, red onion and feta sunshine tart (p52); Levi’s sticky red cabbage (p120); Coconut pavlova with tropical fruit (p168); Sweet potato pudding (p174); Chocolate and orange spice cake (p178). Can you tell I like sweet things yet?

Rating: 8/10 – Really nice book with great simple layout and lots of colour with some lovely recipes, but a few of the recipes seem a little bit samey and maybe a bit too much rum is used!