I’m back in the BVIs after a lovely long holiday in England. I have found loads of new recipes that I really want to try, but some of them will have to wait until we charter next, as the ingredients are so expensive here, particularly fish and vegetables for some reason.

I bought a book in England called Caribbean Cooking, the women in the shop (and my mum) were laughing at me for having to go all the way to England to buy a Caribbean cookbook, but the truth is, the cookbooks I have bought here have not impressed me much. Loads of them have ingredients that are really hard to buy here, or they lean more towards US/Caribbean fusion food rather than true Caribbean flavours and ingredients. The book I have bought is from the Australian Women’s Weekly series which means, they say, that all the recipes have been tried and tested. I want to work my way through some of the recipes in the book – hopefully making me try some savoury recipes for once!

The first recipe I chose from the book was a ‘Green Banana and Coconut Soup’ . Woo-hoo – savoury!! We had friends over for dinner last night so I made it for them. I have cooked with plantains and bananas before, but never green bananas. It was an interesting experience as the result looked, and even tasted much more like a mushroom soup than anything else! It wasnt a great taste, and unfortunately, contrary to the recipe (which had a photo of a lovely white soup) it was a rather un-appetising grey colour. My dinner guests were very polite about it, but I certainly won’t be making it again – hence why I don’t feel the need to share the recipe.Here are some of the photos I took, though.

You bake the bananas for 25 minutes, then peel and skin them.

This is where I started to get a bit worried …

The stock, onion & coconut milk mixture simmered…

The finished soup!

Not one I’d recommend, but certainly worth a try. Hope the other recipes in the book turn out better!