The Pepperpot Diaries: Stories From My Caribbean Table

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Award-winning TV chef and broadcaster Andi Oliver has written her first ever cookbook The Pepperpot Diaries for DK. Splash a little oil into the palm of your hands and rub it all over the dough in the bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel and leave the dough to rest at room temperature for 2-3 hours – 3 hours is preferable if you have time.

To reach this entrance, enter the Royal Festival Hall via the Southbank Centre Square Doors. Take the JCB Glass Lift to Level 2 and exit to the Riverside Terrace. Turn right to find the Queen Elizabeth Hall main entrance. For step-free access from the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road off Belvedere Road to the Queen Elizabeth Hall auditorium seating (excluding rows A to C) and wheelchair spaces in the Rear Stalls, plus Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer and the Purcell Room, please use the Queen Elizabeth Hall main entrance. The Pepperpot Diaries is Andi Oliver's long-awaited first cookbook. Showcasing both traditional and new recipes, cherished ingredients and vibrant flavours from across the Caribbean, let Andi Oliver take you on an exploration of identity and heritage as she shows you how to create simple yet sensational dishes that will bring the unbeatable flavours of Caribbean cooking to your table. I have women of all colours and shapes and sizes coming and speaking to me all the time and telling me how grateful they are that I’m visible to them on the screenLeave to cool, then transfer to a sealed jar or container and store in the fridge to use as needed. The chutney should keep well for 3–4 weeks. There’s something about garnering success as you get older that means you’re ready for it,’ she says. ‘I feel a lot of things would have been overwhelming when I was younger.’

Andi Oliver is a regular face on our TV screens, as the much-loved host of the BBC's Great British Menu, Sky Arts Book Club Live, Channel 4's Beat the Chef, Food Unwrapped, and contributing chef and host on BBC's Saturday Kitchen. On the inside covers of her first cookbook, The Pepperpot Diaries, is a tapestry of photos of her sprawling extended family. She traces them with a finger. Here is her daughter Miquita, the TV presenter, with whom she’s made several shows; her Antiguan mother, now in her mid-80s, who lives upstairs, pictured with her father over the years: “Can you see she’s looking progressively more pissed off in each photo?” There are friends as close as family: the singer Neneh Cherry, with whom Oliver fronted the post-punk band Rip Rig + Panic. And what’s this? A photo of the Kanneh-Mason clan, the piano- and string-playing musical prodigies? “They’re my cousins!” The book is her origin story as well as a guide to a vibrant but under-represented cuisine: Caribbean cooking is the cooking of 700 islands, with India, China, France, Spain and Portugal all finding their way into the food. Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a large pan over a medium heat. Add the curry paste and salt and sauté gently for about 5 minutes, giving it a light stir occasionally.Form the dough into a ball with your hands, wrap it in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 2 hours. Preheat the oven to 170C/gas mark 5. For a while she went by her middle name, Denise, because it felt more like a white girl’s. “I felt like I was waiting for my life to start,” she says. “I knew it was going to happen, and I knew I just had to wait it out.”

Heat the oil in a high-sided heavy-based frying pan or wok to 180C. To test whether the oil is hot enough, drop in a cube of white bread. If it bubbles straight away and goes golden, then the oil is ready for frying. Fry each piece of dough for just under a minute – be careful not to overcrowd the pan and fry just 1 or 2 at a time. The bara will puff up and become a gorgeous, light golden brown colour when ready. The story of food captured in this book will take readers on a journey around the melting pot of cultural influences, history and heritage that has uniquely shaped traditional and contemporary Caribbean cuisine. Through her travels in Antigua, Andi shares her deeply personal journey on reconnecting with the food she grew up eating - the flavours and ingredients that run through her heart and soul - and what the future might hold for Caribbean cookery. This book explores who we were, who we are, and where we're going - all through the food we eat and the people we meet along the way.Her visibility as a woman is not just significant within the television industry but also the food industry as a whole, an area Oliver agrees has a way to go in terms of its treatment of women. “I think that as women we are patronised in the kitchen,” she tells me. “I’ve definitely been in a situation where I’ve been with two older white men – I’m not talking about Oliver and Matthew by the way (Oliver’s GBM colleagues) – and they will give their opinion about, say, how a piece of fish is cooked. And I’m like ‘I like this fish, I think it’s cooked well and I’m enjoying it.’ They’re like ‘It’s not that,’ and I’m like ‘Mate, I’ve told you what I think. You think something else. You being 75 and an old white man doesn’t make you more right than me.’ The first sweet things I ever made were cheesecakes. This iteration brings together the creaminess of white chocolate with toasty coconut and vibrant lime to sublime effect. Not too sweet, just right.