Sian’s Kitchen: Caribbean Comfort Cooking

Restaurateur and TV host Anderson, a rising culinary star in the UK, self-published her first cookbook, Sian and Her Son, during the height of the COVID pandemic. Anderson’s new volume celebrates her Black British identity and her Jamaican and St Lucian culture. The inclusion of short features on other well-known Britons of Caribbean descent, along with a solid playlist to cook by, offers a glimpse of Anderson’s fun personality and relaxed approach to culinary creations. The book also features spectacular photography of completed dishes that give a solid and realistic expectation of how they might look when prepared at home. Readers can look forward to both meat-focused and vegan dishes such as jerk chicken and a vegan Trinidadian pelau. The book is visually appealing and will make readers want to get started cooking, but some ingredients that are found mainly at Caribbean grocery stores might be unfamiliar to or hard to find for some U.S. audiences. Some recipes suggest substitutions, whereas others do not.