Patricia Mash

Hi,
I am Patricia, a Barbadian or Bajan and I enjoy the memories of the kitchen when I was growing up in Barbados. We, my brother, sister and I grew up with our parents and extended families. Our paternal grandmother's home was the hub our family life as we were often dropped off and picked up from there when we were at primary school.

She was a willing teacher in all thing's kitchen, and I spent my early years as her “helper”. I enjoyed watching her milk the goats and later boiling the goat’s milk, we picked okras from her patch together and shelling bonavis peas. She grew cherry tomatoes, passion fruit, avocado pears, mammy apples, thyme, chives and marjoram. There was always something going on.

I loved food because of the smells, tastes and proximity to my grandmother. It felt like she cooked all day. When I was 10 years old, I joined the mobile library and started to borrow cookbooks. The first thing that I ever baked was a Madeira cake and that was an absolute disaster. Nevertheless, I was encouraged to keep going. By the age of 12, I was making dumplings, Bajan soups, Curried Potatoes and Rotis; Saturday lunchtime was my gig. This continued until I was 17 when I was bestowed the honour of planning family Christmas! This was before WhatsApp family chats, and I would leave the menu on a paper which was affixed to refrigerator with a magnet. I am now 48 years, and the Christmas Menu is still high on dad's request by mid-December latest.

At University I studied Computer Science and went on to complete my MBA. For over 13 years I travelled worldwide as an IT professional. My love of food was undiminished as I often wrote to my sister to describe some delicacy in the Maldives, Brasil, South Africa, Europe or in the Caribbean. Quite a bit of my travel time was pre-Blackberry Messenger days, so I had to be very descriptive. I would return home and try to recreate the dishes that spoke to me. I had to cook using my senses and improvise where the ingredients were hard to come by.

Many hosted luncheons and family dinners later, in 2011, my sister Marie and I opened a restaurant called Island Plates. It serves up foods with bold flavors reminiscent of my travels as well as my grandmother's kitchen. Many of our clients have said to us that our food tastes of home. We find that remarkable because they are not from the same country or regions. We believe that food connects you to an emotion, a memory, a place and our hope is that ours helps you to travel to those places on every bite.