anybody’s local cuisine. This was high-end vacation fare, something you’d expect at a fancy dining room in just about any big city on earth. I suddenly wanted to know: where did you learn to cook like that? When did you realise you liked to cook? When can I come into your world and step out of the role I am supposed to play?
The answers came quickly. The owner of this villa, Brian Alexander, had only recently retired after thirty years as the managing director of the Mustique Company, the association of owners that rents all the 110-plus villas on the island. Mementos, hanging on walls and casually propped up on tables in hidden corners of the house, spoke of Sapphire’s noble history. Nothing was more revealing than a small, faded photo of Alexander greeting a young Princess Margaret dockside upon her arrival on the island, with her sister the Queen and brother-in-law Prince Phillip.
In his managerial position, Alexander entertained a lot. He wanted a good cook and was willing to sponsor Donna for training with New York’s French Culinary Institute when it came to Mustique to run a special program. He needed sophisticated cuisine to reflect the worldly crowd he catered to. He needed a dinner bell.
Mustique made even more sense to me when I discovered that the island had been purchased in the late 1950s by a Scottish aristocrat as a private playpen for himself and privileged friends like Margaret.
Donna immediately got that I wanted to hang with her in the kitchen. I was curious about every menu she had mapped out for the week, especially one dish – sushi – that was coming up in a few days. (Sushi? Why not, I thought, with fish this fresh?) Donna wasn’t shy about filling me in on her culinary prowess, and I was more than happy to hear how she had always wanted to learn to cook.
There aren’t a lot of options for work on a small Caribbean island, where most employees come from the mother island of StVincent – larger, yes, but not exactly brimming with opportunities itself. I began to notice the men sweeping the roads and beaches all over the island. So many of them stood and stared as they slowly brushed yet another leaf or scrap of paper out of the way, as if even the tiniest piece of litter might make someone recoil in horror. They were fully employed and yet not doing much of anything at all. Donna, as well as Pearl and Pat, lived on the grounds of my tidy beach castle and might have found a better way. Donna, especially, had a job that was creative and clearly satisfying to her.
As the week went on, lifting pot lids became the major activity in the afternoon, when preparing the evening meal got under way at around five. Donna didn’t hesitate to ask for my help. Once I had crossed that threshold into her culinary domain, I became her new sous chef, or maybe just a heaven-sent helper to do the slicing and dicing. ‘You cut these, please,’ Donna would say, handing over a few red capsicums for a Chinese concoction she was planning that evening. Fair enough, I thought; it’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to lift pot lids at will. Pearl and Pat looked vaguely shocked as Donna and I became increasingly more familiar. But maybe they also knew that Donna took no prisoners, for I was beginning to feel more and more like an appliance.
I had my own way of paying back. Teasing Donna was easy for me, especially since I had a reliable two-woman audience to count on for applause. A simple question, thrown out in jest but laced with mock gravitas – ‘Are you sure you want so many onions in the stir-fry? It might overwhelm the dish’ – was guaranteed to get a rise. Donna’s you’re-a-dead-man expression as she whipped her head around from the stove was as predictable as a Swiss clock.
But I craved more than just an afternoon play date. I wanted to find out where all the fabulous food came from.
‘Will you take me to the market with you? And to the fish store before you make
The answers came quickly. The owner of this villa, Brian Alexander, had only recently retired after thirty years as the managing director of the Mustique Company, the association of owners that rents all the 110-plus villas on the island. Mementos, hanging on walls and casually propped up on tables in hidden corners of the house, spoke of Sapphire’s noble history. Nothing was more revealing than a small, faded photo of Alexander greeting a young Princess Margaret dockside upon her arrival on the island, with her sister the Queen and brother-in-law Prince Phillip.
In his managerial position, Alexander entertained a lot. He wanted a good cook and was willing to sponsor Donna for training with New York’s French Culinary Institute when it came to Mustique to run a special program. He needed sophisticated cuisine to reflect the worldly crowd he catered to. He needed a dinner bell.
Mustique made even more sense to me when I discovered that the island had been purchased in the late 1950s by a Scottish aristocrat as a private playpen for himself and privileged friends like Margaret.
Donna immediately got that I wanted to hang with her in the kitchen. I was curious about every menu she had mapped out for the week, especially one dish – sushi – that was coming up in a few days. (Sushi? Why not, I thought, with fish this fresh?) Donna wasn’t shy about filling me in on her culinary prowess, and I was more than happy to hear how she had always wanted to learn to cook.
There aren’t a lot of options for work on a small Caribbean island, where most employees come from the mother island of StVincent – larger, yes, but not exactly brimming with opportunities itself. I began to notice the men sweeping the roads and beaches all over the island. So many of them stood and stared as they slowly brushed yet another leaf or scrap of paper out of the way, as if even the tiniest piece of litter might make someone recoil in horror. They were fully employed and yet not doing much of anything at all. Donna, as well as Pearl and Pat, lived on the grounds of my tidy beach castle and might have found a better way. Donna, especially, had a job that was creative and clearly satisfying to her.
As the week went on, lifting pot lids became the major activity in the afternoon, when preparing the evening meal got under way at around five. Donna didn’t hesitate to ask for my help. Once I had crossed that threshold into her culinary domain, I became her new sous chef, or maybe just a heaven-sent helper to do the slicing and dicing. ‘You cut these, please,’ Donna would say, handing over a few red capsicums for a Chinese concoction she was planning that evening. Fair enough, I thought; it’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to lift pot lids at will. Pearl and Pat looked vaguely shocked as Donna and I became increasingly more familiar. But maybe they also knew that Donna took no prisoners, for I was beginning to feel more and more like an appliance.
I had my own way of paying back. Teasing Donna was easy for me, especially since I had a reliable two-woman audience to count on for applause. A simple question, thrown out in jest but laced with mock gravitas – ‘Are you sure you want so many onions in the stir-fry? It might overwhelm the dish’ – was guaranteed to get a rise. Donna’s you’re-a-dead-man expression as she whipped her head around from the stove was as predictable as a Swiss clock.
But I craved more than just an afternoon play date. I wanted to find out where all the fabulous food came from.
‘Will you take me to the market with you? And to the fish store before you make
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