Chef and musician Denai Moore’s debut book, “Plentiful,” reimagines the cooking traditions of the Caribbean island nation through the lens of veganism.
from critics for the way it wandered between R&B, electro-pop, and folk influences without sacrificing cogency. She describes her music as “genre free,” a label that might apply as readily to her food. One sees that allergy to categorization quite clearly in a dish like her. It’s a recipe she feels best embodies the book’s vibrancy, with its careful harmony of sweetness, salt and spice. “I ask myself the same questions when I wrote this book [as] when I’m making an album,” she said.
Moore was 9 when she and her family moved to England 20 years ago from her birth country. But she still remembers the mango trees, the ackee trees, the coconut trees of her Jamaican youth; she remembers de-seeding tamarinds so her mother could make juice to serve with Sunday dinners. Music ran through her veins — her father was a musician, and she picked up her first guitar at 12 — but so, too, did food. She savored the pleasures of rice drenched in oxtail gravy.
Miraculously, being in a kitchen and cooking for a throng of people “didn’t feel insane,” she said. The act of feeding others came naturally to her. “It felt like I’ve done this before,” she said of that initial night, “and I want to do this forever.” As she daydreamed of where to take Dee’s Table in the years that followed, she began to write an early proposal for “Plentiful,” sheepishly showing the draft to her music managers. But the business of generosity was also taxing. She didn’t get to concentrate much on feeding herself. “I’d make these elaborate dishes and specials for people and then end up eating some toast at the end of service,” she remembered.
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