Zahra Gor­don

So what's in your oven? If your name is Nneka Daniel Brave­boy, own­er and ex­ec­u­tive chef at the new­ly opened restau­rant and bak­ery Nick & 2Js then on any giv­en day your oven could have choco­late bread flavoured with co­conut or man­go cran­ber­ry wal­nut bread or hops din­ner rolls-all made with hemp.

And the word hemp is no ty­po. In an at the open­ing of Nick & 2Js last Fri­day that she is T&T's on­ly li­cenced im­porter and dis­trib­u­tor of hemp-the non-psy­choac­tive vari­ant of the cannabis plant. Al­most every item on the Nick & 2Js menu has a touch of hemp seeds, flour or oil.

Brave­boy be­gan us­ing hemp while man­ag­ing her cater­ing busi­ness Food Sup­port­ers Plus for more than a decade. Open­ing a restau­rant has been a dream of hers for more than 20 years, how­ev­er.

She's been in the busi­ness of cook­ing and sell­ing food since she was nine. Brave­boy us­es her knowl­edge of food chem­istry, hu­man ecol­o­gy and cre­ativ­i­ty to en­hance her culi­nary skills.

Brave­boy says hemp has many health ben­e­fits. Many of her cater­ing clients had health or al­ler­gy con­cerns and hemp be­came one way to ad­dress them. "The pro­tein in hemp is very sim­i­lar to the pro­tein in our blood and hemp is more di­gestible than soy," she said. As a cater­er, Brave­boy gar­nered rave re­views and she opened a small space for Nick & 2Js' at the Cro­bar Club on Ari­api­ta Av­enue where she was open on­ly for about six months. When she was fi­nal­ly able to open a space of her own, Brave­boy moved to clos­er to her na­tive St Au­gus­tine and branched out to in­clude a bak­ery.

The taste of her hemp-driz­zled dish­es are en­hanced by the use a food the­atre lo­cat­ed out­side the restau­rant. The main at­trac­tion in the the­atre is the dirt oven which Brave­boy built her­self along with the help of Cristo Ado­nis. The the­atre al­so in­cludes a fire­side, roast­ing box and Dou­bles stand (Dou­bles at Nick & 2Js come with a de­li­cious co­conut chut­ney).

Ac­cord­ing to Brave­boy, the slow process used to bake bread and cakes and cook food mag­ni­fies the flavour. And when Brave­boy says slow process she means it; wood in the dirt oven has to be burnt for three hours be­fore any items can be put in.

Some of the com­pli­cat­ed items are made us­ing a con­ven­tion­al stove, how­ev­er, like the hon­ey gin­ger chili crab served with chive buns, the lob­ster corn soup or the hempouries (pholourie made us­ing hemp flour). When it's time to serve the tamarind lamb grazed with cilantro on the oth­er hand, the roast­ing box is fired up.

The food the­atre, Brave­boy said, was an ex­pres­sion of pa­tri­o­tism. "I de­vel­oped it (food the­atre) for many rea­sons. One, is ab­solute per­son­al bore­dom and a com­bi­na­tion of pride in our cul­ture and I've al­ways en­joyed show­ing peo­ple that they can look at food in a dif­fer­ent light."

Side­bar:

All hemp prod­ucts are THC (tetrahy­dro­cannabi­nol)-free and there­fore do not al­ter the mind. In ad­di­tion to con­tain­ing nine es­sen­tial amino acids, hemp has three times the Vi­t­a­min E and twice the iron and mag­ne­sium. Whole hemp seeds con­tain 25 per cent pro­tein, 31 per cent fat and 34 per cent car­bo­hy­drates.

Nick & 2Js is lo­cat­ed on the cor­ner of Agos­ti­ni Street and East­ern Main Road. Busi­ness hours: Wednes­day through Sat­ur­day 6am - 6pm (bread baked from 3pm), Sun­day 6am - 1pm (bread baked from 6am). You can al­so vis­it them on Face­book (Nick & 2J's) or con­tact them via phone at 221-2102.

All hemp prod­ucts are THC (tetrahy­dro cannabi­nol) free and there­fore do not al­ter the mind. In ad­di­tion to con­tain­ing nine es­sen­tial amino acids, hemp has three times the Vi­t­a­min E and twice the iron and mag­ne­sium.

Whole hemp seeds con­tain 25 per cent pro­tein, 31 per cent fat and 34 per cent car­bo­hy­drates.

Nick & 2Js is lo­cat­ed on the cor­ner of Agos­ti­ni Street and East­ern Main Road, St Au­gus­tine.

Busi­ness hours: Wednes­day through Sat­ur­day 6am - 6pm (bread baked from 3pm), Sun­day 6am - 1pm (bread baked from 6am).

You can al­so vis­it them on Face­book (Nick & 2J's) or con­tact them via phone at 221-2102.