Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Sylvia Hunt. A house­hold name for many Trinida­di­ans above the age of 50, but, un­for­tu­nate­ly, not so well known among the younger gen­er­a­tions. A daugh­ter of the soil, a mas­ter­ful chef, and a stew­ard of Trin­bag­on­ian cul­ture, Sylvia Hunt har­nessed and dis­played our her­itage in all of her works, name­ly her meals, TV show, and books. Many peo­ple un­fa­mil­iar with her work might be scep­ti­cal about pay­ing trib­ute to Hunt’s lega­cy; how­ev­er, in do­ing so, they min­imise the cen­tral­i­ty of food in Caribbean cul­ture. Hunt used food as a means of cel­e­brat­ing our rich, mul­ti­cul­tur­al her­itage in T&T and as a tool of re­sis­tance against the colo­nial lega­cy that has crept in­to so many as­pects of our cul­ture.

Born in 1912, Hunt came to life on TV screens in the ear­ly 1960s with her cook­ing show “At Home With Sylvia Hunt”, aired on the on­ly lo­cal sta­tion avail­able at the time, TTT, with high view­er­ship at “prime­time” be­fore Panora­ma. Hunt’s show, which aired for more than two decades, was not on­ly a first in the re­gion as a pro­gramme fo­cused on cook­ing but al­so pre-empt­ed the shows of oth­er leg­endary TV cooks like Ju­lia Child and Martha Stew­art.

Her show doc­u­ment­ed our in­dige­nous recipes, and ac­cord­ing to her daugh­ter Di­ana Sam­bra­no, many peo­ple an­tic­i­pat­ed the show with pens poised to tran­scribe new recipes. Al­though “eat­ing lo­cal” is en vogue at present, in the 1960s, tele­vis­ing a pro­gramme on lo­cal foods was a clar­i­on state­ment to the wor­thi­ness of our foods and cul­ture to be cel­e­brat­ed and doc­u­ment­ed.

Sylvia Hunt

Deep-seat­ed im­pacts of colo­nial­ism have led to a mind­set in which for­eign goods and foods, and ac­cess to them, are a hall­mark of wealth and class. As Hunt gained pop­u­lar­i­ty in the years post In­de­pen­dence, her TV show fea­tur­ing meals, made with bread­fruit, pig­tail and salt­fish, and recipes for pelau, black cake and toolum aligned per­fect­ly with the coun­try’s tran­si­tion of com­ing in­to our own as a na­tion. Ac­cord­ing to her grand­son Christo­pher Sam­bra­no, these foods were not pop­u­lar and were pre­sumed to be “food of the poor, food of the Black and food of the slave.”

Hunt, how­ev­er, used tele­vi­sion to stim­u­late in­ter­est in lo­cal dish­es, not on­ly teach­ing peo­ple to cook them but re­leas­ing view­ers from these colo­nial pre­sump­tions that “for­eign is bet­ter.” When her first book was pub­lished in 1985, copies were added to every Trinida­di­an’s home and be­came a holy grail, with many fam­i­lies, and in­deed fam­i­lies in the di­as­po­ra, still div­ing in­to their dog-eared pages for recipes al­most 40 years lat­er.

Her grand­son Christo­pher said that his grand­moth­er was “pas­sion­ate about our cul­ture, com­mu­ni­ty and her­itage” in her ca­pac­i­ty as a cook, but al­so as a Best Vil­lage judge and an ac­tive mem­ber of lo­cal gov­ern­ment. She was a coun­sel­lor first, then an al­der­man, rep­re­sent­ing Bel­mont. When I asked him what he thought of his grand­moth­er, he said that she was “well ahead of her time” and “cut­ting ground” as a woman with one of the first tele­vi­sion shows on lo­cal TV and in pub­lished books in the 1980s.

Sylvia Hunt receives her Hummingbird Medal Silver from President Sir Ellis Clarke.

Be­ing a pi­o­neer­ing Black woman in those years may have come with a lot of re­sis­tance, and her daugh­ter, Sam­bra­no, as­sert­ed that even dur­ing the film­ing and demon­stra­tions of her cook­ing, peo­ple would say that her moth­er’s non-tra­di­tion­al way of cur­ing meat was her “try­ing to poi­son peo­ple.”

Out­side of her cook­ing show, Hunt was a teacher, a dress­mak­er, a busi­ness own­er, a cater­er and a moth­er. Her shop, Mighty Fine Nov­el­ty Prod­ucts, which was ini­tial­ly lo­cat­ed on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, be­fore mov­ing to Bel­mont, was a pop­u­lar lunchtime lo­ca­tion to which city dwellers flocked in search of her “sweet han.” She was not on­ly a moth­er to her eight bi­o­log­i­cal chil­dren, but al­so opened her home to three chil­dren from the or­phan­age whom she adopt­ed. One of her stu­dents, Ber­nice Jef­fers, re­called how her class­es with Ms Hunt were very piv­otal in nudg­ing her to­wards be­com­ing a di­etit­ian, as “she al­ways showed us how to pre­pare bal­anced meals, stress­ing the use of lo­cal and in-sea­son in­gre­di­ents in food’s prepa­ra­tion.” Jef­fers re­mem­bers go­ing home from school and shar­ing Ms Hunt’s recipes for mac­a­roni pie, fudge, sug­ar cake, and co­conut sweet­bread with her moth­er, and in time to come, shar­ing the tips learned from Ms Hunt with her chil­dren.

Sylvia Hunt’s cookbook.

Fayola Fraser

This multi­gen­er­a­tional shar­ing was ex­act­ly what Hunt in­tend­ed–to use food to cre­ate the “Proud Lega­cy of Our Peo­ple.”

Shar­ing food and recipes may seem in­con­se­quen­tial to some, but as a coun­try, so much of our his­to­ry and lega­cy is un­doc­u­ment­ed. Hunt wield­ed her in­flu­ence to put our cul­tur­al lega­cy on pa­per and in film. Could she have be­lieved her im­pact would be this great? Her daugh­ter and grand­son be­lieve so. In­deed, Christo­pher echoed that his grand­moth­er’s lega­cy has not on­ly im­pact­ed how he puts a se­cret in­gre­di­ent (grat­ed cheese) in­to his callaloo but how he takes great pride in shar­ing food as part of his Tri­ni her­itage and pass­es on that pride to his fam­i­ly, res­i­dent in Bar­ba­dos.

Sam­bra­no de­scribed her moth­er’s lega­cy in one word “strength”. As a mul­ti-tal­ent­ed, pi­o­neer­ing woman, Hunt’s last­ing lega­cy was self-be­lief and de­ter­mi­na­tion to chase pur­pose, re­gard­less of prece­dent. In 1986, Hunt was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal Sil­ver for her loy­al and de­vot­ed ser­vice to our coun­try and cul­ture.

Re­cent­ly, food blog­ger Mark Wiens vis­it­ed Trinidad and toured around the coun­try, sam­pling lo­cal foods and doc­u­ment­ing them to his in­ter­na­tion­al fan base. The rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment agen­cies viewed this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case our coun­try and our cul­ture and in­trigue peo­ple to­wards our shores. This was an af­fir­ma­tion of the in­te­gral­i­ty of food in our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty and food as a cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy. When tourists hear of Trinidad, sam­pling our cre­ole food is in­ti­mate­ly in­ter­twined with a vis­it to our coun­try.

Hunt was a true pa­tri­ot. There is no Trinidad with­out “we food” and our pride in our food as a cul­tur­al prod­uct was first in­stilled by her tire­less work of com­pil­ing, cre­at­ing and doc­u­ment­ing recipes that rep­re­sent our her­itage.

Hunt’s fam­i­ly have reprint­ed her most pop­u­lar cook­book, “Sylvia Hunt’s Cook­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, Proud Lega­cy of Our Peo­ple” which will be launched at 6:30 pm on Wednes­day at Mille Fleurs.

The book will be avail­able at se­lect­ed book­stores lo­cal­ly and at Sylvi­ahunt­cook­ing.com