Rose’s Gold: A Comfort Food Cookbook

Rose’s Gold, a new cookbook by R. Shepherd, promises recipes for tasty comfort food, with Jamaican-British fusion recipes. In this cookbook, familiar homemade favorites, like stew or pie, get a Caribbean kick.  Several recipes add a Scotch Bonnet for that extra heat, or call on tropical fruit for sweetness. 

The cookbook was inspired by Elma Rose Francis, a Jamaican-British mother and home chef, and it really feels like a family cookbook. Some recipes are more like flavor suggestions than a step-by-step guide, giving general guidelines and a flavor profile, but then inviting the cook to make their own calls and add their own style. Just like getting a family recipe from an auntie. These meals are suitable for most home cooks to try. I’m always annoyed when a recipe sounds tempting, but then calls for loads of specialized equipment… I like cooking and trying new recipes, but I definitely don’t have a pasta machine or herb scissors.)

Spiced beef patties might be the most recognizable, familiar Jamaican food for me — my old neighborhood in Brooklyn had a late-night café selling them, and I’d pick one up for a snack on the way home. But that’s not the only recipe, or even the main focus in this cookbook. Rose’s Gold is full of recipes for apple-rum pie, beef curry patties, porridge with tropical fruit, and other Jamaican-style breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and desserts. The food photos will make you hungry, too. 

Rose’s Gold will be released in July 2020. Posted in partnership with Ghost & Ribbon publishers, opinions are my own, as always.