Just what is it about Barbadian men and cooking? Lifestyle's Lawrence Trott probes the phenomenon of why so many men from Barbados `turn their hand' in the kitchen and are proud of it.

When Bermudians think of Barbadian men they probably think of macho, athletic types who love their cricket - after all the Caribbean country has produced some of the world's best.

They probably don't think of them as knowing their way around the kitchen, but the ability to cook is something else Bajan men have in common, and they are quite proud of it. It is something traditionally taught to them at a young age by their parents.

Some of the Bajans living in Bermuda showed off their cooking skills at the recent annual Bajan Men Can Cook event put on by the Barbados Association of Bermuda and held this year on the 36th anniversary of the country's independence from Britain. Traditional dishes from Barbados were prepared and sold, with proceeds going to charity.

For years Bermudians have been travelling annually to Barbados - and other Caribbean islands - in large numbers to support the West Indies cricket team. Some of the same dishes they have sampled in Barbados were produced here by members of the Barbados community proud to show off what they learned at a young age.

"I learned my cooking skills from my grandmother, not my mother," said Policeman Donville Yarde, the second oldest in a family of seven which included five boys.

"If you are from a family and the male is the oldest and mum is out working, normally she would leave instructions so that when you get home from school you start the cooking. How we learned to cook is our mother would tell us `if you want to eat, learn to cook'!

"All the boys learned to cook, not that all the boys love to cook. I have some nephews now who are also cooking."

Whereas few Bermudian boys were taught to cook by their mothers, Bajan boys learned that and other domestic things like washing.

"There are a lot of professional families in Barbados and traditionally men are taught to cook," said Graveney Bannister, a prosecutor who came to Bermuda in 1980 as a policeman. "I used to observe my father making Christmas cakes, he did most of the baking, and I used to steal the batter from the bucket when he was finished to lick it.

"Barbadian dishes, for the most part, derive from a mixture of Arawak Indians (the first people to establish villages in Barbados), Europeans and Africans, that's why we get that nice cultural mix of spicy food."

Bannister was the second oldest amongst six siblings, three boys and three girls.

"In my household I used to have to iron my (school) uniform... Khaki pants and white shirts," he recalled. "My mother would always show you where you went wrong by putting in a double seam. `You should never put two seams in trousers', she would say."

Yarde stressed that doing household chores like cooking and washing was never considered feminine by Bajan boys.

"We just thought it was fun and the norm for men to become involved," he explained.

"We never heard about being effeminate for wanting to do these things. We grew up playing games with the girls and doing things with the girls, so therefore the cooking and learning how to sew was fun. It was part of the culture and a man had to be well rounded and was never looked at as being feminine.

`You felt proud that if a button came off your shirt, that you could get a needle and sew it back on."

Yarde found out that things were done somewhat differently in Bermuda when he came here in 1978.

"When I came to Bermuda I got a culture shock," Yarde remembers.

"We came into the barracks and there is no kitchen to cook and you had to go to the cafeteria to buy food. We found the food tasted different to the food back home, we were accustomed to the spices. It is getting spicy now but at the time it wasn't spicy.

"It so happened there were nine of us who came here together and I took on the job of being the master chef. We went down to town and got a hot plate and some pots and the food was cooked in my room.

"When I moved from the barracks to my own place, that's when I started to cook and I would get on the phone and call my godpa who was a chef and he would give me some tips. I would take a recipe and change it. I cook but I never measure anything and I don't taste, but after awhile you get the feel of it and you know when something is not right.

"I have followed recipes to the letter and I find it never comes out right, so I have to adapt."

Bannister got his start in cooking by experimenting when his parents were out of the house. "When they went to church and anytime I got home early I would try to cook and sometimes I would mess up," he says without shame.

"The first time around when I made dumplings I forgot to roll the dumplings and the dumplings grabbed hold of the potatoes and everything in the pot. They tasted nice, though!

"I was so embarrassed, but my mother encouraged me, `don't worry about it son, you'll get better'. I could see her smiling on the corner of her face and my sisters were laughing, but I was determined I was going to perfect it the next time around. It was observation and trial and error.

"It creates an air of independence because your parents would always say `we might not be around, you may be on your own'."

Bannister says most Bajan children start their cooking experience with Roast Bread Fruits and each of the 11 parishes prepare food differently.

Some of the foods prepared in Bermuda are similar to those found in the Caribbean. What Bermudians call peas and rice here is rice and peas to the West Indians.

"You call it codfish cakes but we call it salt fish, but with no potato," explained Yarde. "I'm what you call an old-time Bajan, I love to keep my culture alive. Some of the things I make here are things you don't see much of other than in Barbados. When I go home and see the older folks I ask them for their recipes and when I come back I put it to work."

Both Yarde and Bannister spoke of something called lead pipes. "When you eat those you drink a gallon of water," Bannister warned. "It's a form of coconut bread but it is very hard and sweet."

Said Yarde: "We also have something called meat rolls which is something that is dying out in Barbados."

The pair have been in Bermuda long enough to appreciate Bermuda's dishes, which they admit are somewhat similar.

"The cultures are similar, I find a lot of the dishes here use English or Irish potatoes," said Bannister. "You have baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, potato salad, but in the Caribbean we have so much of a mix of yams and potatoes and don't rely on English or Irish potatoes. What they call sweet yams is what we call sweet potatoes in Barbados."

Added Yarde: "What I find in Bermuda right now with their foods is that because Bermudians have been travelling a lot to the Caribbean and have acquired that taste, a lot of Bermudians are beginning to cook like in the Caribbean, with foods a lot more spicy. "I find a lot of men here are not in the kitchen cooking, the ones you see in the kitchen are mostly involved in the restaurants and hotels. The average young man is not in the kitchen. I can see a lot of catering of the young men is done by their mothers.

"What you also find is Barbadian women come to Bermuda, have children and bring them up and spoil them. They don't bring them up in the way they would normally have brought them up if they were living in Barbados."

Asked the reason for Bajan men being able to "turn their hand" in the kitchen, Royal Gazette's Barbadian sports reporter Gayle Alleyne laughed and quipped: "It's because they love their bellies."

"No, seriously - not that that's not true because they do eat quite a bit - it's because Bajan mothers believe in teaching their sons, just like they do their daughters, how to cook," said Ms Alleyne.

"It's a matter of practicality and pride. They don't want their sons to be at any woman's mercy where food is concerned. On top of that, if a man lives on his own, he needs to know how to cook even more so.

She recalled how in university in England her brother was the toast of his friends - even some girls - because of the variety of foods he would serve up.

For traditional Barbadian recipes turn to Page 43