The way to curry favour – or in this case, soup.

When I first started this writing malarkey, my intention was to write a novel, just the one, and that would be it. The malarkey however, was not prepared to let me do that, so not only have I now written two novels, have two more in progress, with a further two in the planning stages, I also make a monthly contribution to Bahrain Confidential, a local glossy magazine and write a weekly cookery feature for another Bahrain based publication, Weekender .

Titled, Around the World in Eighty Dishes (thank you, Jules Verne,) I cook a dish from a different country each week, photographing the ingredients and finished product, as well as writing a brief history of the food or the country, and supplying the recipe.

Shortly, we will be arriving in the Caribbean, and as I like to be a couple of weeks ahead with the articles, this week I cooked a traditional recipe from Jamaica.

As is usual with these dishes, the quantities I cook far exceeds what the two of us can reasonably eat in one go; sometimes we have the same dish over two days and sometimes we freeze a portion. On this occasion, I decided to combine the leftovers to make a soup.

As is often the case, something that is effectively thrown together, as this

soup was, far exceeds your expectations, so much so, I decided to turn it into a recipe so you can give it a go yourself.

It is time consuming, with each stage taking several hours, and that is probably what made this dish taste so good, the final ingredient – lashings of time.