Fire and Smoke Are an Integral Part of Trinidad's Culinary History

Most of the Caribbean islands were born of volcanic spew—violent underwater eruptions; fire-breathing mountains belching billows of lava that cooled as they came forth, hardening in place; rounded, black and bulbous. Certainly, smoke hovered at the water’s surface. As it cleared, a necklace of little landforms emerged, stretching from the tip of Florida to the edge of South America.

Smoke remained in the fires of the native people seen from...