CRAIG and Shaun McAnuff – brothers, YouTubers, recipe writers – are on different phone lines when we chat, and both keep tripping up with static, dipping in and out of earshot. Each time, the other shouts: "Bro, you've gone again!"
The south London cooks, aka Original Flava – the name of their hit YouTube channel and debut cookbook – were close growing up, even sharing a bunk bed (although not the same football team, which was "quite intense"), and are just as close now, if not more so.
Dishing up Caribbean food to their legions of online fans, arguments are still rare. "It's made us very competitive, in a good way," says Shaun (32). "We want to make things right and better, and the [recipe] standard has to be really high – it's brought us closer together."
The brothers, who have Jamaican heritage, were inspired to cook by their mother and grandmother, and put the increasing popularity of Caribbean food down to a "British acceptance of our culture" combined with staple Caribbean ingredients – from plantain to cassava – being more widely available, and the likes of Levi Roots and Ainsley Harriott having "paved the way". Original Flava is all about pushing that further.
"We saw that lots of people loved Caribbean food, but were quite intimidated by it because they didn't know how to cook it," explains Craig (29). "So initially, we just wanted to make a page for our friends." But then their first one-minute video racked up a million views "and everything blew up overnight".
"It was bit of a shock," remembers Shaun. "I looked at my brother one day, like woah – everyone's sharing it. First, all our friends started sharing it, then their friends started sharing it..."
Now they have a mighty 15k YouTube subscribers and more than 58k Instagram followers.
For Craig though, things could have panned out quite differently. "Growing up in south London, you're faced with that challenge," he says, speaking of gang culture. "You get caught up in that sort of life, and then you're affiliated with people outside of your circle, and then you're known as a gang, and then you have to build up that credibility, and not show your weakness."
The younger McAnuff brother remembers being on a bus with a group of friends when a guy got on: "He was looking to question us, 'Why were we here? Where you from, etc?' I got a bit cheeky, like, 'Who wants to be a millionaire? Stop asking us questions' – and then he got a bit rowdy, and then he showed me his gun.
"It just spiralled out, and I started to laugh at him; I thought it was a fake gun," he recalls. "At the time you're fearless as a young man."
However, it was a "turnaround" moment for him and has led to both brothers visiting schools, where some of the kids are facing that choice themselves, to talk about their experiences and run cookery workshops.
"We understand the struggles that young people face when it comes to this sort of thing," says Craig. "We try to teach young people: Have that no-fear attitude, but put it in a positive place."
A lot of their own positivity and drive can be attributed to the support of their quite wonderful-sounding grandmother.
"Our nan [Lurline] is our inspiration; she's an amazing lady," says Shaun reverently, adding with a laugh: "She's actually more popular than us now! She literally gets stopped on the street."
A "big part of our journey", she spent the summer holidays training them up to make staple Jamaican dishes like ackee and salt fish, and mackerel rundown, and then helped make their YouTube careers possible "because she opened up her home" – it's where they still film their videos today.
And, like any good nan, she's always pitching in. "She'll be a bit like, 'What's vegan? What's that?' She's still learning, but she's very open to it," says Shaun. "It's like [having] an eagle eye, isn't it? If you go wrong, she does offer a helping hand and tells us off a little bit, but it's all good."
Their food encompasses nan-approved traditional Caribbean dishes like rice and peas, mac and cheese and beef patties, but also ones with a twist, like jerk-spiced lentil bolognese, green banana potato salad, and their jerk burger.
Talking of jerk, the brothers are sanguine about it being many people's only experience of Caribbean cuisine. "It is so nice," says Craig. "I'm not surprised everyone wants to know just about that, but there's so much more to Caribbean food."
He speaks of the pioneering Rastafarian vegan movement, ital; of Caribbean produce, from mangoes to sugar cane that in Jamaica grow literally on the street; and how while in Caribbean households dinner will feature an almost excessive amount of dishes but, surprisingly, "most of the time jerk chicken isn't even on the table".
For the book, Craig and Shaun visited Jamaica together, spending time with family and eating their way round the island. "It was my first time, but it felt like I'd been there for years," says Craig. "It's like I almost knew the place already."
They say their message is: "Don't be afraid of Caribbean food man, try it out at home, it's easy."
:: Original Flava: Caribbean Recipes From Home by Craig and Shaun McAnuff, photography by Matt Russell, is published by Bloomsbury, priced £20. Below are two recipes from the book for you to try.
CURRY GOAT
(Serves 4-6)
1.35kg goat, cut into 3-4cm chunks
5tbsp curry powder
1tsp salt
1tsp freshly ground black pepper
1tsp ground ginger
1tsp ground pimento (allspice)
2tsp ground turmeric
4tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 x 400ml can coconut milk
500ml water
3 spring onions, sliced
Large handful of fresh thyme sprigs
8 baby potatoes, peeled and halved
1 scotch bonnet pepper
Method:
Put the goat in a bowl and add two tablespoons of the curry powder, the salt, black pepper, ginger, pimento and turmeric. Cover and marinate in the fridge for up to eight hours to get the maximum flava. If you have limited time, a few hours is fine.
Heat the oil in a large pot over a medium heat and add one teaspoon of the curry powder with the onions and garlic. Cook for two to three minutes until dark brown. We call this burning the curry, aka BUN UP di ting! Then add a likkle of the coconut milk to create a thick and tasty paste.
Add the goat to the pot and saute until brown all over. Add half the water and the remaining coconut milk, cover and cook over a medium heat for up to two hours or until tender, stirring occasionally and adding two tablespoons more curry powder halfway through. Add the remaining curry powder, to taste, and add more water during cooking if necessary.
Add the spring onions, thyme, potatoes and scotch bonnet and cook for a further 15 minutes. Remove the scotch bonnet (or leave it in longer for a spicier taste), then cover the pot and cook for 30 minutes more until the meat is very tender; it should be falling off the bone if you have used bone-in goat.
JAMAICAN BANANA FRITTER ON AN AMERICAN-STYLE CHEESECAKE
(Serves 8-10)
120g digestive biscuits, crushed
60g butter, melted, plus extra for greasing
For the filling:
400g full-fat cream cheese
200g soft light brown sugar
200g sour cream
100g double cream
3 eggs, beaten
1tsp vanilla extract
100g plain flour
2tsp cornflour
3 ripe bananas
2tsp lemon juice
For the topping:
1 x quantity banana fritter mixture (see below)
Vegetable oil for shallow-frying
300ml double cream, whipped to soft peaks
Handful of sliced strawberries and blueberries, to decorate
Icing sugar, to dust
For the banana fritter mixture:
4 overripe bananas (or plantain), mashed
120g soft brown sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt
250g plain flour
80ml water
Vegetable oil, for shallow-frying
Method:
Preheat your oven to 160C Fan/180C/Gas 4. Lightly butter a 23cm springform cake tin. Place the crushed biscuits in a bowl and stir in the melted butter. Tip the mixture into the greased tin and spread it evenly over the base, compacting it down. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then leave to cool.
For the filling, combine the cream cheese and sugar in a bowl. Stir in the sour cream and double cream. Whisk in the eggs, then add the vanilla, plain flour and cornflour and mix to combine. Mash the bananas in a bowl with the lemon juice, then stir into the filling mixture. Spoon the filling over the cooled base and level it out. Increase the oven temperature to 200C Fan/220C/ Gas 7. Bake the cheesecake for 10 minutes, then turn down the oven temperature to 120C Fan/140C/Gas 1 and bake for a further 45 minutes to one hour, or until the centre has just a slight wobble. Switch off the oven and let the cheesecake cool inside for two hours.
For the topping, heat vegetable oil in a pan to the depth of about 5cm. Using a tablespoon, drop walnut-sized spoonfuls of the banana fritter mixture (just mix all the ingredients together) into the hot oil and fry for two minutes or until golden. Spread the whipped cream over the top of the cheesecake. Dot the banana fritters over the cream, then scatter over the berries and dust with icing sugar.
