Book excerpt: Okra, plantains, sweet potatoes and mangoes: these and the other essential ingredients of Jamaican cooking are now widely available, bringing the island's delicious cooking within anyone's reach. Covering all aspects of Jamaican cuisine from soups to preserves, fish to ices, Classic Jamaican Cooking also presents a range of traditional herbal remedies and drinks. With recipes as varied as plantain tart and shrimp soup, salt fish patties and coconut ice-cream, this book dispels forever the myth that Jamaican cookery begins with curried goat and ends with rice and peas. Needing only occasional modification for the modern reader ('Take seven gallons of rum, three gallons of seville orange-juice ...'), Caroline Sullivan brings alive the wealth and variety of the island's food. With its blending of African and European influences, Jamaican cooking rests on a foundation of tropical fruits and vegetables, and the author draws out the full range of their flavours in one of the New World's tastiest cuisines.