Anguilla’s Malliouhana highlights Caribbean cuisine

ANGUILLA — It’s not every day that you get to take a cooking class with a “Top Chef” finalist. And it’s even more unlikely that the classroom will be cooled by gentle Caribbean breezes and face an Anguillian seascape as impossibly blue as a blue raspberry Jolly Rancher.

And yet, here I am.

Not because my culinary skills come anywhere close to those of my teacher’s, Nina Compton, the St. Lucian chef and fan favorite on the New Orleans installment of the Bravo TV franchise. (The same chef who, years later, continues to delight diners at her Crescent City restaurants, Compere Lapin and Bywater American Grill.) It’s because I’m one of seven students signed up for a private class that kicked off her monthlong residency in July at Malliouhana, Auberge Resorts Collection, Anguilla's iconic West End resort.

The second in the hotel’s inaugural series of chef partnerships and pop-ups dubbed Flavors of Malliouhana, Compton’s class is arguably the highlight of the weekend, open to in-house guests and walk-ins. And it’s how I — a kitchenphobe who only makes reservations for dinner — find myself attempting to make gnocchi from scratch, facing off with an unfamiliar wooden implement that, at first glance, looks suspiciously like an Afro pick. 

“That’s what we call a gnocchi board,” Compton patiently informs me. And it’s an essential tool in today’s meal: ricotta gnocchi with corn poblano cream. 

At a table in front of us, Compton is deftly whipping up the creamy sauce while we make the pasta we’ll enjoy it with for lunch. With a gentle press of the thumb, neat, inchwide pieces of pasta dough curl in on themselves and roll elegantly off the other students’ gnocchi boards. Mine, gummy and more, let’s say, “free form” in shape, are less eager to separate themselves. And it takes hands-on instruction from Compton’s able assistant Mike Pirolo, the owner of Miami Beach restaurant Macchialina, before I (kind of) get the hang of it. 

As the blender whirs, Compton asks about each of our culinary journeys and then shares her own, in which she’s melded the Caribbean flavors she grew up on with her love for French and Italian cuisine (hence today’s gnocchi). As she speaks, her passion for island cuisine — and the privilege she feels at being able to share it — is obvious. “Having a restaurant and doing these events, traveling and cooking dishes that people have never tried before and getting them excited about Caribbean food, for me is very rewarding,” she says. 

Previously dismissed by some as unsophisticated or relegated to the “street food” category, Caribbean cuisine and cooking techniques — whether jerk, escabeche, brown stew or any of the other myriad ways food is enjoyed in the region — is finally coming into the spotlight. Compton and her Caribbean cohorts — including New York-based St. Lucian chef Shorne Benjamin and Jamaica’s Andre Fowles, both of whom have appeared on the Food Network’s “Chopped” — can take some credit for that. Compton is witnessing a long-standing deference to European cuisine and ingredients being replaced with a rightful pride in regional flavors.

“Now, I think a lot of young [Caribbean] chefs are taking pride in using local ingredients and traditional recipes and making it fun,” she says. “Chefs in the past have held back, and now we’re just like, ‘No, this is what we’ve grown up eating.’” She shares that when she’s at home in St. Lucia she eats a locally grown avocado every day. The starchy staple breadfruit — “boiled, fried, cooked any way at all” — is another of her favorites.

As the class continues, Compton offers food-related tips that are both specific — “Layer your seasonings when you’re cooking, adding them with each individual ingredient so that the final dish doesn’t taste overwhelmingly of a single spice” — and more general — “Enjoy yourself in the hotel, but make sure you get out and eat like a local.” 

What she doesn’t share is how to make gnocchi quite as effortlessly as she does, but I figure practice is key. And my culinary ineptitude is swiftly forgotten when we sit down to eat our feast, now expertly finished and beautifully plated by Malliouhana’s kitchen crew.

The following day, my fellow students and I are back in the oceanview restaurant, Celeste, for the weekend’s flavorful finale, Sunday brunch. The small plates — tater tots with coconut creme fraiche, buttermilk biscuits with mango jam, grilled shrimp with coconut curry — are delectable. So, too, are the island-inspired main courses, which include jerk pork hash, Caribbean spiny lobster Benedict and French toast with rum caramel sauce.

Compton works the dining room, stopping at every table to say hello and solicit feedback. She’ll leave the island in a couple of days, but six of her dishes will remain on Celeste’s menu for a month after her departure. Mango panna cotta and snapper ceviche, oh, my! 

When she gets to our table, I take the opportunity to ask her about her culinary mission. 

“There aren’t a lot of Caribbean chefs, so if you have a stage where you can showcase and elevate [our cuisine], it’s so important,” she tells me. “I want to travel to more islands and see how differently things are done. There’s so much more to learn.”

It’s a sentiment I can identify with as I open the gift bag that rewards our participation in the cooking class. Inside, no doubt for the gourmet meals I have yet to make, there’s sea salt from Anguilla’s flats and a bottle of the chef’s favorite Tuscan olive oil. And I can’t help but smile when I pull out the final memento: my very own gnocchi board.