Nneka Braveboy introduces smoked herring pepper sauce

In 2003 she introduced Trinidad and Tobago to bar-b-que pigtail, then it was cooking with hemp and now chef Nneka Braveboy is giving the country smoked herring pepper sauce.

“Even if it sounds weird, it’s not. It’s an actual infusion of flavours that is really delicious. I understand flavours of food and how to put them together.

“And the smoked herring pepper sauce is not an offensive, overpowering hit of smoked herring. It’s a true homogeneous blend of herbs and spices and it goes well with everything.”

And she would know how to blend flavours, as Braveboy has been experimenting with them from a young age at the elbows of her grandmothers.

She expressed gratitude to have been raised by the two women she described as business-minded, creative and industrious. She said her paternal grandmother in Grenada was extremely artistic and academic-minded while her maternal grandmother in TT was a “true homemaker” and perfectionist, a “master of everything” especially when it came to cooking.

“Just being with my grandmothers while they were cooking, I just naturally absorbed everything they were doing and I was able to replicate. And then I would go and experiment and do things on my own. Food is my natural calling.”

The food scientist started her culinary education with food and nutrition at the CXC level and moved on to food science at what was John Donaldson Technical Institute, Port of Spain. She then did several courses at the TT Hospitality and Tourism Institute (TTHTI), including an associate degree in culinary arts, a bachelor’s degree in culinary management, and an associate degree in food and beverage supervision and management.

She explained, “Once you have mass-produced foods produced in an industry setting you need food scientists. They are the ones who would figure out exactly how much preservatives need to go into a product, what temperature you have to heat something to kill bacteria, analyse the nutritional content of food and more.”

She is currently studying for an associate degree in food science and technology at the University of TT.

Braveboy’s career started at age nine when she saw a pink boom box she wanted badly in a store. It was $399. She paid down $30 for it and started baking to earn an income. She made and decorated cakes on order and, within a few months, she was able to pay off her boom box.

At age 11 she catered her first event, a book launch, and the author encouraged her to write a cookbook. Since then she has accumulated numerous recipes, enough for the four cookbooks she is contemplating publishing.

They include recipes for food, drinks and sweets people use for prayers and religious festivals, cooking basics for children, a general cookbook and one on baking.

Years later, as she was about to graduate with her first degree from TTHTI, she became pregnant with her first son. While she was deciding what she wanted to do with her career, she started getting small catering jobs and, without fail, she took a third of the money earned and reinvested it in the business by buying equipment.

That discipline allowed her to eventually build a professional kitchen at her parents’ home.

Around that same time, she had the idea for BBQ pigtail. As Carnival was coming up, she approached the organisers of QRC all-inclusive fete saying she wanted to introduce TT to her product.

They hired her for 1,500 meals of BBQ pigtail with provision chips and she continued working with QRC and several other fetes for several years.

The lumpsums of money, along with her other catering jobs, allowed her to be a stay-at-home mom to her two boys who are now 22 and 17.

“That was one of the main benefits of it, to be at home with my children and to be able to raise them and make sure they were stable.

“If I were to go out into the industry, I would have been working ungodly shifts and I really wanted to be home with them. That’s why I stuck to catering.”

In 2011, Braveboy opened Nick and 2J’s restaurant on Ariapita Ave offering hemp-infused food. One year later, she started a dirt oven restaurant and bakery in St Joseph which ran for four years until the property changed ownership and she had to close it down.

Then, during the covid19 pandemic, since the food industry was shut down, she started to experiment with flavours and condiments.

“My neighbours were always smelling food coming from my apartment in St Augustine and they started banging on my door, so I offered food for sale. At that point in time, I designed and developed various condiments and sauces to go with all my food products.”

She created smoke herring, mango lime and ginger lime pepper sauce, as well as tamarind chutney, a citrus fire rub seasoning, and several BBQ sauces. She also made snacks such as peanuts, channa, chiblo, split peas, and more.

She bottled the sauces to go with the food and people started requesting bottles of the smoked herring pepper sauce in particular. They bought it to carry it for family and friends overseas and kept asking why it was not in supermarkets.

And so Sassy Dragon, her condiment brand, was born.

At the moment, the smoked herring pepper sauce is the only one on the market, but she intends to expand the selection soon. It is available at Massy Stores, Fitt St Market in PoS, Eat It Marketplace in San Fernando, Mode Alive in Valsayn, Peppercorns, and soon at the Caribbean Airlines duty free store at the Piarco International Airport.

Braveboy also started her newest restaurant, Trini Nicksy in Maracas, St Joseph, where she uses all her condiments. She described the parlour turned restaurant as rustic and homey but it is small so it is mainly a takeaway service.

At Trini Nicksy, customers have the option of a variety of food styles such as Indian, creole and Arabic but some of her most popular include lobster corn soup, fried crab and dumpling, and carrot and bhaji pholourie.