Celebrated Jamaican chef Norma Shirley has an eight-page spread in Bon Appétit’s May 2006 issue. Called ‘A Night in Jamaica’, the article gives readers tips on how to create ‘the easy, seductive vibe with a dinner party menu that’s a little fancy – and a lot of fun’.

Shirley captures our love for entertaining with just the right amount of ‘bling’. “Jamaica,” she mused, “just seems to have relaxed entertaining down pat.” What’s the secret? “Common sense party planning,” said the celebrated chef and restaurateur. “Plus we love copious food and camaraderie – we’ll find any excuse to entertain.” There’s no disputing that.

“I’m just happy that the Caribbean is under the spotlight,” she tells SunDay. “My only regret is that our wonderful Appleton rum was not a part of this wonderful issue.”

Shirley, who returned to Jamaica in the mid-80s, revolutionised the way we looked at food. “I never served rice at my Belmont Road restaurant,” she states in her usual dogmatic tone. “It used to drive them mad.”

Fact is, her no-nonsense approach to the culinary arts still drives folks ‘mad’. What has remained constant, however, is her passion for food.

It’s hard to imagine that she couldn’t even boil an egg when she married Cambridge-educated medical doctor Michael Shirley. It was he in fact who introduced Shirley to the world of gourmet dining.

“We’d cross the Channel just to have dinner,” she recalls.

The love affair would continue when Shirley moved to New York and then to the Berkshires. In 1976, she opened her first restaurant in the Stanford White Building at the Old Railroad Station in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. “I gently eased,” she chuckles, “a New England clientele into the effervescent joys of Jamaican foods.”

Adding food styling to her repertoire, she prepped plates for photo shoots for some of the world’s leading style publications. By the Eighties, Shirley had established a name for herself among the food cognoscenti. What better time then to return home and ease a Jamaican clientele into the effervescent joys of

nouvelle cuisine? Not only has she brought her ideas and skills home, but she has remained on the cutting edge for more than 20 years, creating names for herself like the ‘queen of parsley’ and making numerous appearances on the Food Network as well as the Discovery Channel and raising the Jamaican flag in every food and style magazine of note.

Shirley’s awards have been numerous, too numerous in fact to mention, and although appreciative of every one, she says the Prime Minister’s Medal of Appreciation for the Culinary Arts as well as the Jamaica Observer’s Table Talk Food Awards Chairman’s Award have moved her the most.

She plans to embark (thankfully) once again on culinary training.

This Bon Appétit issue is a collector’s item, so grab a copy while you can.