Stir Fried: Influencer Natasha Laggan brings Indo Trinidadian food to the table

When an innocent TikTok of a young, Indian-featured Trinidadian woman bussing it up at a concert with her friends blew up, the Internet had a hard time grasping the concept and existence of Indo Trinidadian people. “Girl went so viral that there is a TikTok educating non-Caribbean people about the existence of Indo-Caribbean communities!,” @Iamingtonsky comments on the post. “Everyone acting like theres no Indians in the West indies, dance gyal!,” @kikiyauna also notes. Not that Internet commenters directly reflect the United States’ understanding of the diverse South Asian diaspora (although a woeful 29 percent of young Americans cannot pinpoint the Pacific Ocean on a map), but viral moments can also be educational opportunities. 

“We call ourselves Trinbigonians. But most of the time we say we are Trini. We’re everything in one. We’re not just an Indian or a Black person, we’re together,” says Natasha Laggan, the biggest food influencer in Trinidad and Tobago and a proud Indo Trinidadian. 

Named the Caribbean's top food influencer in 2022 by Forbes, Laggan’s YouTube channel, Trini Cooking with Natasha, boasts more than 300,000 subscribers and she’s accumulated more than 1.1 million followers on Facebook. The 42-year-old content creator, who has been based in Fort Lauderdale for the last 10 years, makes concise, practical cooking videos that speak to the viewer like a helpful friend. She’s currently 200 pages deep into a long-simmering cookbook project, and her YouTube segment Taste of D Town showcases food-based travelogues. 

Natasha Laggan makes concise, practical cooking videos that speak to the viewer like a helpful friend.

Courtesy of Natasha Laggan

The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is a small island nation perched at the southernmost point of the Caribbean sea, just 11 kilometers off the Venezuelan coast. More than a third of the island’s vibrant creole mix are descended from Indian migrant workers who came to work on sugarcane plantations in the 1800s, comprising the country’s largest ethnic group. 

Due to a similar history of colonization and creole ethnic makeup, Indo Trinidadian cuisine shares many commonalities with Indo Guyanese food, such as open-fire cooking, and green seasoning, an all-purpose herb paste of culantro, lime, peppers, and ginger popular throughout the Caribbean (Laggan’s version uses pudina, also known as broad leaf thyme). While fresh cumin seeds are commonly used in India, both Guyanese and Trinidadian cooking use geera, cumin seeds that have been roasted and ground into a powder. Both cultures also favor pre-made curry powders rather than fresh masalas common in India. Doubles, a street sandwich of curried chickpeas on fried flatbread, are equally beloved by Guyanese and Trinis. The biggest beef between Guyanese and Trini foodies is paratha versus clap roti—but we’ll get into that later.

Laggan’s paternal grandmother immigrated to Trinidad from India to work on a sugarcane plantation, where she met Laggan’s grandfather, another Indian migrant worker. When the plantation disbanded, the workers were all given a tiny plot of land—just enough to build a house and grow a little corn and a few pepper plants—and Laggan grew up on that plot of land in the small coastal town of California, Trinidad. 

Trinidad is ruled by corporations who own huge plots of land—what they call “estates”—populated with industrial factories and the people who work there. Laggan’s mother ran the first roti joint on one of these estates, selling on-the-go breakfast and lunch to factory workers. “For breakfast she made sandwiches: China bread and chow mein, corned beef, similar to corned mutton, fried eggs, bread and cheese, stewed liver and gizzards,” Laggan says. 

Lunch was Trinidadian staple dal puri, “a soft flat bread filled with a spiced split pea filling…and then you cook that, wrap it like a burrito, and then you have curry potato…or you can do beef, conk, duck…it’s so good,” she rhapsodizes.