RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Steve Dookhie may be a bar­ber by day, but in his spare time he crafts de­sign­er fire­sides, or chul­has, for cook­ing cur­ried duck, car­ry­ing his cre­ations to com­pe­ti­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go, where un­usu­al de­signs have be­come his trade­mark.

Among his most recog­nis­able pieces is a duck-shaped chul­ha, a project he de­vel­oped with mas­ter steel ben­der Lar­ry Jages­sar and his fa­ther, the late Li­onel Jages­sar Sr, of Jages­sar Mas.

An­oth­er cre­ation fea­tures a three-tiered de­sign ca­pa­ble of hold­ing three pots at once. Around his Bar­rack­pore home, flower pots made from re­cy­cled tyres, bam­boo struc­tures and hand­craft­ed dec­o­ra­tions bear ev­i­dence of Dookhie’s cre­ative spir­it.

Dookhie, 56, who op­er­ates a bar­ber­shop in San Fer­nan­do, says his pas­sion for cre­at­ing fire­sides grew out of his in­volve­ment in duck-cook­ing com­pe­ti­tions.

“I was in­tro­duced by one of my cus­tomers, a very good friend, Mr Saeed Mo­hamed, in the 103 cur­ry duck com­pe­ti­tion,” Dookhie re­called. “I had no idea what was go­ing to hap­pen. I just went like every­body else, and I got to like it.”

What be­gan as par­tic­i­pa­tion in cook­ing com­pe­ti­tions soon evolved in­to a fo­cus on spe­cial­i­ty fire­sides. Draw­ing on a con­struc­tion back­ground, Dookhie be­gan cre­at­ing elab­o­rate struc­tures that stood out among com­peti­tors.

“I was able to win the fire­side cat­e­go­ry sev­en times. No­body in the com­pe­ti­tion ever came close,” he said.

Over the years, with help from the Jages­sars, he has built con­crete-craft­ed chul­has shaped like igloos, hous­es and ducks, while con­tin­u­ous­ly ex­per­i­ment­ing with new con­cepts.

His lat­est de­sign re­sem­bles a tra­di­tion­al chul­ha but in­cor­po­rates a horse­shoe-shaped struc­ture built from steel and re­in­forced con­crete. Dookhie says the de­sign is in­tend­ed to with­stand years of use.

The con­struc­tion process com­bines steel fab­ri­ca­tion, wire fram­ing and spe­cialised ce­ment mix­tures ca­pa­ble of en­dur­ing high tem­per­a­tures.

“It will take about two weeks to do one of them,” he ex­plained. “If you do get a crack, it’s go­ing to heal it­self be­cause it has steel in­side.”

Al­though many peo­ple be­lieve food cooked on a fire­side chul­ha tastes bet­ter be­cause of the clay struc­ture, Dookhie has a dif­fer­ent the­o­ry.

“It’s noth­ing about the clay,” he said. “It’s all about the wood.”

For Dookhie, the se­cret in­gre­di­ent is dry hard­wood. He favours teak, man­go and ch­enette wood, of­ten col­lect­ing dis­card­ed pieces from sawmills and road­sides be­fore cut­ting and prepar­ing them for cook­ing.

“You don’t ever see some­body tak­ing a knife and chip­ping some wood and putting it in the pot,” he said. “It’s the smoke and the type of wood you use.”

He said teak re­mains his favourite.

“If I have teak wood in a fire­side, I ain’t go­ing nowhere. The smell has to be in my nose.”

The fire­sides are cen­tral to a hob­by that re­volves around duck-cook­ing com­pe­ti­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly riv­er limes, where teams gath­er to cook and so­cialise.

Dookhie said the com­pe­ti­tions are about much more than food.

“Once you light up a fire­side, there’s all kinds of things hap­pen­ing,” he said. “There’s a big lime, mu­sic, danc­ing, peo­ple gath­er­ing around.”

While his elab­o­rate cre­ations at­tract at­ten­tion, Dookhie has nev­er viewed them pri­mar­i­ly as a busi­ness ven­ture.

“My tim­ing is al­ways work­ing. I ain’t push­ing too many sales,” he said. “It’s a pas­sion of mine.”

In­stead, he con­cen­trates on de­sign­ing pieces for com­pe­ti­tion dis­plays, of­ten in­cor­po­rat­ing re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als such as bam­boo, co­conut branch­es and cal­abash­es.

One pre­sen­ta­tion, built al­most en­tire­ly from bam­boo, earned him a Best Pre­sen­ta­tion tro­phy. Bam­boo cups, bowls, spoons and dec­o­ra­tive props formed part of the dis­play.

Now he is work­ing on a new project, us­ing large sec­tions of bam­boo as cook­ing ves­sels ca­pa­ble of steam­ing about two pounds of cur­ried duck for up to 25 min­utes.

“We’re go­ing to ac­tu­al­ly cook a duck in­side the bam­boo,” he said.

His in­ter­est in build­ing and fab­ri­ca­tion traces back to child­hood. Dookhie grew up in a fam­i­ly led by his fa­ther, Isaac Dookhie, a builder. The skills were passed through the fam­i­ly, with sib­lings en­ter­ing var­i­ous trades.

“I turned out to be a car­pen­ter, a painter and a steel fab­ri­ca­tor,” he said.

At age 18, he al­so dis­cov­ered bar­ber­ing, even­tu­al­ly open­ing a shop with his wife, Deb­bie. To­geth­er, they named it Cre­ative Cuts, a ti­tle that lat­er in­spired his com­pe­ti­tion iden­ti­ty.

Dookhie be­lieves younger gen­er­a­tions should be­come more in­volved in tra­di­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties and hands-on skills.

“They need to be ac­tive and be a lit­tle more phys­i­cal,” he said. “Get some­thing to do.”

He al­so hopes tra­di­tions sur­round­ing fire­side cook­ing, chul­has and com­mu­ni­ty gath­er­ings con­tin­ue to sur­vive.

“Peo­ple are get­ting more in­volved now,” he said, not­ing the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of duck-cook­ing com­pe­ti­tions across the coun­try.

For Dookhie, the fire­side is about more than com­pe­ti­tion tro­phies. It is a place where food, crafts­man­ship and so­cial tra­di­tions meet.

And while cur­ried duck may be the star at­trac­tion, he in­sists there is one dish that should al­ways come first.

“My favourite food to cook on a fire­side is toma­to cho­ka,” he laughed. “I may en­joy cook­ing duck, but it’s veg­eta­bles I like to eat.”