MAJOR P.C. DUNN
The soldiers of the Third Battalion (National Reserves) couldn't believe their ears, so on Monday afternoon a few came peeping around the Officers' Mess to see if their Training Major had really donned an apron.
It was true. Major P.C. Dunn, who oversees the 700-member strong reserves, had rolled up his sleeves to put the finishing touches to his stir fried vegetables and steamed chicken balls for the Valentine's lunch.
They wouldn't have been surprised if they had known a few simple facts about the Major, a senior JDF headquarters staff attached to the Third Battalion -- he knows food and cooking is his passion. He has contributed to a cookbook of recipes from officers around the world and plans to write his own international cookbook.
His taste for the kitchen was fired up by his mother who would start dinner in the mornings before going to work, leaving it for her middle child to finish after school. He used to call her for instructions, but that soon stopped. He truly impressed her, however, when he baked a cake for her birthday. He was 16.
He's 42 now and his mother calls him for recipes.
Major Dunn who is enrolled in the EMBA programme at the University of the West Indies, started army life as a cadet in his Jamaica College Days. He became a reserve before joining the regular force in 1984. "I just loved the army and wasn't getting as much as I wanted in the cadets."
The major who was among the reserves who went to Grenada in 1981, notes that he does most of the of the cooking at home. He started with Saturday soup before taking over the kitchen. Now he experiments with Asian cuisine -- Chinese and Thai, for example -- and makes a melt-in-your mouth roast beef (one of his biggest triumphs).
The true testimony of his culinary skills came
last year after he was in the U.S. on senior staff training. After two weeks, his then six-year-old daughter wanted him to come home to cook for her.
Parting shot: "Sometimes I take a week to think up a new dish or to create a new taste. I like eating out and when I have a fancy restaurant meal I try to figure out the ingredients and replicate it when I go home."
Major Dunn is pictured here preparing his steamed chicken balls.
