Farah Gopaul is using the flavours from home to influence a new culinary path.
She was born on the island of Trinidad in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, part of the Antillles in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela.
"I was pretty much an oil field girl. Trinidad is an oil field country. You name it, cousins, aunties, uncles if they are not doing engineering they are working in oil and gas."
Ms Gopaul said she lived in a sheltered expatriate community as a child, where education was highly regarded.
"Like a lot of islands in the Caribbean there is a large emphasis on education ... Mum was keen for us to be avid readers.
"It was fortunate Dad worked in the oil fields and we went to oil-field private schools so we had a really good education."
Her mother's family was originally Hindu from India.
"When you go through the history of Trinidad you will see that besides the fact we were colonised by the Spanish, then the French, the British introduced slavery to the Islands.
"Trinidad didn't have the long brutal history of it compared to some of the other islands at the time but when slavery was coming to an end, they had a lack of labourers and they started pulling immigrants from different places in Asia.
"They came three generations ago, although the records are very sketchy as there is only one archive place in Trinidad, and all my grandmother knew was that her mum died on that trip.
"I have a very good friend who is Syrian Lebanese but Caribbean, which is very typical of Trinidad and the food reflects all of that. It's just stunning."
Ms Gopaul's father was an Indian Muslim but she and her sisters went to a Christian school.
The second of four girls in her family, she remembers climbing trees in idyllic settings filled with wildlife and nature.
"I was completely animal mad. Dad would go hunting and bring home something like a raccoon, which would tear around the house for two days before Mum would say 'get that out of my house'."
When she was 16, Ms Gopaul's father died suddenly, which sparked a flame within her to leave her island home.
"I kind of knew I wanted to leave but that just crystalised that I did because Mum was now looking after four girls. I felt I needed to go off and do my own thing and because at that point everybody in your family could have a say over your life."
Ms Gopaul applied to different hospitals in Britain to become a nurse and ended up landing a job in Westminster, London.
But it took her a few years to settle in.
"The streets, the people, the sky, everything was so grey and coming from technicolor brightness, it was just contrast.
"Everything was different from home. Young people socialise a lot but you wouldn't necessarily get 17-year-old girls getting mashed drunk in Trinidad. It's all about clothes-making and looking fabulous.
"My Mum did not even teach us how to open a bank account and I had never crossed a road that had more than two lanes in my life.
"I was crossing some north London intersection - I think I almost killed myself. I had people swearing at me, I was completely fresh off the boat."
But it was in these years that Ms Gopaul honed her cooking skills.
"I felt like a bit of a social misfit, all I did was cook. It was the only thing that grounded me at the time, so I carried all my pots from Trinidad with me. While everybody else was getting mashed in the pub, I was actually with my pots and pans."
She said that while growing up cooking was a huge part of her island lifestyle.
Christmas events included up to 40 people and her mother cooked all the food.
"But every year Santa Claus was a different colour - black one year, Chinese one year."
In 2004, Ms Gopaul met her English husband, James Fuller, and the pair lived in Britain for a number of years before returning to the Caribbean, then moving to New Zealand in 2012 when they met another couple who were moving to the Bay.
Ms Gopaul is studying at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, doing a Level 3 hospitality chef course.
She hopes to learn new culinary skills before launching her own cooking classes. Both Ms Gopaul and her husband love living in New Zealand.
"It may be a reserved culture compared to the Caribbean but we have made some of the best friends we have ever made in our travels and love the openness and honesty of the culture."