Spicy Kale and Bacon “Mix-up”

Spicy Kale and Bacon

I struggle to find ways to eat more Kale. I got tired of steaming it with butter, or eating in raw in salads. This recipe is inspired by the Jamaican way of cooking “Callalloo”, a green leaf vegetable used throughout the Caribbean. It’s not done exactly the way it is cooked in Jamaica but instead combines other seasonings to get a unique taste, especially from the addition of the Japanese Rice Wine Vinegar. It makes a quick and satisfying breakfast. Because it has a slightly tart taste (in addition to being spicy), it is best paired, and balanced with a sweet root vegetable like Korean Yam or Caribbean Sweet Potato (Bonaito).

 Ingredients

2 ½ -3 cups coarsely chopped kale

3 slices thick cut bacon, cut in ½ inch pieces

1 tbsp cooking oil

1 shallot

3 cloves garlic

2 Thai Chili

1 Roma Tomato

1 tsp dried Jerk seasoning

½ tsp salt

1 tsp dried thyme

2 green onions, green parts only, sliced thinly

½ tbsp Marukan Japanese vinegar (I use this because it is less acid than ordinary vinegar)

1 tsp Worcester Sauce

Method

1. Cut bacon in ½ inch strips. Render this down in a frying pan with the oil until the bacon pieces are crisp, and most of the fat has been rendered. Remove the bacon bits, and discard all but 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat/oil.
2. Put garlic cloves, Thai chili pepper, and shallot in a small chopper and pulse chop finely. Do the same with the Roma tomato.
3. Fry the chopped seasonings in the pan with the mixed bacon fat/oil until shallots start to sweat. Be careful not to burn the garlic.
4. Add the chopped kale, sliced green onions, jerk seasoning, dried thyme, salt, Worcester sauce, and vinegar to this. Cover and steam for about 5 minutes. Add the bacon bits, and steam for another 5-10 minutes until kale is cooked to desired tenderness.

 

 

Vietnamese Grilled Pork with Lemongrass-Thit Nuong-My Spiced up version

Vietnamese Grilled Pork with Lemongrass-Thit Nuong-My Spiced up version

Sliced and still moist

 

There are many recipes on the internet for this dish. My version uses a Red Habanero chili in addition to the Thai Chili to give the meat a spicy, fruity flavor. I do not remove the seeds from the Habanero but it's advisable for people who are not accustomed to spicy food to remove them. The other ingredients are all pretty traditional, and are found in most of the recipes I came across on the net. I also cooked it using a variety of techniques (steam bake, and broil) since I do this in the oven, not on a grill. This makes it more suitable for urban dwellers that live in apartments. I slice the cooked meat thinly, and eat it in a lettuce wrap with rice vermicelli, mint leaves, cilantro, basil leaves, Sriracha sauce and Vietnamese Do Choa pickle. It’s a perfect Summer dish. I also use it in noodle soups to spice up the canned broth that forms the base for the soup.

Ingredients

 2 ½ lb pork butt or shoulder. I got some thick sliced pieces with fat in it. 

 1/4 cup minced Lemongrass 

 3 tsp brown sugar 

 4 tbsp fish sauce

  2 tsp ground black pepper 

  3 thai chili

  1 Jalapeno chili 

  1 red habanero chili 

  4 -5 cloves garlic, minced 

  3-4 shallots, minced.

    2 -3 green onions white and green part

    2 tbsp sesame oil

    2 tbsp thick soy sauce (not regular soy sauce. This is Soya sauce mixed with molasses, making it thicker and gives a good char to the meat. If you can’t get this, use a combination of equal parts of molasses and dark soya sauce)

Juice of 2 limes

Method

1. Make cuts in the meat with a cleaver. Do not cut all the way through. The idea behind this is to increase the absorptive area of the meat so that it takes up the marinade better.
2. Put the lemongrass (cut away tough outer covering), shallots, green onion, peppers, garlic, sugar, and fish sauce in a small chopper. Puree to a paste. Pour over pork in plastic bag and add black pepper, thick soy sauce, and sesame oil. Mix well. Marinate in refrigerator overnight.
3. Remove pork from bag, reserving marinade. Scrape off as much of the marinade mix as possible (see photo).

   

   Ready for first broil

   Place pork on a rack in a roasting pan, and place under broiler to char the meat. (see photo).

   

   Slight char after first broil

   When charred, place meat strips in roasting pan (lined with foil). The meat is not cooked at this stage so handle like you would raw meat.
4. Pour marinade over the charred meat and use the lime juice to wash out any remaining marinade in the bag.Pour this over the pork as well.
   

   

   Marinade poured over pork, ready to be covered and baked

   5. Cover the roasting pan with foil. Bake covered at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour.Remove foil (see photo) 

   

   After baking for 1 hour covered

   and place under broiler to obtain final char on both sides of the strips.

   

   Final broil

   Slice and eat in a lettuce wrap with the herbs and rice noodles(see photos)

Plate of herbs, Thai Basil, Cilantro, Mint and Pickled Cucumbers

Rice noodles with sesame oil

Iceberg lettuce

Wrap with pork, herbs, noodles, and sriracha

Spicy Pepper Chicken with Sweet Thai Chili Sauce

Spicy Pepper Chicken

By now, people reading my blog will know that I like very spicy food. I like to use pepper flavors from all over the world, blend them together to try and find the combinations that work. I could use the peppers in their raw state and make my own sauces but I also like to experiment with ready made pepper sauces to see how they play with one another in recipes! The end result I try to get is not having any one pepper sauce flavor dominate the taste but instead get the flavors to act like the different notes in a glass of wine. Naturally, such spicy food has to be balanced with the right amount of sweetness to make the end result lip-smacking good! This recipe uses pepper sauces from Peru, Jamaica, and Thailand, and also a variety of Chinese and Japanese seasonings. Because the Sweet Thai Chili Sauce is not spicy enough, I kick it up a notch by using the Guilin Chili Sauce from China. While it is probably better to do this on an open grill, it can also be done in an oven with just a few more steps in the process!

 Some ingredients you need:

Ingredients

2 ½ lbs chicken thighs (about 6), bone in, skin on

Marinade

½ tsp Jamaican Meat seasoning (Jamaica)

½ tbsp dried jerk seasoning (Jamaica)

1/2 tbsp wet jerk seasoning (Jamaica)

1 tbsp Worcester sauce (England)

1 tbsp Sriracha pepper sauce (Asia)

1 tbsp aji Panca paste (Peru)

1 tbsp aji amarillo paste (Peru)

1 tbsp thick soya sauce (this is a mixture of soya blended with molasses. It gives a nice char to the chicken skin) (China)

1 tbsp marukan vinegar (this is a Japanese vinegar with 4.5% acidity, not the usual 5% as is found in standard vinegar)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp pickapeppa sauce (Jamaica)

Sauce

 1 cup Thai Sweet chili sauce for Chicken ( I like the "Flying Horse" brand)

1 tbsp Guilin chili sauce

Method

1. Make 2-3 cuts in the chicken thigh on both sides, down to the bone. Place in a 1 gallon plastic Ziploc bag

2. Mix all marinade ingredients together and pour over chicken thighs. Massage well through the plastic. Marinate in refrigerator overnight. DO NOT add the Thai Chili sauce and Guilin sauce at this point!

3. Remove thighs from bag and broil in a roaster pan with a rack until the skin develops a char on both sides, as seen in the photo below.The chicken is not cooked at this stage so handle it as you would any raw meat.

4. Remove from under broiler and transfer to smaller baking dish so that the thighs fit closely together. At this point, pour the sauce mixture over the chicken and cover with foil. 

5. Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for 1 hour. Take out of oven oven and remove foil. 

6. Place baking dish with chicken and sauce under broiler, and broil until the sauce starts to bubble and the skin starts to char. 

7. Remove from under the broiler. Pour sauce into a small saucepan and reduce until the volume is decreased by half. Plate and serve. 

After sauce reduction, sauce thickens and coats the chicken.

Apricot Sour Cherry Chutney

Pork chop, chutney, baked plantain and pickled cucumbers

This is a very quick and easy way to whip up a very tasty condiment to go with a thick cut pork loin chop, seasoned and cooked to your taste.
Ingredients
 6 dried Apricots
4 Tbsp dried sour cherries
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic
1/2 Green Habanero pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp Garam Masala
Thin slice ginger root
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp vinegar
Method
1. Coarsely chop the dried apricots, cherries, onion, garlic, habanero pepper and ginger root. I use a small chopper to do this
2. Put all in a small saucepan and add the vinegar, salt, Garam Masala, and sugar
3. Bring to a boil and immediately turn down the heat to low. Simmer covered for 10 -15 minutes. If any is left over, it will keep in the refrigerator for a day or two.

Apricot and sour cherry chutney

Banana Chayote Squash and Mango Bread

Banana Chayote Bread

Living in Jamaica in the 1970s proved challenging for someone who liked baking cakes and breads. The importation of many items that used to be readily available in the 1960s, ceased, and one was forced to turn to making do with local ingredients that were not really made to do the same things. One had to figure out how to use things of similar texture but which had a different taste, in recipes. This bread is a result of that time when the motto was “Tun you hand” or make do with what you had. Fortunately, bananas, spices, coconut oil were readily available. All purpose flour and granulated or “white” sugar were luxuries to be had at supermarkets by buying “under the counter” or if someone would bring it back from a monthly shopping trip to Miami. These items were also available at US Dollar based stores in tourist areas on the North Coast, established for tourists and expats to purchase items. If you really wanted the items badly enough, and had a couple of US Dollars to spare, the items could be had a grossly inflated prices if you were prepared to drive from Kingston to the North Coast often. Brown sugar was often all that was available in ordinary grocery stores, and the flour readily available then was known as “counter flour” which I suspect was bread flour. This is why I have added flax and oatmeal as that type of flour is heavier, and more dense and glutinous than the lighter, all purpose variety. Zucchini could be grown there but I suspect that not many people thought about doing that even though it used to be readily available in supermarkets just a decade before. In its place, I have used the Chayote Squash or Cho-Cho as it is known in local Patois. This member of the squash family is grown and eaten throughout Central America and the Caribbean, and it became the substitute when “American” apples were no longer imported. The texture of the raw Chayote is like that of a Pear but the vegetable itself is tasteless. It does however take up the flavor of whatever juice or sauce in which it is cooked. Soaked in apple juice for 1-2 hours, it became pieces of “apple” used in pies, crumbles etc. All in all, as challenging as those times were, doing without a lot of things probably resulted in my making a healthier version of the bread!

The chopped dried mango makes a nice contrast

The Mango makes a nice contrast

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

¼ cup oatmeal

¼ cup flaxmeal
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 tsp teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp allspice

Dash of Cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar

½ cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup coconut oil
1 medium ripe banana, mashed (about 1 cup)

Thumb sized piece of root ginger, peeled and finely grated

Juice and zest of 1 lemon (In Jamaica I used a small sour orange, known in local Patois as the “Civil” Orange, possibly a corruption of the term for Seville Orange. We used it to make Bitter Marmalade)
3/4 cup peeled, seed removed, coarsely shredded Chayote squash
1/2 cup chopped dried mango

Chayote cut open

Chayote

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour one loaf pan and set aside. I also line the bottom with a piece of parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt
3. In a separate bowl, add the Lemon juice, zest, grated ginger, chopped dried mango, and shredded chayote squash to the mashed bananas. Doing this prevents the mashed banana from turning brown, and also helps soften the chopped, dried mango pieces.
4. In a large bowl, use the whisk attachment of your stand mixer to mix the eggs. Add the sugar and oil and whisk until it takes on a pale color, and is mixed. Change to the paddle attachment for your mixer. Add in the banana mixture and mix well. Add the flour mixture and stir gently with a wooden spoon or on low speed on your stand mixer until no flour remains. 
5. Pour mixture into prepared loaf pan. Bake until a bamboo skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, about 1 hour and 10 minutes, depending on your oven. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, and then remove the bread from the pans and place on wire rack to cool completely before serving. Slice and serve. The bread keeps well when wrapped and frozen. Thaw just before use by reheating slowly in a microwave using low power.

A typical Lebanese Snack, Olives and Cheese

Dressed Olives and Manchego Cheese

Olives dressed Lebanese Jamaican style

A typical Lebanese snack I grew up eating was a dish of cheese, olives, and bread! This was also eaten at breakfast or as an after dinner offering instead of a sweet desert. The bread is usually Pita but any flatbread would work equally well. The cheese is a hard, white, salty cheese like Greek Kefalotiri or Kasseri, Bulgarian Kashkaval, or Spanish Manchego. Olives are a mixture of black and green olives. Years ago, I would cure my own olives but now I buy them cured from a mainstream supermarket or a Middle Eastern or Greek store. The dressing I use is Lebanese-Jamaican style so it does differ from how the olives are dressed in Lebanon. Naturally, the Habanero pepper plays a role! There are no measurements.

Ingredients

Olives plus some of the brine in which they have been cured

Lemon or Lime juice

A small amount of vinegar, maybe 1-2 teaspoons (too much makes the olives get soft)

Garlic

Thyme

1-2 Habanero peppers with seeds, sliced.

Olive Oil

Method

1. Put the olives and the brine in a bowl. Make a couple of small cuts in the olives with a sharp knife.
2. Chop up a couple of garlic cloves, coarsely. Add the chopped garlic,sliced Habanero pepper, thyme leaves, vinegar, and lemon or lime juice and mix all together.
3. Place this mixture with all the liquid in a clean container, and cover the olives with olive oil. Keep refrigerated, and take olives out as needed with a CLEAN, DRY spoon. They will keep for quite some time like this.

Quinoa Tabouleh, Lebanese-Jamaican Version

Quinoa Tabouleh

My pot of Mint

Lebanese, because of their Phoenician heritage, love to migrate to other countries. Indeed, there are far more Lebanese outside of Lebanon than are currently living in the country. My own Grandparents arrived in the Caribbean in 1897 from a small mountain village in Lebanon. No matter which country they went to live, they preserved their culture, food, but unfortunately for many second generation Lebanese like myself, the language only lives on in the form of words for food, and a couple of swear words! What they did with their food was to adapt it in many ways to include local ingredients. One such adaptation in the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, was to include the Habanero or Scotch Bonnet Chili pepper in all their cooking. To people currently living in Lebanon, the addition of such a hot pepper would be unthinkable as they prefer to use ground Sumac to obtain the sourness, tartness and spicy taste necessary. Another adaptation was to use limes instead of lemons in the dishes, as lemons were not always available.

I have a pot of beautiful, fresh mint growing in my garden so I knew that a dish of Tabouleh would have to be made with it! Tabouleh, or Cracked Wheat Salad, has many variations in Lebanon, and other countries of the Levantine region. The mix of grains, spices and herbs vary between families, regions within Lebanon, and countries of the region, each proclaiming their version to be the “best”. The most serious insult one can offer a Levantine person would be to say that you do not like their Tabouleh!

This version is made with Quinoa, a grain from South America, and the seasonings I use are representative of the Caribbean version of the dish. I also make it with cracked wheat or Bulgur wheat. There are few measurements as the final product is solely dependent on individual taste. I do not use a food processor to chop the herbs and vegetables as it results in too much bruising of the leaves, and that makes the leaves develop a black color due to the damage. Instead I use a very sharp knife or cleaver, slicing through bunches of the herbs as thinly as possible. However, a food processor may be used to “pulse” chop the herbs quickly, resulting in minimal damage to the leaves.

 Ingredients

¾ cup of cooked Quinoa (this is cooked like rice using twice as much water as the grain, brought to a boil then simmered for about 15 minutes until all the water has evaporated). I let it cool in the fridge before adding any of the herbs to it.

Salt

Black pepper

Allspice

Sumac (The sumac bush is native to the Middle East. The berries are dried and ground into coarse powder. Sumac is a versatile spice with a mild but tangy lemony flavor. It is used in many other countries of the region, including Greece and Turkey)

½ Habanero pepper, deseeded, and finely minced

6 stalks of Green Onions or Scallions, thinly sliced (use green and white parts)

2 medium sized cucumbers, chopped into small cubes (deseeded if there are a lot of seeds. I tend to use the small Kirby or Persian cucumbers with fewer seeds)

3 Roma tomatoes, chopped into small cubes(I remove the pulp and seeds, using only the firm part)

Flat Leaf or Italian Parsely, Fresh Mint, (I wash the Parsley and Mint very carefully, using 2-3 changes of water. I then use only the Mint leaves, and the small tips of the Parsley, not the larger stems. There are no measurements for this. As a rough guide, I use 1/3 portion of mint to 2/3 of Parsley. This is to say twice as much Parsley to the quantity of mint). I also tend to make my Tabouleh more “Herbal” than “Grainy”. Other may prefer it with more grains than herbs)

75 mls Lemon Juice and Lime juice in equal proportions

25 mls Olive Oil

Method

Mix together the cooled Quinoa, chopped, herbs, sliced green onions, minced Habanero pepper, and chopped tomatoes and cucumbers. This mixture is seasoned to taste with the salt, black pepper and allspice. Add the Lemon/Lime juice and Olive Oil dressing, and mix thoroughly. Sprinkle Sumac on top of the salad before serving.