Sunny with a Chance of Delicious

Sunny with a chance of Delicious
Confession and apology


Jouney with out maps
Unadventourous advedture

Wey Indian Umami
Destination – wife saving recipes

Close your eyes and think of the Caribbean. What do you see? I’m betting you conjured up clichéd images of perpetual summer, white-sand beaches and cocktails with little pink umbrellas. It’s a pleasant thought, but I’m here to tell you the islands offer so much more.
Take for example our food. West Indian food is really, REALLY great. I mean, I know it hasn’t achieved the celebratory status of some other world cuisines and even has a bum rap of being very heavy on the carbs but I’ll talk about that in another post.

This past week I found myself sitting in one of the many American styled restaurants that have sprouted up all over this island, The menu was uninspiring and consisted of little more that glorified over priced burgers and a few pasta offerings. Cheese was the star flavouring agent. It was over everything – even the shredded lettuce that masqueraded as a salad. I shudder to think that many people who visit our islands might go away with the impression that this type of food is the daily fare of the local population.

Once upon a time it may have been true that people travelling to a foreign destination may have been reluctant to try unfamiliar food. In an effort to make guests feel at home, restaurants sought to make them feel at home by providing them with typical European or American fare. Luckily that is changing and more places are giving local cuisine the prominence it deserves.

I dare say based on the number of food blogs out there these establishments are headed in the right direction. Travelers today are now looking for culinary adventure along with their vacation package and are a lot more daring. Okay so maybe not everyone is up for a fishy-smelling but chicken-tasting plate of curried iguana à la Andrew Zimmerman of Bizarre foods but I’m guessing that most would love the adventure of sampling local flavous like the recipe that follows.

So here is my challenge to you. On your next vacation to the Caribbean or elsewhere, take a holiday from the food that is familiar. Explore where and what the locals eat. Then along with pictures of your pretty sunburn you’ll take home the aromas of sunny days, tastes of briny seafood, the almost electric heat of local peppers and the delicate intrigue of fresh herbs.

Not traveling to the Caribbean this summer; no problem man. So long as you marinate your fish the night before I can get you there in 10 minutes with this adaptation of a Jamaican steamed fish recipe.

Jamidaian Stew Fish
Traditionally red fish (red snapper) is used but I have an aversion to bones. If can’t find already filleted red fish I use King fish (King Mackerel) which has one central bone through the middle or Carite or Cavali. This dish is actually combines elements of Janaican and Trinidadian cooking and the name is a tribute to my second mom who is Jamaican but has made Trinidad her home. Jamaidadian is how she describes herself.

Ingredients
2/2 – 3 lbs King Fish (King Mackerel or other fish)
3tb spoons Green seasoning  (I don’t mince on my seasoning I like anything from 3 to 5 tablespoons of the stuff.)
1 tsp Angostura Orange bitters
4 tbsp. golden ray margarine (or butter)
1 large onion, peeled and sliced into rings
2 large christophene (chayote), peeled, seeded, and diced

1cup diced West Indian Pumpkin ( calabaza squash) peeled and diced
1 cup carrots (diced)
10–12 allspice berries
4 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
1⁄4 tsp. minced scotch bonnet peppers (optional) * absolutely no swapping with jalapenos please the flavour is vastly different. You can subsititute with a ½ to a full tsp of any Caribbean pepper sauce so get your butt in gear and head for your nearest West Indian supplies mart. We’re cooking Caribbean today not Mexican.
1⁄2 tsp. minced fresh ginger

2 stalks lemongrass, trimmed and crushed (this is called fever grass in Trinidad)
Method
Season fish with salt, 2 tbs green seasoning and 1 tsp orange angostura bitters. Leave in the fridge to marinate overnight.
The next day chop all vegetables.
Melt 2 tbsp. Golden Ray margarine (or butter) in a large cast-iron or heavy-bottomed pot over medium high heat and lightly saute, garlic, onions and 1 tbsp green seasoning. Add the chopped veggies. I used christophene (chayote), pumpkin, carrots, ginger, pepper and lemongrass. You have free reign on the vegetables for this one any combo of veggies would work here, broccoli, cauliflower, beans what ever is in season.
Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook, until fish is cooked through, about 7 – 10 minutes depending on thickness of fish slices. Discard lemongrass before serving.
Close your eyes and inhale. Now taste …..well? Are you on the beach yet? The warm warm scent of allspice and subtle zing of citrus should make you feel like you are there. Serve over rice with a sied of stewed beans. (Recipe to follow).

Look at what I found! My mom's old Agostura® recipe book. She has had it ever since I was a little girl. The cover is missing so it is difficult for me to ascertain exactly when it was printed. Coming to think of it, I don’t remember it ever having had a cover but  my guess would be that it was printed in the late 60’s or mid-70’s?  The recipes contained within are for the most part are unimaginative with a few quaint recipes for wild meat like turtle stew, lappe and salami d’agouti. Finally there is a chapter with the amusing title of Wife-saving recipes! I can only imagine the ad campaign...Are you a wife? Are your meals dull and boring? Then you need saving....You need the magic touch that means so much! Alrighty then, so I won't be quitting my day job, any time soon.

Angostura® bitters is known the world over as an indispensable bar ingredient but did you know that in Trinidad, home of this world famous concoction it is a much used cooking ingredient? According to the official website it is also the hallmark of a good cook!

So will you taste the bitters in your food? Does it make your food taste bitter ?

No. According according to the website Angostura® aromatic bitters is not bitter when added to food and drinks. It works by enhancing the flavour of other ingredients without masking the personality of other ingredients; it adds a unique but subtle flavour of its own.

In my experience when you cook or even bake with bitters, what you get is an increase in what the Japanese call umami or the savoriness of the food. This taste has no direct translation except to say that the dish has a level of deliciousness that goes beyond the ordinary. In local parlance, it gives your dish that sweet hand taste. In Trinidad a good cook is described has some one who has sweet han’ (sweet hands) meaning that what ever they cook is “sweet too bad” - sweet here not meaning sugary but lip- smacking go back for second goodness.

Trinidadians cook with Angostura all the time. So much so, it has become almost a reflex motion for me to put a dash of it in soups, stews, marinades, on ice cream, in pasta sauce as well as in my drinks. So ingrained is it into our cooking culture that it is rarely mentioned in recipes because it goes with out saying that it’s in there.

So tell me do you cook with bitters or am I the only one who finds it to be almost as necessary as salt? Maybe you use another ingredient to give your dish that magic touch. Do tell. I'd love to know your magic ingredient.

My next recipe will of course feature Angostura bitters. I just hope that my Jamaican readers don’t slay me when they see what it is…. Stay tuned.

Okonomiyaki - Savoury Japanese Pancake

Tomato Eyes

It happens that sometimes

Calypso Rice

What do you know this rice to be becaue like evything else ther are so may versions and people call the same thing by various names

search for a way to transform cauliflower from a discouraging vegetable into a radiant side dish by caramelizing it, we smile at first, and are expected to smile. It is, after all, only caramelized cauliflower. As the search picks up momentum and intensity, however, and we learn how Loiseau began to blanch and strain and purée, we start to succumb to the grandeur of the quest. Why should the search for caramelized cauliflower be any less significant than Ad Reinhardt’s search for the pure-black painting, or John Cage’s for pure silence? But then when we read that Loiseau committed suicide after the failure of his caramelized cauliflower to impress his critics, we rebel again, in shock. It was, after all, only caramelized cauliflower.

doing simple country cooking at a glorified bistro just outside Paris. He was financed by a shrewd promoter named Claude Verger, who saw that elemental food could be popular and still presented to the critics as something new: a variant of the new cooking, or nouvelle cuisine.

That it was simple and not genuinely new does not mean that it was without value; no one had been cooking that way with passion or conviction for a while. Calling plain cooking high cooking was in itself a radical act. Loiseau became a star, and, with money advanced by Verger, he bought La Côte d’Or, a famous old restaurant in the Burgundy town of Saulieu. In the dense, deep-eating days of gratins and casseroles, the place had held three stars in the Michelin Red Guide; by sheer effort, Loiseau built it back up, and the reader cheers with him when he finally gets his three stars, in 1991.

The trouble was that there was no reason to go to Saulieu except to eat, and this made Loiseau particularly, even uniquely, vulnerable to the Guide and its system of stars and inspectors. The Guide no longer had an easy or organic relation to French cooking. The Red Guide grew up with the automobile, and with the idea of the long journey away from Paris that required several stops for

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/04/050404crbo_books#ixzz0klrauhOG


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/04/050404crbo_books#ixzz0klqhrHg0