Cruising in the Caribbean

First and foremost, I have to congratulate blogger for making changes to their post editor - from now on pictures will be added and sized to hopefully be aligned properly. Kudos for them figuring out that it was quite the challenge before, especially with me being rather rusty in HTML codes.

Second, I would like to share my deep excitement that my blog is getting some worldwide attention! How fun is that? I think should start posting some of the original recipes and from now on I will create a link to the actual cookbook that I use. I will warn you that I have a growing collection - currently it is at about 30 books. I ran out of space for them - but - problem was recently solved when I designated a whole bookshelf to the cookbooks. Not only are they neatly displayed, but there is also an empty shelf (that needs to be filled).

A few friends and I gathered for one of my known cooking parties. A time when each person brings a few ingredients and we sit, chat, chop and cook together. Dinner is always served at least an hour after the planned time. But it is always a good night of sharing, laughter and friendship. There is something very intimate about a kitchen. As I am interested in phenomenology, I am interested in looking at what makes the experience of the kitchen different from, say, the living room. The kitchen is a special place to me and I daresay others, though, maybe their interest in cooking is not nearly close to mine or perhaps because I love cooking so much I am too biased to look at it neutrally. In any event, this was the first dinner party I've had in a long time.

Each dinner party has a theme. This night was the Caribbean. Trying to stick to fall vegetables in keeping with the season was probably the biggest challenge I faced in picking recipes. Every recipe looked amazing. But with my recent conviction to eat in season, I just could not justify picking out recipes that required the main ingredient to be imported from who knows where just because I have the luxury of being able to buy whatever I want. I made a mistake with okra (though while it is not "in season" according to my book, it has been on sale a lot lately, so I do not feel so guilty).

Peanut Chicken

Main course was peanut chicken - a very rich sauce with thyme, garlic, curry powder, lemon juice and various other ingredients to make it spicy to taste  (I think I toned down the spice since the last Caribbean meal that I made challenged my tolerance of spicy foods). And of course, it had peanut butter. 

The meal was complimented by a red and green pepper corn bread (using up the peppers that were required for the rest of the recipes!). It was so good and made the perfect bread addition to the meal.

Bean Salad

As a side dish we had a very good peppery bean salad with quite the dressing - cumin, ketchup, white wine vinegar. It had 3 different types of beans (kidney, chickpeas and black beans). The black beans gave it a different texture and then the vegetables were crunchy. This is definitely a keep recipe and I will try to post it as it would be good to make for lunch or anything.

Okra Fried Rice

The Okra Fried Rice was something that I had never tasted anything like it before. I have had okra once but never cooked it myself. I really enjoyed the different flavours and the colourfulness of this dish.

Creamed Sweet Potato/Yam

Then we had creamed sweet potato with a bit of yam in it. Or perhaps a bit of sweet potato in the yam. or perhaps all yam. or perhaps all sweet potato. We discovered the impossibility of us being able to determine which is which without knowing what plant they actually grew from. The stores use yam and sweet potatoes differently. They both come in oodles of varieties so they are easily confused. Sweet potatoes can be cream or orange fleshed. Yams can also be cream or orange fleshed. Mind you, the white fleshed (what i considered sweet potato) definitely had a very distinct flavour. But who knew you had to be an expert in botany to be able to pick out the right ingredient for recipes?

Barbadian Sweet Coconut Bread

The dessert was actually made for the next day. We were too stuffed to try to eat dessert. This is a Barbadian Sweet Coconut Bread. In Barbados, it is often served at Christmas time. It had a whole pile of flour, lots of coconut, hardly any sugar and very little liquid. It barely rose and was quite dense to hold. But the bread, while heavy, was moist inside and incredibly sweet. Definitely another keeper.

Recipes can be found in this great book! I love the pictures, the recipes so far are easy and delicious. The book also explains the beliefs, culture and types of food for the various countries.

Caribbean Night

My absolute favourite thing to do is cook.... and it is something that can bring a smile to my face however gloomy I feel inside. I've been wanting to cook for my friends T & L for a long time, but it's difficult since they have kids and are allergic to cats. Opportunity presented itself last Sunday and I seized it - they became my guinea pigs for a Caribbean night. I cooked for many hours and was excited in my own little world in their kitchen. This meal was quite educational for me as it used vegetables and spices that I have never used before.

First, I made an appetizer of plantains, yams and sweet potato chips. This involved deep frying - something that I have never done! By the end of the cooking spree, I felt covered in oil! But it was definitely worth it!

If you are like me, you would have thought that yams and sweet potatoes are the same thing and buy the same vegetable for recipes that require either. I now stand corrected. The typical "sweet potato" that you see in the supermarket is most likely a "yam". Yams are orange inside with an orangey-brown skin. However, yams have red skins and white flesh (much like red potatoes). They have a slightly sweeter taste. While they are not from the same plant family, they are both good sources of the difficult nutrient to obtain: beta-carotene (the precurser to vitamin A).

Plantains are a type of banana that are grown as a vegetable. They must be cooked before eating and have a slightly bitter taste. In the plantain chips, they had a nice hint of sweetness making them very enjoyable and perhaps my new favourite vegetable (or is it a fruit?). They are cooked like potatoes - they can be fried, mashed, baked or boiled.

Corn is a major component of Caribbean cuisine. It is considered a sacred food and has a lot of significance in their culture. My cookbook has this note: "Not only was it a vital source of sustenance, but it also provided shelter, fencing and even clothing. Every part of the plant was used, even the silks surrounding the kernels, which became ties for tamales. When corn was cooked, whoever added it to the pot had first to breathe on it to rid of its fear and dying and accustom it to the heat." So I made this really yummy corn soup with tomato topping on it! After watching a girl on Master Chef use canned tomatoes and having the judges make a frown, I could not cut corners - I used fresh corn on the cobs :-) The soup was very sweet as a result!

The Salad had red onions, mangos, tomatoes and cucumbers with a light garlic and spice dressing. Very nice complement to the meal with a nice combination of sweet, salty, acidic and tang. Click here for recipe.

The main course was a thyme chicken and lime dish. It actually had quite a kick even though none of us could figure out what made it so spicy! Even I coughed on the spice! The chicken was sliced open and the spring onions and thyme dressing poured inside. It was very tasty, but unfortunately quite dry as I overcooked it. I learned the hard way that when substituting chicken thighs for chicken breasts, you need to adjust the amount of time to cook.

The rice had soy sauce, a bit of coriander and a couple of other ingredients that matched the rest of the seasoning for the meal. All in all, I think it was a good meal and I'm excited to add Caribbean to my cooking repertoire.

Journey to Japan

Tonight my friend L. and I made a very yummy meal! I tried Japanese food for the first time! SOOOOOOOOO good! It is Unami! (Delicious)

We made Spicy Edamame. Edamames are rich in protein, minerals, calcium and vitamin B1. The chili peppers made it quite spicy, but the soy sauce dressing helped to tone down the spice a bit.

The highlight of the meal was Asian Gazpacho with cilantro pesto. Wow. Whoever thought that vegetables could taste this amazing? I've been reading about Japanese and was delighted to discover their philosophy of food.... one of the things that they value is to try to bring out the natural flavours of the food. So there were no spices added to this chilled raw soup, just vegetables. The cilantro pesto was to die for. I think I will have to make this over and over and over again

We discovered Daikon which is a very large radish. Very good too with a bit of a kick! this salad was made with Daikon, Watercress and walnuts and really complimented the meal.

The main course was chicken presoaked in Saki and then steamed with bok choi, then served with a bit of lime. This was also very good and again, the flavours of the food come through very nicely.

I'm really fascinated now by Japanese food philosophy..... I think about how much I love Moroccan food and how so many spices are used that you can't distinguish any one particular flavour. And that is lovely. But Japanese food is different, it uses combinations that naturally highlight each flavour!

Oh I'm excited that I've branched out to a new region!