Beer with Thyme with Coconut

This dish was inspired by a lot of things. One being Red Stripe and the fact that a Jamaican man will drink a hot beer right off the shelf. So I figured what if the heat came from a flame as opposed to nature. Next, Thyme: it’s only a natural feature in any Jamaican dish. And, Coconut milk, nice and thick from the can.

                It was a Friday and I wanted something fun and new that included beer. At first I wanted to put the three together with steak, but none of us felt like going as far as turning on the grill…maybe next week. Easier option: chicken (I swear I am going reincarnate as a yaad fowl).

                Friday dinner became a time for experiment, throw together, especially after we moved to Harbour View;  before that we lived in Stony Hill Fridays, which brought pizza and church fish fries. I got the inspiration, from Iron Chef, to de-bone and de-meat two wings and a thigh, cooked the meat down in thyme and coconut milk, then stuff the meat back in the wings (wrap the rest in skin of the thigh).  

                But divert back to beer with me. Growing up I used to tease daddy about drinking something that looked like urine: “How is he satisfied by warm urine? Poor thing, work must very rough.” He explained it was an acquired taste. Of course, I had to wait to get to college to acquire said taste and looked forward to coming home in the summer to Heineken yesterdays. A cold beer became as attractive to me as tea was mum. Don’t get me wrong, after dinner, the decision between fever grass (or vanilla chai) tea and a cold Red Stripe or Heineken seems life altering in those five minutes.

                This then begs the question: Why would you sacrifice the satisfaction of beer's cold, crisp potential for a room temperature one on a typical hot Kingston day? To this day all I get in response is a pair of shrugged shoulders. All I can do now is raise my cold beer to these weirdoes and enjoy the hot beer the way I can tolerate it – via stove. Here goes.

Thyme & Coconut Brewed Chicken

Ingredients:

1 ½ c of beer (Heineken)                                      Chicken: 2 wings, 1 thigh

1 c coconut milk                                                    Thyme – 2 sprigs

Salt and pepper                                                     Granulated sugar – 1 tsp

5 Pimento seeds                                                    1 clove Garlic - diced

Coconut oil - 1 tbsp                                               Green pepper - sliced

Tomato – sliced                                                      string

How:

With meat scissors where necessary, remove the meat from the skin of the respective parts. Put the skins in a bowl and cover with beer, 1 sprig of thyme, and the sugar and leave to marinate.

Dice the meat and put in another container and cover with the coconut milk, thyme, salt, pepper and leave marinate.

After one hour, shake off as much of the milk as possible and brown the chicken in the coconut oil.

Wrap the cooked meat in the three skins and tie with string then brown them in the same pan.

 

Mix the beer marinate with the coconut milk marinate along with the diced garlic and pimento seeds.

After the chicken is browned, lower the heat and pour the mix in. Leave it to reduce around the meat.

Garnish with the sliced tomato and green pepper. 

Warm caramelized beer and coconut milk at their goodest!

Eat well,

Gillian M. 

A juicy slap in the face

Disclaimer: no recipe today, just a reflection.

The health nut, environmentally conscious, the market vendor, the chef, the foodie or anyone who loves and respects freshness will understand and respect the amazing-ness of awaiting arrival of a fruit in season. In our case, Sour and sweet sop, Jackfruit, Mango, Avocado, Cherry, the Plums and many more; so I feel that I can assume that when companies got into the market of canning the juices of these seasonal/indigenous fruits, immigrant all over joined in on the hallelujah chorus. 

                I signed up for choir on a visit to DC. We went to the Caribbean store and upon finally dragging my jaw to the other side I found them, haloed in cans and boxes and bottles. Guanabana (Sour sop), preserved jackfruit, pomegranate (Panganaut… I need find out how to spell it in patois), and guava among others. There was a collection of liquids from drawn from the coconut. 

                Why would I use ‘liquids’? Well, apparently there’s a discrepancy as to whether it is Coconut juice or Coconut water. On laughing at this, all I hear behind me is “stttrreeeuuuppp, juice? Cocnut JUICE? Cho, just pass me two a any a dem weh seh 'water' nuh.”And there's an entire row of laughter. Love it!

               Now the coconut water: something were very wrong this one. [I love that word had a problem with that sentence.] It tasted young and tangy, versus sweet and refreshing, ripe. Surprise! It is made in Thailand. I looked it up and apparently Asians prefer the water of young coconuts, while my mind's eye was attempting to envision the chopping of a ripe brown coconut turned upside-down over a cup.  Greater heartache came from the label: Grace was using young, un-Jamaican coconut. From a business point of view, I completely understand that choice, but man!

                Automatically, my hands reached for the juices and water of the aforementioned fruit, but Gillian was in for a true surprise with regard to the source of the fruits. What didn’t come from Brazil, came from Taiwan, or Thailand, or Venezuela. Nothing against the similarity in Tropical temperature and surroundings, but I hoped against hope that the taste wasn’t affected. Silly me! The sour sop was missing its think, pulpy, milky-ness it tasted like a drink instead of juice. 

                                Sour sop/Guanabana                                                                                 Jackfruit

              

                On to the jackfruit, mum and I could eat an entire jackfruit – the first of the season of course, then itis set in and we can wait til next season. This time before opening it I looked at the label: Asia again; an Asian company so it’s okay. In any case, I am thinking it should taste the same – bananas from Hawai’i and Ecuador taste the same, so wah?! Surprise again! It tasted different. There are a collection of reasons for this, including the preserving syrup, the can and consequential mitosis. 

                And who was there to console me, mango. I still have a plan to make a jackfruit vinaigrette for a shrimp and arugula salad. I just need to get over the shock - there is just something about the effect of reality on the abstract; initially interpreted in this case as a rude awakening.  Til then I’ve been making myself mango-pineapple milkshakes… soothing me back to recovery.  

Til the next DC trip, or the salad (with pineapple instead),

Eat/drink well,

Gillian M.

"Clean Di Bone!"

If there is one thing I’ve learned from eating at Daddy’s friends and relatives’ houses is to be aware of the question, “You hungry?” Listen in on how eagerly the host asks the question and their response to your answer.

                If ask, “You sure?” after your response of “No”, be ready to make space in your stomach for whatever is made, especially if they’re getting set to light the stove. I loved driving around Daddy and meeting his people, especially because I got to eat out! But he would never tell the next person, “Hey, we already had lunch so we alright.” It’s a good thing that I had to swim later on in the day, or I would have had a belly as huge as his. There’s this thing with host that the visitor just can’t say no to.

                So in any case we end up eating maybe four lunches in a day. And this is where I get to thinking that the brain needs to seriously work on its effectiveness, “Greetings organs, especially stomach, due to recent influx of food from today’s errand running and people visiting, there will be halt on the digestive activity for the next 2 days, but let’s keep burning, k thanks!”

                Overtime, I developed the art of eating slowly to avoid, “Oh you finish already? Want some more?” The natural response to that is “Rhatid, no, mi belly full man, dammit!” And, of course, the host asks, “Why she eat so slow, she alright?” Response: “Just savoring everything man.” Thankfully Daddy started spreading out the visits when I got to high school, so we had lunch set and the necessity to navigate was done away with.

                But no matter whose house we were at we were never finished until the bones are clean. I didn’t have a problem with this because it is custom in the Millwood household too. Practice made perfect. In most if not all cases, the food tastes that great that you can’t avoid cleaning off the bones of the chicken, oxtail, cow foot, pig tail in the stew peas, or the stewed pork . This created my resolve of making food that you can’t resist waxing off.

                 And so, with my surplus of pork chops, I made us a dinner that ended in clean bones. YAY!

Cilantro Baked Pork chops with tomato and cilantro Spaghetti

Ingredients:

2 pork chops

½ c chopped cilantro

½ slice of lime

1 tbsp Allspice

1 tbsp sugar

½ fistful of spaghetti

1 Roma tomato - julienne

½ c coconut oil

Salt

Black& white pepper

The cooking:

 Pork Chops: the usual – marinate your chops in mixture of the lime juice, ¼ c of the chopped cilantro, 1 tsp of salt, 2 tsp of black, sugar and white pepper and the Allspice. Drizzle with coconut oil and put in the oven at 325 degrees and cook until dark. (If it just so happens that you feel festive, through the chops on the grill over charcoal or apple wood.)  

  

Spaghetti: spaghetti in tsp of coconut oil and a pinch of salt until al dente.

Sauté the tomato with the remaining chopped cilantro and salt and white pepper (1 pinch of each).

All together:

Mix spaghetti and sautéed tomato and cilantro and plate with the pork on the side and garnish with whole cilantro. I squeezed some of the other lime half over my entire plate… woke me up and soothed me all in one bite.

Cilantro Baked Pork chops with tomato and cilantro Spaghetti

“So in conclusion… (See below)”

Clean!

               

Cheers to a full  belly!

Til lata,

Gillian M.

Banana's cousin, Plantain, and its varying roles

Plantain, Banana da terra, Platano, etc.

Banana’s cousin brings that bit of sweetness on a fork loaded with oxtail, rice and vegetables. It’s pitiful that it isn’t readily available to eat at will like the banana, you have to peel it, slice it… wait for the oil to get hot then the plantain slices to cool for want of avoiding a scorched tongue.

                Plantain, which off a yardy’s tongue as ‘plantin’, is normally fried as a side item, but in my house an entire plantin is gone before dinner – dessert before dinner, cart before the horse and so on. Thank nature that it’s good for you – mind, tongue and soul. Alongside bread, plantin is a staple bought every week at least to serve as snack, side and staple.

Plantin, The Snack

                It always vexed me how Island Grill and Pollo Tropical in Florida only 2 or 3… extra if you catch the eye of the guy doing your order in time to give him a wink. But that’s business right? Capitalizing on the oily, caramelized goodness of natural potassium: hurtful, yet natural.

                I remember, about my second or third time at Chipotle, thinking to myself, “The only ingredient missing from this full bodied, Latin American inspired goodness is some plantin: boil or fried.” After a shopping trip into DC we came back with about five whole plantins and wax off a whole one the next day with breakfast:

Plantin, The Side in Tomato-mozzarella omelette with fried plantins, toast, & avocado slices

Plantin, The Side in Shrimp & tomato pasta

Note: Wax off - down, vacuum, eat hurriedly... clean your plate!

Eat well...and sweet,

Til lata,

Gillian M.

"Like white on rice!" How about reddish-brown?

  

The messages in ads for world peace advocacy are along the lines of we are all the same even though we are in different places, speak different languages, and have somewhat different experiences – beneath it all, we are all the same. This comes out quite blatantly in food preferences.

                And never did this "similarity in difference" stand out to me than in a discussion of rice preference. Freshman year I met a teaching assistant from Costa Rica, we nicknamed him Juanes since he was such a replica of the Colombian artiste that it was ridiculous. We were going through our countries, and explaining and comparing our cultures with some Asians and a pair of twins from Dom. Rep., and we got to food. This is where east separated from west, unintentionally.

                Juanes was going over rice and beans compared to Jamaican rice and peas. This Costa Rican was talking bout cooking the beans and the rice separate. What? No cooking them together with thyme, coconut and Miss Bonnet/ Sra. Habanera? What kind of meal is that? It seemed unfathomable, but to each his own yeah? Yep.

                Of course, there is yellow of Spanish rice and the dark brown of sauce in fried rice. But what are they missing? Thyme, coconut and Ms. Scotch. I just can't runaway from their allure. Differences in appearances and culinary processes aside, these kinds of rice all taste good of done correctly... with love. 

Recipe:

• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 3 tsp salt
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 1tbsp margarine
• 1 cup red peas (kidney beans)
• 1 scotch bonnet/habanera pepper
• ½ can of coconut milk
• 1 ½ cup rice

How:

If using canned peas (Goya, etc):

Bring wet ingredients and spices to a boil. Then canned peas and add along with rice, and cook until rice comes to softness preference.

If using dry, bagged peas: soak them for two hours or over night. Then throw peas and all ingredients to a boil.  

If rice isn’t cooked enough, steam with a wet grease sheet under the pot cover.

Eat with anything really: stew chicken, roast fish, coconut shrimp, oxtail as below, and others.

Curry Oxtail with Rice & Peas

                Three years later, senior year, I presented rice and peas, oven baked chicken breast, and raw vegetables buffet on a culture Friday event. A member of the audience asked, “How did you get the rice to be the brownish reddish color?” I took a second. You know that “really?” second, yep one of those. After which I put the tour guide face on and explained that it was “because the peas sweat onto the rice, like when your darks bleed unto lighter colors… only, you want this that effect.”

                So please embrace my disappointment when I walk into a restaurant that advertised “Jamaican Happy Hour – Jamaican mixed drinks and food” and saw them serve white and red peas separately – the peas were optional. Call me immature if it’s synonymous with being annoyed by the apparent butchering of my culture. Naturally, I asked my friends if we could leave and go downtown to where Jamaicans actually live, to which they responded with an already tipsy chorus of “Calm down lady, allow di Captain [Morgan] to mek it irie!”

                I was grateful for the humour since they pronounced it almost as perfect as Brad Pitt did in Meet Joe Black. The humour continued straight into Sunday dinner when they looked up the recipe for rice peas and brown stew chicken. Great friends! All that was missing was fried plantain (check next entry!)

Eat well friends,

Bless up,

Gillian M.

Another Jamaican fruit that I found in DC almost made me want ask my mother to send my primary school uniform the way I was overwhelmed with nostalgia: June Plum. I’ve heard it go by Dew Plum. Whatever the discrepancy in naming, it’s a plum. After you peel it, you can eat it by itself, depending on how ripe it is. The normal way to eat it, however, is with some salt.

                I since I had only bought three (the others didn’t look appealing at all), I looked for a way to get the most out of the last two (for now!). I decided to make a small pasta lunch which incorporated caramelized June plum (I love my brain!). I acknowledged the issue of the thorny inside because of the side and forged ahead in ensuring that only fruit was used. The other ingredients included a tomato, green onion, garlic, all spice, salt, black pepper, thyme, scotch bonnet, linguine and black forest ham.

June Plum & Black Forest Ham Linguine

                The combination banged man, it was bangin’.

Ingredients:

• 1 roma tomato - diced
• 1 green onion - diced
• 1 clove of garlic - diced
• 3 sprigs of thyme
• 2 slices of Black Forest Ham - diced
• 1 tsp scotch bonnet pepper - diced
• half-fistful of linguine
• salt and pepper; 1 pinch of granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp coconut oil 

What I love about it the dish is that it looked so normal but was amazing. Thyme and June Plum are such a fantastic combination. Thyme’s power is comparable to cilantro and one notch below basil and is used as often as salt and black pepper in seasoning.

Directions:

• Start off by boiling the linguine with thyme and some kosher salt until al dente
• Put June Plum to caramelize with 1 ½ pinches of sea salt and 1 pinch of sugar
• Add tomato, onions, black forest ham, garlic, coconut oil and pepper to sauté
• Strain linguine and add to sauté pan (with thyme)
• Serve mix on a plate and squeeze half of lime over the top
• Goes down well with a bottle of Heineken (I’m not a fan of imported Red Stripe…I wait until mi reach yaad).

Eat well,

Til lata,

Gillian M.

Thanks for Breakfast, Mum

By age 16 I considered waking up at 6:30 for school to be sleeping in – thank you competitive swimming. I enjoyed my 6:30 wake up shout on the days before meets or when my dad felt sorry for me and gave up on forcing me to be up at 4:30 am for practice at 5. Mum (Gela for greater comic relief) enjoyed it too because it meant that our family breakfast would take place around our bar instead of in the parking lot of the YMCA or stadium pool.

                 She always made it quick, fun and vibrant with porridge, boiled eggs with garlic salt, toast, cantaloupe, watermelon, orange, and bananas. Mind you, I wasn’t the biggest fan of porridge (oats or cornmeal) until well into those teenage years; I guess it’s something about being an athlete that made you visualize the protein healing the muscles that got ripped apart by yesterday’s practice. Or, it could have been Gela’s reminder that you eat what is provided or go to school hungry. Regardless, I treasured those chlorine-free mornings.  

                My post-graduate budget allowed me to relive those once in a while and when I got in the mood for an egg my first instinct wasn’t to fry it or make an omelet, but, yes to boil it! So I sliced it and made into a sandwich and downed it with some peach tea. My cousin called me grandma for the entire day, but I thought, “What would Gela do?”  She would show the sandwich some love, and that is exactly what I did, as much as I could before going to work.

Egg & Red Pepper Sandwich (time: 5 minutes):

• 1 boiled egg – sliced into 8
• 8 julienne slices of red pepper
• 1 tsp Parmesan cheese  
• 1 pinch black pepper
• 1 pinch salt
• ¼ clove of garlic diced
• 1 pinches of dried parsley
• 2 slices of bread

Assembly (time: quick):

Lay all your ingredients on one slice of bread. Close the deal with the other slice.

For better handling, slice your sandwich in two or three – the pepper slices had their own agenda when I got down to business.

Hope you really are eating well,

Til lata,

Gillian M.