Jamaican Inspiration - Spicy Chicken Soup

 

Inspiration

• I wanted to make chicken soup because it was feeling like winter today after a very mild winter
• I wanted it to have a warm quality and wondered about putting allspice in it. I did some searching  in the Flavor Bible for pairing thyme, marjoram (herbs I usually put in chicken soup), and allspice. Marjoram wasn’t listen, neither was celery which I usually use. So I was down to carrot, onion, thyme, and allspice. I decided to also use black pepper, bay, and a habanero I’ve had in the fridge for a while. 
• I was thinking dumplings, so I googled Jamaican dumplings soup, and found some recipes. I noticed a lot use pumpkin.

Spicy Chicken Soup

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp oil
• 1yellow onion, quartered
• 2 carrots, cut into large pieces
• 1 tbsp dried thyme
• 6 allspice berries
• 1-2 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 tbsp kosher salt
• 1 habanero pepper, cut in half
• 1 whole chicken
• 3 Yukon potatoes
• 1/2 a buttercup squash
• 1 tbsp coconut oil
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice  

        Method

• In a large, heavy stock pot heat the oil over medium high heat.
• Add the onion, carrot, thyme, allspice berries, black peppercorns, salt, and habanero and sauté until fragrant. 
• Add the chicken and brown on all sides.
• Add enough water to bring to cover and bring to a boil over high heat.
• Reduce heat to bring to a simmer, partially cover with a lid and let simmer until chicken is tender and falling off the bones.
• Remove the chicken to a plate to allow to cool
• Strain the broth and set aside.
• In the stockpot, heat the coconut oil over medium heat.
• Add the garlic, thyme, and ground allspice and cook to fragrant 
• Add the potatoes, squash, and broth and bring to a boil.
• Reduce to a gentle boil and cook until vegetables are tender.
• While vegetables are cooking, remove the meat from the bones and break into pieces.
• When vegetables are tender, add the chicken, and heat through. 
• Serve

 

Ukrainian Inspiration

Inspiration

• I had a beet root and horseradish salad at Veselka in NYC and wanted to try my hand at it. I found this recipe which I used for guidance. I couldn’t find fresh horseradish, so used prepared.
• I wanted to make a pork tenderloin to go with it. A Ukrainian friend once made me vareniki with potato, dill, and feta. I also love dill with beets. So, I decided to bring dill into my marinade. For pork, I also like a marinade with mustard and so I incorporated that as well. 

Beet and horseradish salad

Ingredients

• 4 beets, trimmed and washed (about 400 g) 
• 3 tbsp prepared horseradish 
• 20 g apple cider vinegar 
• 20 g sugar 
• Salt and pepper to taste 

Method

• Place beets in a medium pot and cover with water. 
• Bring to a boil over high heat, then turn down a bit to retain a gentle boil.
• Cook until beets are knife tender (20-40 min). 
• If they are different sizes, you might take out the smaller ones to cool while the larger continue to cook. 
• You might have to top up with more water and bring back to a boil.
• Remove beets from water and set aside to cool
• Once cool, peel the beets and then grate into a medium bowl
• Add remaining ingredients and stir well. 
• Set aside to allow flavors to blend before eating.

Dill Mustard Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients

Marinade

• 5 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 heaping tbsp whole grain mustard
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp dill weed
• Large pinch salt
• Generous amount of pepper

Remaining ingredients 

• Pork tenderloin
• Olive oil  
• 4 tbsp labneh
• 1 tsp whole grain mustard
• 2 tsp dill weed
• Salt and pepper to taste 

Method

• Whisk together marinade ingredients in a large bowl. 
• Add tenderloin and rub well with marinade and push down until submerged as much as possible. 
• Place in refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Turn occasionally.
• Mix together labneh, mustard, dill weed, salt, and pepper in a small bowl and set aside.
• When ready to start cooking, preheat oven to 450 degrees.
• Remove pork from refrigerator.
• Once the oven is heated, heat a cast iron pan over medium-high heat
• Add a generous amount of olive oil to the pan and let warm.
• Remove pork from marinade and put into the cast iron.
• Brown on each side
• Place cast iron into the oven and set a timer for 10 minutes
• Turn pork and set a timer for 10 -15 minutes
• Cook until pork is 145 in the thickest part.
• Remove from oven and let sit for 10 minutes.
• To serve, smear a scoop of the labneh onto the plate and top with slices of tenderloin.

Leftover Cornbread

A couple days ago I posted about the Easter dinner I made for my friend and myself. This morning I realized I still had some of the cornbread sitting on the counter. Now, I love cornbread, but when it sits around a few days it gets a little old tasting. I have been known to use the leftovers to make stuffing (and I guess I've never blogged that because I can't find a post... weird). But, since it was morning and I was looking to have some breakfast, not plan dinner, I revived my days old cornbread by cutting it in half, slathering it with butter, and pan frying it until it was golden and delicious. I also realized I was out of syrup, so I improvised and made molasses honey to pour over the top of the cornbread. Voila, simple, delicious breakfast made with what I had in the house.

Cornbread with Molasses Honey

day old cornbread, sliced in half
butter
1/4 c honey
1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
pinch of salt

Butter the cut faces of the cornbread and put in a skillet over medium heat.
Fry the cornbread until golden, then flip.
Briefly fry the cornbread on the other side, then remove from the pan.
While the cornbread is frying, in a small sauce pan, heat the honey, molasses, and salt over medium heat.
Once warm and salt is dissolved, remove from heat.
On a plate, place your cornbread and drizzle with the molasses honey.

Roast Chicken and Collard Greens

I've been living in Maine for nearly six years now. When I think about that, it seems crazy. One of the things that has made living here much easier is the proximity of my older brother and sister-in-law, which was the result of one of those life coincidences. About the same time I got a job here, my brother got an opportunity to expand his artist's skills down in Massachusetts. So, I moved to Maine and he and my sister-in-law move to Massachusetts. It is nice to have them so close because my entire family can only get together so many times a year. I typically spend the less important holidays, like Thanksgiving and Easter, with them. But, there have been times where for some reason or another I don't make it down to spend even those holidays with them. In those instances, one of my friends invites me to her family's holiday celebration. I'm always grateful for their generosity (and of course the delicious food they provide).

This past Sunday, while my friend's family had extended another invitation to myself and another friend far from her family, we both felt like having a really quiet Easter dinner. So, I decided to cook dinner for the two of us. Luckily we checked if the stores would be open on Easter, so I was able to get to the store the day before for all my ingredients. Actually, I ended up at 4 stores because the 3 stores before the last did not have any fresh mint on hand. I'm not sure why other people needed mint; I doubt they were all planning to make minted carrots like I was. (That's another on of those delicious Eula Mae recipes I mentioned previously in this blog). Along with minted carrots, I roasted a chicken (sort of based on the Eula Mae recipe) and made cornbread (also Eula Mae) and collard greens. My friend shared a delicious bottle of red wine she got while in Turkey and we finished the meal with hazelnut gelato. All in all, it was a delicious meal (if I do say so myself).

Roast Chicken

1 5 pound chicken, washed and patted dry
2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp sage
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp white pepper
6 shallots, ends trimmed off and sliced in half (you can leave the skins on)
2 bay leaves

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a small sauce pan, melt the butter with the thyme and sage over low heat and then set aside to cool slightly.
Place the chicken in a roasting pan.
Mix the salt, cayenne, black and white peppers.
Rub the salt and pepper mixture on the skin of the chicken and between the skin and meat.
Stuff the cavity with the shallots and bay leaves.
Rub the outside of the chicken with the butter mixture and then place it breast side down in the roasting pan.
Place the chicken in the oven and roast between 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours, or until fully cooked.
Remove from roasting pan and place on a platter for serving.

Collard Greens

1 tbsp oil
2 - 1/4 inch slices salt pork, cubed
2 large bunches collard greens, stemmed, sliced into 2 inch strips, and washed thoroughly
1/2 tsp raw sugar

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat.
Add the salt pork and cook, stirring occasionally until browned (bottom of the pan might brown as well, but that should come up once the greens are added).
Add the greens, stir, and cover.
Turn heat down to medium.
Let greens cook until desired tenderness, stirring occasionally (be sure to scrape the bottom of the pan to get up the browned bits).
Sprinkle sugar on greens and cover for a couple more minutes, then stir and serve.

Spicy Sofrito and Black Bean Soup

Thinking back on my childhood, I think I pinpoint my now sister-in-law's entry into our family as the moment where our culinary world expanded. I refer to both an exposure to new foods and flavors and to the culture around sharing food. Growing up, my mother and my sister-in-law's parents made almost every meal from scratch. My guess it was both family tradition and economically driven. It's much cheaper to feed your family home cooked meals than pre-made ones (well, it was. Now I'm not sure if that is still the case). During college my sister-in-law would get a craving for something my Mom would make and tell my brother that they needed to buy celery so that they could make "white people food." It was and still is funny because so many of our meals growing up really did start with a base of onions, celery, ground beef, and salt and pepper. My sister-in-law's family, being Puerto Rican, started most dishes with sofrito, adobo, oregano, cumin, and a smattering of other seasonings. Despite eating a lot of Puerto Rican food over the years and watching both my sister-in-law and her parents cook, I still haven't been able to capture the flavors properly in my own house.

When it came to dinner time, we always sat down as a family to eat, as I believe my sister-in-law's family did as well. In our home, someone would serve up food for each person, giving them the amount they wanted. If we wanted seconds, we served ourselves. In my sister-in-law's family, someone serves the food, but typically gives you more than you ask for. When your plate nears empty, someone offers you more. My sister-in-law told me that one of the first times she ate dinner at our home, she left hungry because while she wanted more food, she was never offered any more and she didn't feel comfortable serving herself more even while the rest of us grabbed seconds. Over the years, we have shared many meals and while our tendencies in how we gather and share food may not have changed much, we have become more accustomed to our differences, small as they may be.

As we all grow and explore the world around us, we have been exposed to more styles of cooking and have incorporated those into our lives. My brother and sister-in-law lived in Japan for a couple years and brought back a passion for the Japanese style of cooking. Growing up, we almost never ate fish because we lived in Wisconsin and nobody in my family went fishing. After they returned from Japan, the family started eating fish with more regularity and occasionally we will make miso soup, ginger chicken, or tonkatsu. I lived in China, where a friend and her mother taught myself and a couple other foreigners how to make baozi. For the last couple years, my family has made baozi for our Christmas Eve dinner. This time intensive meal goes quickly when everyone is chipping in to help roll the dough and form the buns. My other sister-in-law, wife of my younger brother, is a vegetarian which has introduced more non-meat options to our family gatherings. When you grow up with every meal being based on a meat and starch, learning to cook delicious vegetarian meals definitely has a learning curve.

As I drove to the grocery store tonight pondering what to cook for this week, I had a craving for Puerto Rican beans. But, me being me and me not really having mastered Puerto Rican food, I made up my own style of sofrito. Below is the recipe for the sofrito and the black bean soup.

Spicy Sofrito

2 medium tomatoes, cored and quartered
1 bell pepper, cored and quartered
1 head of garlic, peeled
8 small shallots, peeled
1 can chipotle peppers in adobo
2 cherry peppers, stems removed and halved
2 tbsp olive oil
1 bunch cilantro

Place all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Place in jars and either refrigerate or freeze.

Black Bean Soup

1 c spicy sofrito
1 1/2 tbsp tomato sauce
1 small jar pimentos with juice
2 tbsp slices green olives with juice
2-4 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp cumin
adobo to taste
3 28 oz cans of low sodium black beans
2 cans of water
2 tsp chicken better than bullion

Place spicy sofrito, tomato sauce, pimentos with juice, green olives with juice, oregano, cumin, and adobo (sprinkle back and forth across the bottom of the pan twice) in the bottom of a large stock pot. Turn heat to medium-high and cook until fragrant. Add the black beans, water, and chicken bullion. Turn heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-high and cook at a low boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and carefully use an immersion blender to blend smooth. Serve hot.

Campfire Fajitas

Shepherd's Pie at The Liberal Cup in Hallowell, ME