caribbean food, your tips and recipes

my girlfriend and i have recently become hugely into caribbean food (we live in manchester city centre and a few of the surrounding suburbs have caribbean takeaways). we've been making an amazing curry goat with rice & peas for months now but wondering if any ilxors have other recipes worth trying? we often get awesome DUMPLINGS! with gravy from this place: caribbeantogo.co.uk and i'm v keen to make it but can't find a recipe for that sort of gravy anywhere. im considering buying a levi roots jar of curry sauce, are these actually any good?

feel free to use this thread to talk about any other caribbean foods! we've been trying to get oxtail for ages but they're always sold out. recently tried peppered steak which was so so good, real soft fally-aparty meat and an amazing spicey sauce. the jerk chicken they sell isn't so great, looking to try it from somewhere else as it's sometimes a bit dried up and lukewarm by the time it arrives at our flat from the shop 15miles away.

there's another shortish thread here on the cooking board: caribbean food

Whenever I have a barbeque I always made jerk chicken.

I normally get about 4 chicken legs, cut into thighs and drums, then stick a knife in them several times all over to allow the marinade to penetrate.

Marinade is something like:
1 onion
4 garlic
1 lime - juiced
1/2 orange - juiced
1 scotch bonnet (seeds in)
freshly ground pimento (all spice berry)
freshly ground cinammon.
thyme
salt + pepper
sugar.

Just whizz up the ingredients in a blender and rub into the meat, leave to marinade between an hour and a day.

Cook with the lid on in a barbeque for best results, but pan frying or roasting will also work.

Made some coleslaw by grating carrots and slicing cabbage finely, add a little mayonaise, salt/pepper, lime juice and some oil

Also make some rice and peas if you feel like it: fry onions, garlic, add rice, salt/pepper, scotch bonnet, pimento/thyme and can of coconut.

Keep trying for oxtail - ask around good butchers to put some aside for you. Oxtail and Butter Bean stew is delicious.

I normally make a jamaican curry by grounding up a few curry spices such as cumin, coriander, fenugreek etc adding turmeric for colour + salt/pepper, coating the meat in it, and then browning it. Take the meat out, fry onions, garlic, ginger, put the meat back in, add scotch bonnet and a can of coconut with some water. After about half and hour to an hour low simmer, I then add breadcrumbs to thicken and serve with rice.

Hint: to make breadcrumbs, always have a supply of stale ends of unsliced bread left in a dry place, and then just stick it in a blender just before you need it.

The only pulse I like is puy lentils so I serve curries with pea-free coconut rice.

JAMAICAN CURRY CHICKEN

Cut up 1lb/500g chicken thighs (if you have a butcher who can chop the thighs up with the skin off and bone in, even better) and wash it with the juice of half a lime. Set aside. Blend together 6 garlic cloves, 4-6 chopped scallions/spring onions, one whole green cayenne pepper, a handful of fresh thyme, one piece of ginger the size of your thumb, some sea salt and a couple of slugs of sunflower oil. Add two tablespoons Jamaican curry powder or Madras curry powder, one tbs dried thyme, one tbs allspice, one teaspoon of turmeric and one of chili powder, plus a couple of grinds of pepper. Juice the other lime half and add to the mix. Blend the dry ingredients into the wet and cover the chicken thighs with the marinade paste. Marinate for at least 6 hours - or overnight.

Dice one large onion and chop 4 spring onions/scallions. Fry these in sunflower oil on high heat in a large skillet. When the onion has sauteed, add the entirety of the marinade and chicken to the pan. Fry the chicken until it is firm and don't let the ex-marinade burn. Peel a medium-sized potato and cut into large cubes. Throw these in the pan (they help thicken the gravy as the curry cooks), add two mugs full of water to the pan and when you've given it a mix, lower the temperature down to a gentle simmer you know you can leave alone for 30 minutes. Go have a beer or something.

When you return to the kitchen, check the curry, give it a stir and prepare rice - coconut rice is simply one mug of rice fried off in a saucepan, one and a half mugs of water, a mug of coconut milk and a dash of salt. Bring the mix to the boil before turning it right down and leaving it on very low heat for the next 20 minutes with a lid on the pan. This rice will be perfect. Go have another beer. Remove both pans and cool for 5 minutes before serving - but if the curry needs liquid adjustment, just take the rice off an either add a small amount of water or let it simmer for a few minutes after another stir.

Apparently my Jamaican food is not bad for a white girl.

my recipe for amazing caribbean food:

1. go to the hummingbird restaurant on stroud green road
2. order pretty much anything on the menu
3. eat

Well, some of us have the best and cheapest butchers in London on our doorstep - this recipe feeds 4 people for less than £5 all in.

Also BREADCRUMBS? No way, seriously (I save those for a semi-dry pasta sauce made with anchovies, garlic and white wine, or herbed escalopes). Potato method taught to me by a 60-year-old woman whose sister has an amazing Jamaican takeaway in Dalston.

Also BREADCRUMBS?

Mate, I was as surprised as anyone, but it really works. Don't use too many, just enough to get the consistency. Nothing wrong with potato if that's what works though.

However, try more pulses - pulses are the best! I'm not a fan of canned unless I'm making a last-minute dinner, but good dry ones cooked so they still have a nice firmness to them.

Just noticed I forgot to mention the peas in the rice and peas! I use kidney beans or black-eyed peas but I don't think either is actually authentic - but I've never found pigeon peas.

my recipe for amazing caribbean food:

1. go to the hummingbird restaurant on stroud green road

That sounds very useful for someone in Manchester. :D

more cooking threads needed on ile

Yes! Bring the noms.

some great recipes here, will definitely try them out. what are some good caribbean side dishes? steamed veg is always pretty nice but i'm not a fan of those patties - super dry and stodgey. the DUMPLINGS! and gravy thing is my favourite side dish but i haven't found any recipes online. are there any others, preferably ones easy to make at home?

what's with the d umplings thing?!

Yay! Thread bookmarked. Caribbean is one cuisine I know little about - can anyone recommend a good cookbook?

we're pretty new to this game but the curry goat recipe on levi roots' website is the one we generally use, it's easily as good as, if not better than the proper bought version

box of 'festivals' mix makes amazing DUMPLINGS!. now searching for the perfect curry sauce/gravy to have with them. bought a jar of curry sauce as well but it was superhot and smelled like pickles and clay. the search continues..