davidscooking

I agree with the concern about acidic food and cast iron not always working well together. I do much cooking in a large cast iron skillet and a cast iron dutch oven. But for things like omelettes (and crepes, of course), I like a much lighter pan. I tend to shy away from using cast iron for foods that cook quickly and are easily overcooked--eggs, shrimp, fish, greens. Cast iron retains so much heat that simply removing it from a burner won't slow the cooking much at all.

I love cilantro because it tastes like brightness. And because it's the perfect herbal compliment to chile peppers. And because even though it IS hell to grow yourself (upon reaching maturity, it goes to immediately and aggressively to seed, so it's useful for like a day), it's widely available and of consistent quality--I love it because I can depend on it.

I've eaten immature coconuts in exactly the same way nightscotsman describes. In Jamaica, such coconuts are called "jellies" and are considered a treat. They're sold at roadside stands. The vendor takes one up, still inside its outer husk, sets it on a flat surface and decapitates it with a machete. The inner shell is easily removed. One then drinks the coconut water and scrapes up the sweet, gooey "meat" with a spoon or a fragment of a shell. Never seen any recipes calling for jellies.

If the blender isn't "blending", stop the motor, open the top, and stir the ingredients by hand with a long spoon, being sure to stir down around the blades. Sometime it takes several iterations, but this generally works for me. What usually happens is that one or two ingredients (usually the softest/moistest ones) sink to the bottom of the blender jar and completely surround the blades. The other stuff "floats" (for lack of a better word). The blender churns but nothing much happens until you stop and stir.

Here's mine, described in great detail: david's mortar and pestle

Where are you at on northern Lake Mich? My folks live near Elk Rapids.... I'd have to say cherries are the favorite food in their area, with whitefish and morels in hot pursuit... I, however, live in New Orleans. So much good food that I single out one that wouldn't draw an argument from a lot of people. But crawfish is probably the safest bet . . .

Tajine made with preserved lemons is wonderful.... Photos of both at the bottom of this page: http://www.davidscooking.com/cookbooks/coo...evs/africa.html

Here's my entry for a product called the Foie-Gras-Matic Liver Loosener: Hey foodies! Had it up to here with plain old pan-seared foie gras? Bored to tears by those endless pâtés de foie gras? You need the new Foie-Gras-Matic Liver Loosener, from the folks at GooseTooLoose Enterprises. Our patented hepatization process separates those stubborn goose livers into their constituent liver cells, thus freeing you-the-consumer to incorporate foie gras into all your favorite foods and beverages! Wow the guests at your next cocktail party by whipping up a pitcher of frozen foie gras margaritas or a batch of elegant foie gras martinis. The kids will love frothy foie gras frappées and frosty foie gras shakes. But the Foie-Gras-Matic is about more than just great beverages. A lot more. Your family will soon be enjoying foie gras in ways you never imagined: on breakfast cereals, as a sandwich spread, a nachos topping, on a bratwurst or a hotdog. Try a foie gras vinaigrette on your favorite salad. Enjoy a steaming bowl of foie gras chowder or dig into mashed potatoes with foie gras gravy. And what better ending to a holiday meal than a creamy foie gras pudding or that all-time classic, foie gras à la mode? Foie gras makes sense given today’s active lifestyles. A foie gras smoothie makes a delicious and satisfying lunch on-the-go. And since foie gras is naturally low in carbohydrates, it’s perfect for people on the Atkins Diet. At the low, low price of $29.95, you might want to buy more than one: the Foie-Gras-Matic makes a great gift.

Thanks guajolote. I'm actually working up that recipe for my own site, but no reason it can't be here too. Yes, 55 gallon drums would be the way to go. Someday! Actually tho', a full-sized Weber works OK. The Jamaicans I've talked to use the drums because of price/availability. As for cutting up the bird before marinating, I'm sure there's as many ways to make jerk chicken as there are cooks. What I've seen most often is halved birds. To serve, the half is placed on a chopping block and cut, right through the bone, into inch or two-wide pieces with a meat cleaver. To eat it, you have to use you hands. It's finger licking good, fi real.

david's jerk sauce First of all, this resembles less a sauce than a curry paste, made with several of the ingredients that characterize Jamaican cuisine: thyme, ginger, scallions (“escallions”), allspice (“pimento”), and scotch bonnet chile (close cousin of the habanero). This recipe should make at least 2 cups. All quantities are approximate and can be varied. Jerk sauce is wonderful, but with Mr. Habanero around, subtle it ain’t. If you do two chickens, just thin the sauce with water and distribute it evenly. ¼ cup whole allspice berries 2 tablespoons black pepper corns 2 bay leaves 1 small onion, peeled and coarsely chopped 1 bunch of scallions, coarsely chopped 6 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped 1 (for hot jerk sauce), 2 (for really hot), or 3 (extremely hot) Habanero chiles, stemmed and seeded Leaves and tender stems from a bunch of thyme, about ¼ cup 2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger 2 teaspoons salt ¼ cup cider vinegar or fresh squeezed lime juice ¼ cup vegetable oil Water as needed 1 or 2 chickens, backbones removed and split into halves Ketchup or pickapeppa sauce Toast the allspice berries and black peppercorns until fragrant. Pulverize the allspice, black pepper, and bay leaves in a spice grinder, then add the powdered spices to the bowl of a food processor, along with the onions, scallions, garlic, chiles, thyme, ginger, salt, and the liquid ingredients. Process to a fairly smoth paste, with some small chunks, adding water and scraping down the food processor as necessary. Reserve about ½ cup of the jerk paste to make a table sauce. Evenly distribute the remaining paste over the chicken halves, thinning with a little water if necessary, and marinate for at least an hour and up to 24 hrs refrigerated. Meanwhile, make a sauce to accompany the cooked chicken by mixing the reserved paste with 2 or 3 tablespoons of Pickapeppa sauce or ketchup. The sweetness smooths out the taste. as Suzanne F points out in the previous post. Cook the chicken slowly in a covered charcoal grill over indirect heat, for 1½ to 2 hours, turning and basting about every half hour with leftover marinade (most won't stick to the chicken). Tend the fire carefully; if it’s too hot, the chicken will be badly overdone given such a lengthy cooking time. Too low a fire, obviously, is a problem as well.

Jerk Chicken First of all, this resembles less a sauce than a curry paste, made with several of the ingredients that characterize Jamaican cuisine: thyme, ginger, scallions (“escallions”), allspice (“pimento”), and scotch bonnet chile (close cousin of the habanero). This recipe should make at least 2 cups. All quantities are approximate and can be varied. Jerk sauce is wonderful, but with Mr. Habanero around, subtle it ain’t. If you do two chickens, just thin the sauce with water and distribute it evenly. 1/4 c whole allspice berries 2 T black pepper corns 2 bay leaves 1 small onion, peeled and coarsely chopped 1 bunch of scallions, coarsely chopped 6 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped 1 (for hot jerk sauce), 2 (for really hot), or 3 (extremely hot) Habanero chiles, stemmed and seeded Leaves and tender stems from a bunch of thyme, about ¼ cup 2 T grated fresh ginger 2 tsp salt 1/4 c cider vinegar or fresh squeezed lime juice 1/4 c vegetable oil Water as needed 1 or 2 chickens, backbones removed and split into halves Ketchup or pickapeppa sauce Toast the allspice berries and black peppercorns until fragrant. Pulverize the allspice, black pepper, and bay leaves in a spice grinder, then add the powdered spices to the bowl of a food processor, along with the onions, scallions, garlic, chiles, thyme, ginger, salt, and the liquid ingredients. Process to a fairly smooth paste, with some small chunks, adding water and scraping down the food processor as necessary. Reserve about ½ cup of the jerk paste to make a table sauce. Evenly distribute the remaining paste over the chicken halves, thinning with a little water if necessary, and marinate for at least an hour and up to 24 hours, refrigerated. Meanwhile, make a sauce to accompany the cooked chicken by mixing the reserved paste with 2 or 3 tablespoons of Pickapeppa sauce or ketchup. The sweetness smooths out the taste. Cook the chicken slowly in a covered charcoal grill over indirect heat, for 1½ to 2 hours, turning and basting about every half hour with leftover marinade (most won't stick to the chicken). Tend the fire carefully; if it’s too hot, the chicken will be badly overdone given such a lengthy cooking time. Too low a fire, obviously, is a problem as well. Keywords: Main Dish, Carribean, Intermediate, Chicken, Barbeque, Grill ( RG314 )

Depending on how important authenicity is to you and your friend, you may want to disregard this advice; it sounds kind snobby, but not so intended. As someone who has travelled to Jamaica many times, eaten jerked meats all over the island, and replicated them with varying degrees of success, I'd like to point out the several pitfalls of attempting to recreate authentic jerk chicken. Jerk sauce is easy to make. A food processor and, depending on the recipe, varying amounts of thyme, scallion, allspice ("pimento" to Jamaicans), scotch bonnet / habanero pepper, fresh ginger, garlic, vegetable oil, salt & black pepper, etc. But "chicken with jerk sauce," while passed off as "jerk chicken" outside Jamaica, is not really jerk chicken. "Jerk" simultaneously refers to the sauce and a style of cooking; it means barbeque in the strict sense: a long, slow cooking method, over indirect heat. It's no coincidence that the original jerk meat was pork, which is the best meat for such a treatment. Chicken works OK too. The Jamaicans generally jerk halved birds rather than pieces, to lengthen cooking time. Two other complications. The best jerk chicken is cooked over coals of wood from the allspice tree, which gives a characteristic flavor, as do hickory or mesquite. And Jamaican chickens, no matter how they're prepared, taste better than ones from US supermarkets, presumably because they're not produced on factory farms, Jamaican agriculture being less (ahem) "advanced" than the US. Free-range is the best equivalent. Don't have my sauce recipes handy, but you can find a jillion of them on google. I'll check this string later, and if someone hasn't posted a suitable sauce recipe, I'll dig mine out. But again, the specifics of the sauce recipe matter less than the cooking method.

You might try that French peasant classic, chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, made entirely with thighs. You can use this recipe, using about 4# of thighs: http://www.davidscooking.com/recipes/chick...chick40clv.html

Bond girl. The most typical way of handling meat: If the gumbo includes poultry and/or sausage, they are browned in oil one at a time, then removed from the pan. The cooking oil and any fat rendered in the pan are used to make a roux. Then seasoning vegetables are cooked in the roux. Seafood is generally added near the end, so as not to overcook it. But there are lots of variations in which various meats are handled, and some are cooked separately before adding to the gumbo. Okra tips: Soniat says "In selecting okra for gumbo, always remember to get fresh, tender okra, One way to tell this is to bend the tips of a few of the okra pods.... If the tips snap off, you know the okra is fresh, but if the tips are soft and pliant and do not pop off, do not use them--they are not fresh." "It's best not to use cast iron in cooking as it may discolor the okra."

I've recently read several Louisiana cookbooks, during the course of which I looked at least a couple of dozen gumbo recipes, and in every one, you add your seasoning vegetables to the hot roux. That's completely in accordance with what I've seen cooks here in NO do. As for other rules about what makes gumbo gumbo, here's what Leon E. Soniat Jr. has to say in "La Bouche Creole" about the gumbos prepared in his family: "The gumbos we ate were divided into three main classifications: those with okra as a base, those with file (fee-lay; a powder of ground sassafrass leaves) added just before serving, and those with neither okra nor file. Some Creoles will stoutly maintain that a gumbo must have either okra or file, and there is a great deal of merit to their position. There are others who just as vehemently uphold the opposing view that a gumbo is a gumbo, even though in contains neither okra nor file." Okra and file have the effect of thickening gumbo. If you use file, add it at the very end (a pinch to the serving bowl), as cooking file generally produces a stringy mess....

My favorite culinary tours have been in Jamaica, along the south coast between Negril and Alligator Pond. Lots of places right on the water, with the very fishing boats that brought in your meal beached a few yards away. Two elements of national dishes, ackee in ackee-and-saltfish, and pimento (allspice) wood for jerking chicken, an generally unavailable outside Jamaica. I cook Jamaican, but there's no match for the real thing....