Jerk stewed chicken

Capsaicin
For what it's worth
Source: https://me-pedia.org/wiki/File:Capsaicin_peppers.png

Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a big fan of the chilli. Probably more than half the recipes I've published in this blog contain chilli in some form or other. The substance in chillies that makes them hot is called capsaicin. There's some interesting biochemistry involved in how it works (to me, at any rate) which I won't go into. One thing I will say, however, is that capsaicin affects a receptor called TRPV1 in mammals, but not in birds. Mammals have great teeth at the back of their mouths to grind things like seeds, whereas birds swallow them whole, So, if you're a chilli plant, you want your seeds to pass through an animal unharmed so they can be deposited elsewhere, and not crushed up in the jaws of some milk-weaned twat. Therefore having some substance in your fruit that give mammals a burning sensation after eating them keeps them well away This means birds eat the chillies, poo the seeds and spread the plant far and wide. On the other hand it means that birds will never know the sweet pain of a really good, hot curry. They'll never experience that life-affirming feeling of a really searing chilli, and its accompanying endorphin high. Imagine that, you're a bird and can't get a really good, ring-stinging curry, which is truly one of the great pleasures in life. Saying that, most of the ring-stinging curries I've had contain birds, in the way of chicken, so that would be kind of cannibalism. Family Guy did address this in one of their episodes (see below). On the other hand, having seen the mess bird poo already makes on a car, it's probably not a bad thing that they aren't affected by chilli.

Taking a tern for the worse
The problems of eating chicken if you're a seagull, though, seagulls are probably as far removed , in evolutionary terms, from chickens as humans are from cows

Of course, there's a major flaw in the chilli plant's strategy to avoid being eaten by mammals, in that it didn't reckon on the masochistic tendencies of a certain great ape to derive pleasure from pain via endorphins. Hell, getting pleasure from pain is such a big thing in humans that some people actually part with large sums of money to prostitutes to sandpaper their testicles... apparently. There's even some suggestion that people who eat lots of spicy chilli may live longer, which means I might actually now be immortal. The effect of capsaicin, however, isn't restricted to the mouth. Anyone who's ever chopped a chilli then touched their eye will know what I'm talking about, or worse, if you've ever needed a wee after preparing chillies. The weirdest thing is having a wee after eating a lot of hot chilli gives a good simulation of a UTI as the capsaicin burns on the way out.

So, anyway, the amount of capsaicin and related compounds in a pepper determine how hot they are and there is a scale to determine that. the Scoville Scale. It was conceived by Wilbur Scoville, an American pharmacist, diluting extract of chilli until it couldn't be tasted any more. Nowadays, of course, we do it by measuring actual capsaicin itself and adding a fiddle factor to give a Scoville heat unit, or SHU. The range in SHU is huge. A sweet pepper has a value up to 100, the jalapeño and chipotle 2.5-10K, the Thai bird's eye 50-100K, the Habanero (as used to make the famous Tabasco sauce) and Scotch bonnet (I'll come onto that in a bit) at 100-350K to the stupidly hot Bhut Jolokia (aka ghost pepper) and Trinidad Scorpion at 750K-1.5M or Carolina Reaper and sinisterly named Pepper X (the current world record holder as the hottest pepper) at 1.5 to 3M or greater, on a par with law enforcement pepper spray.

Chilli Peppers
They're not all red hot
Green pepper, Jalapeno, Chipotle, Birds eye, Habanero, Scotch bonnet, Bhut Jolokia, Trinidad scorpion, Carolina Reaper, Pepper X. They get more deformed, ugly and evil they look, the hotter they get
Sources: https://www.foodcity.com/product/0000000004065/, https://www.veritable-garden.co.uk/small-fruits-vegetables/140-jalapeno-hot-chili-lingot-3760262511665.html, https://www.spicesinc.com/p-84-chipotle-morita-chiles.aspx, https://www.nutrivaso.com/2016/05/, https://blog.sonoranspice.com/the-habanero-breaking-down-the-popular-pepper-with-extreme-heat/, https://www.shutterstock.com/search/scotch%2Bbonnet%2Bpeppers?page=2&section=1, https://www.friedas.com/products/ghost-chile/, https://mychilligarden.com/moruga-scorpion-red/, https://www.lazada.com.my/products/10-seeds-carolina-reaper-the-worlds-hottest-chilli-pepper-no-1-in-guinness-worlds-records-2013-2017-benih-cili-terpedas-i191107705.html , https://twitter.com/buypepperxseeds/status/929442732132716545

The Scotch bonnet is one of the hottest regular peppers you can get hold of fairly easily and cheaply in the UK, especially if you are privileged to live in an area with a large Afro-Caribbean population. It's got a wonderful fruity falvour besides the chilli heat and is a common ingredient in Carribean cuisine, especially that of Jamaica, which I've covered before. It's a major component of jerk seasoning, which is the basis of this dish. Jerk, in food terms, usually refers to marinated grilled meat of some sort, and is a great way to add some pep to your BBQ. However, we found this recipe years ago in an otherwise shit magazine (I think it was actually Take a Break, believe it or not) and have been making it ever since. It uses jerk seasoning, or paste, in a stew with pineapple, peppers and tomatoes. It's probably the hottest regular dish we cook, without adding any extra chilli, but it is really delicious.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes

 INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 peppers, cored, seeded and cut into strips (any colour, though at least one of them should be red)
200-250g chicken fillet, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tin of tomatoes
1 small tin (230g) pineapple chunks in pineapple juice
1 tsp jerk paste
½ tsp ground allspice
½ tsp ground ginger
Pinch dried thyme
Salt and pepper

Ingredients
From top left, clocwise: tomatoes, pineapple, red and yellow peppers, onion, garlic and spices in the dish: ginger, allspice, thyme jerk paste.

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion for 5 minutes

Add the garlice and fry for another couple of minutes

Throw in the peppers and fry for 5 more minutes

Add the chicken and the whole tin of tomatoes and the pineapple, including the juice

Throw in the jerk paste, ginger, allspice and thyme, plus a good grind of black pepper and a bit of salt.

Pour in 100ml water, stir, bring to the boil

In da pan

Turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for 30-60 minutes. Remove the lid for a bit if it's a bit wet

Serve up with something traditionally Caribbean like rice and peas or, as we usually do in our house, with oven-roasted diced potatoes. Roasted sweet potatoes work even better. 

Served up and ready to eat

NOTES
This would work well with pork or beef. Chicken on the bone, in the way of thighs or drumsticks, is also a good alternative, and a little cheaper.

A couple of different colours of pepper make it look really great, but you could swap in some sweet potato instead.

Adding the pineapple juice adds a nice sweetness to this dish which goes well with the chilli heat.

Jerk paste is available from supermarkets and is made from spring onions, Scotch bonnet chillies, thyme and allspice which give it a really distinctive Caribbean flavour. It's incredibly potent, so you really need to use it sparingly. It lasts ages in the fridge. The stuff we're using at the moment is from Dunn's River. It's great to marinate meat before barbecueing as well. I add a little extra allspice, thyme plus add ginger to pep up the spice flavour a little.

Jerk spice

Wilbur Scoville is not to be confused with Philip Schofield, though he is also responsible for more than his fair share of eyes watering after he broke the hearts of housewives across the nation when he came out as gay live on national TV recently. Of course, coming out as gay at his age is actually a tragedy, as he should have been able to expresshis sexuality throughout his life without fear of it affecting his career. He also announced he was a Tory at some point recently, so he does have something in his closet that he should have been ashamed about.

Now, I know what you're thinking "So, Iain, I suppose, given the discussion of chillies, you're going to sign this off with a video from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, aren't you?" and the ansewer is no. They're shite and also alleged sleazy sex pests, so, in appreciation of the Scotch Bonnet chilli, there's something way more in keeping with the nature of this blog. This is a song about the joys of the Highland wind whistling round your meat and two veg whilst wearing a kilt, something that would be a good thing to experience to ease the aforementioned ring-sting after an infernally hot dish such as this recipe. Never mind trying to find what's hiding Under the Bridge. What you need to ask is "Donald, Where's Your Troosers?"

Andy Stewart's biggest hit

Donald, where's your troosers?
I took them off because it makes dogging easier.

Double Ska Jamaican Chicken burgers with pineapple salsa

While looking for ideas for recipes to try, I chanced upon one for Reggae Reggae burgers. The Reggae Reggae brand originated on Dragon's Den in the UK when Levi Roots strummed a guitar in his pitch and got some rich fucker to buy his sauce (ooer, sounds a bit rude). The brand is now a corporate behemoth incorporating not just the original sauce, but various other table sauces, spice mixes and other products up to and including pasties and even soft drinks. I'm sure Levi Roots did start off with family recipes, but sold out faster than a Tory MP with a... Actually, no need to qualify that, he sold out faster than a Tory MP because that's what they fucking do. Then again, Dragon's Den is, by its very nature, all about selling out, so good on him.

He used the unique selling point, or USP, of his Jamaican culinary heritage and home-cooked, family recipes to create his brand. It's not as if he's an American who's voice is the auditory equivalent of having your head pushed into a bucket of wallpaper paste, nor is he some wanky, angry TV chef who's face is plastered across a range ready-made sauces which they wouldn't actually touch with a barge-pole topped with a Michelin star. Of course, not all USPs are created equal. Take mine for example. I'd probably go on Dragon's Den, force-feed the dragons a bowlful of chilli that would have them shitting napalm for the next week and I'd probably end up going home empty handed having subsequently called them a bunch of twats.

I've done a recipe for burgers previously, of the beef variety, which is the origin of the hamburger. You can get chicken burgers at your local corporate fastfood joint, but they do tend to be breadcrumbed and deep-fried so, in my humble but profane fucking opinion, aren't actually "burgers". Burgers, for me, should be made of minced or ground meat. Flavour them how you like, but they need to be, for all intents and purposes, a reconstituted steak 

So, I wanted to do something that had a Caribbean feel, I love burgers (as I've made clear before) and thought chicken burgers just don't get enough coverage. Now, chicken is basically pretty bland on its own so you need to give it lots of flavour. A bit of ginger, lime juice and chilli add just enough tropical character to justify me ripping off Levi Roots' Reggae Reggae brand to call mine Double Ska. And because of that, why not have a bit of ska before we start (like you need a reason to play a great bit of Prince Buster)?

One step beyond.
RIP Prince Buster

TIMING
Preparation: 60 minutes (including roasting the pepper and leaving it to cool)
Cooking time: 15 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Pineapple salsa
1 small yellow pepper
Half a small, fresh pineapple, cored, peeled and the flesh diced
3 or 4 spring onions, trimmed, cleaned and finely sliced
Juice of  ½ a lime
1 tbsp rum
½ tsp ground allspice

Burgers
Half a medium red onion, finely chopped
1 medium to large garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp vegetable oil
500g skinless chicken thighs, boned (or bought boneless)
half a thumb's size of fresh root ginger, finely chopped
Juice of ½ a lime
Pinch of dried thyme
1 chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 egg
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve
Basic green salad or a few washed lettuce leaves, shredded.
Bread buns

RECIPE
For the salsa
Wash the pepper and place in an oven at 200°C for 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and place in a plastic bag and seal until cool.

Remove the pepper and peel off the skin.

Core and dice the pepper.

Mix the chopped pepper with the pineapple and spring onion in a bowl.

Add the allspice, rum, and lime juice.

Mix well and chill until you need it.

Pineapple salsa

For the burgers
Heat the oil in a pan and gently sauté the onion and garlic for 5-10 minutes, until the onion is soft and near-transparent.

Add the ginger and carry on gently frying for another 5 minutes.

Allow to cool.

Trim any stringy, white bits from the chicken and cut it into smallish chunks.

Throw the chicken, the cooled onion, garlic and ginger, plus the other ingredients into a food processor and blend for a minute or so, occasionally stopping to scrape any larger pieces of the mixture back into the bowl.

Form the chicken mix into patties. This amount of mixture will make around 4 and (as I stated in my post for hamburgers earlier) I use a burger press to make evenly sized patties, but I'm one of those people.

Cook in a little oil in a frying pan of griddle pan. They take around 5-7 minutes per side. Ensure they are cooked through.

 Urban griller
Chicken burgers. They are difficult to keep in shape

Serve in a toasted bun with salad and a dollop of the salsa and a side order of chips/wedges (sweet potato wedges work especially well).

NOTES
I do call these Double Ska burgers and I realise that I've only posted one ska track, so here's the second one, a little more recent. Listen to this as you read the rest of this post.

Skank while you cook
Prince Buster and Suggs on Jools Holland doing Madness and Enjoy Yourself

The burgers can be quite soft and break up easily so it's worth putting them between sheets of clingfilm or grease-proof paper and leaving them in the fridge for an hour or more to help them keep their shape when cooking.

I de-seeded the chilli in the burgers because you want the burgers to have only a mild kick. On the other hand, you could completely leave the chilli out if you're effetely inclined.

I didn't put chilli in the salsa, but you could if you wanted a bit more heat. I appreciate that this salsa is similar to the pineapple sambal I posted previously, but the flavours are very different in character and really encapsulate the respective cuisines they come from.

Like in a lot of Caribbean food, the best chillies to use are Scotch bonnets which have a fantastic and distinctive fruity flavour.

Scotch bonnet
No, I don't see the resemblance either

Finally, given the ska theme, it would be remiss of me not to give a plug to a band called Skaface, a 10 piece ska band from the coastal English town of Blackpool. My pal Colin is their drummer and they are ace, so, if you get a chance, go and see them.

Rice and peas

Rice and peas is up there along with delicacies such as Bombay duck (see my thoughts on this from an earlier blog recipe here), water biscuits and crab sticks as actually not being composed of what their name actually suggests. And don't even get me started on the whole fucking omnishambolic multiple personality defect that is the "pudding" (steak and kidney? Christmas? Black? Bread and butter? Sweet? Savoury? Make your fucking mind up!)

The "peas" in rice and peas are actually beans, kidney beans in this case. It's a Caribbean classic and goes very well with my Jamaican lamb curry or something like jerk chicken.

As in most Jamaican cuisine, the chilli ought really to be a scotch bonnet and put into the rice whole to impart a bit of flavour, rather than making it spicy hot. In this instance I used a bird's eye chilli which doesn't have the same fruity flavour as a scotch bonnet, but it still worked.

INGREDIENTS
1 large spring onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 whole chilli
½ tsp allspice powder
200ml coconut milk
200g rice
300ml water
½ a vegetable stock cube
½ tin of kidney beans

RECIPE
Rinse the rice in a couple of changes of water to get rid of excess free starch.

Add the oil to a pan and fry the garlic and spring onion.

Add the allspice and chilli.

Stir in the rinsed rice.

Add the water and stock cube, stir, then add the coconut milk.

Stir well, bring to the boil, cover, and turn the heat right down.

Leave for 15-20 minutes to let all the liquid get absorbed by the rice leaving (hopefully) a pan full of light, fluffy, delicately flavoured grains.

Serve with any Jamaican main course such as my Jamaican lamb curry or jerk chicken.

OK, it's not much to look at

It's rice and it's got beans in it. What do you expect?

NOTES
The mild coconut flavour works well to temper the heat of something really spicy like jerk chicken.

Unlike a lot of rice dishes, which can be a bit bland, this has enough taste to make a light lunch in its own right with the leftovers next day. Make sure the leftovers are kept in the fridge. Also, if you do have it the next day, make sure you seriously fucking nuke it in the microwave to kill off any bugs and avoid food poisoning from good old bacillus cereus which is actually quite fond of rice and doesn't like to share.

Other beans can be used in this, like black turtle beans. Some recipes recommend using dried beans and using some of the cooking liquid from preparing these. I didn't. Some versions of rice and peas  call for bacon in as well. If you do use dried kidney beans, bear in mind that if you don't prepare them properly you're arse might end up resembling a garden sprinkler the next day, thanks to the fact that the beans are poisonous if they aren't soaked and cooked according to instructions.

I used Thai jasmine rice for this. It tastes great for any savoury rice dish. As I've said in several previous entries, but a huge fuck-off bag of it from an Asian supermarket and you will have great rice on tap for months and it's cheaper and better than most of the crap you buy at the local Western grocer.

Jamaican lamb curry

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s there was a big influx of migrants from the British Commonwealth to the UK who were a vital part of rebuilding the country following WWII. A large contingent came from the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. In the late 60s, eminent scholar, Conservative politician, and, as it subsequently became apparent, massive racist cockwomble, Enoch Powell, foretold there would be rivers of blood as a result of this influx. Anyone who bought a pair of gum boots to spare their socks from getting stained in the gore must look pretty fucking stupid now as this hasn't happened.

It's nothing new, of course. There were doubtless a few resident Neanderthals probably grunting the same about the Cro-Magnons (ugg ug-uggg ug'g ugg or "fucking neo-hominids. They come over here with their complex language abilities and their way of crafting superior arrowheads and hand-axes from flint") when they arrived; and no doubt there would have been a subsequently vocal minority of the residents who said similar things about the Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the Jutes, the Saxons, the Normans, the Hugenots, the Jews, the Indians, the Pakistanis, as there is saying the same thing about the Poles and the Syrians now. The worst of the bunch were the fucking Angles. Those bastards came over to Albion, next thing you know we have to change the name of our entire fucking country to Angle-land, or England, to suit them. It's just Germanic feudal correctness gone mad.

Anyway, despite the naysayers, the little Englanders, and the out and out fucking racists, we have a fucking proud history of welcoming immigrants, and them becoming part of the fabric of British life with their culture enriching ours. As I mentioned in a previous entry, the British national dish these days is now accepted to be chicken tikka masala, and Melas and Eid have become massive community events for everyone living in towns with a big Asian population.

This is equally true of the Caribbean immigrants from the late 20th century. One of the most vibrant events in the national calendar is the Notting Hill Carnival, arguably the largest street festival in the world, is a huge celebration of West Indian culture. The musical landscape was changed drastically by reggae and ska in the 70s and 80s; and restaurants specialising in Jamaican and other Caribbean cuisines are often a gem of the culinary life of any town.

Carnival!Notting Hill in full swing
(picture from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7970631/Notting-Hill-Carnival-wont-be-down-in-the-dumps.html)

The most well known dishes of Jamaican cuisine include jerk chicken, rice & peas and goat curry. Being a bit of an aficionado of curries from across the globe, I had to try this, but goat tends to be a bit in short supply in these parts so substituted lamb.

TIMING
Preparation: 10 minutes (plus marination)
Cooking: 3 hours

INGREDIENTS
500g diced lamb
2tbsp Jamaican curry powder (see notes)
1 onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 thumbs-worth of fresh root ginger, finely chopped
200ml coconut milk
200ml water
1 chicken stock cube
1tbsp tomato pure
2 regular red chillies, finely chopped (see notes)
2 regular green chillies, finely chopped (see notes)
2tsp Encona chilli sauce (see notes)
Half a butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and cubed

RECIPE
Trim off any excess fat from the lamb and put it in a bowl with 1 tbsp of the curry powder and shake the bowl to cover the meat

Leave to marinate for at least an hour, overnight if possible.

In a flame-proof casserole dish, heat the oil on the hob and brown the lamb for 5-10 minutes before removing with a slotted spoon

Add the onion, garlic and ginger to the dish and fry for a couple of minutes before adding the rest of the curry powder

Return the lamb and add the rest of the ingredients.

Stir well, cover and place in an oven at 150°C for three hours.

Check the stew every hour or so and add more water if it's getting dry.

 

 How it is cooking

Makes enough for two people. Serve it with rice and peas (recipe to follow)

With rice and peas

NOTES
There are loads of commercially available available blends of Jamaican curry powder. Now, some cookery columns, celebrity chefs etc would insist you must make your own. As a rule I'd say fuck that for a game of soldiers. Why reinvent the wheel? However, I actually did make my own, but mainly because I couldn't find any in my local supermarket. This is how I made it:

• 2½ tbsp ground tumeric
• 2 tbsp whole coriander
• 1 tbsp whole cumin
• 1 tbsp black mustard seeds
• 1 tbsp whole fenugreek
• ½ tbsp star anise
• ½ tbsp ground allspice
• 1 large stick of cinnamon (10 cm)
• 1 tsp cloves
• ½ tsp whole black pepper
• ½ tsp ground ginger

Put the spices in a dry frying pan and heat for a couple of minutes on the hob to toast. Let them cool then grind to a fine powder and store in an airtight container

As mentioned above, this is based on a goat curry. Fortunately it works very well with the lamb I used which is readily available. Goat would probably need more cooking, but who knows? Not me, I've never fucking cooked it.

I'd intended to use sweet potato in this recipe but couldn't find any so substituted squash. Squash or pumpkin is great in any curry, but this would also work with regular potato.

Coconut milk in tins is great for this

I used the chillies I could find in my local supermarket, which were some not-too-hot non-descript variety. However, the chillies used in this ought to be scotch bonnet chillies which are hotter than Satan's urinary tract when he was having a severe case of urethritis during Hell's great cranberry shortage of 1986. As well as being stupid hot they also have a fantastic fruity taste that is as much a part of Jamaican cuisine as the other spices. Again, I couldn't find any scotch bonnets locally so used the bog standard chillies in the ingredients. On the other hand, Encona Hot Pepper Sauce is made from Scotch Bonnet chillies, hence why I add some to this dish.

Scotch bonnet chillies and Encona Hot Pepper Sauce which is made from them(You can get an extra hot version of the sauce)
(Chillies pic from http://huntergathercook.typepad.com/huntergathering_wild_fres/2011/01/homemade-scotch-bonnet-hot-sauce-thrifty-central-heating.html Sauce picture from Tescos website)

Sweary jocularity aside, I'm conscious of the fact that the as well as enriching British culture, the influx of immigrants from former British colonies in the West Indies betrays a dark history of the slave trade that saw huge numbers of African natives captured and shipped across the Atlantic to provide a cheap workforce for plantations in these selfsame former colonies.

Many immigrants live in some of the most deprived parts of the country complete with the social problems that afflict such areas, as well as often being vibrant centres for diverse cultures. The vibrancy then leads to more affluent people moving to the area, gentrification and next thing you know, the area is no longer vibrant and is the setting to some Richard Curtis (yes, him) bland, middle-class Rom-com as was the case for Notting Hill.