Week 6 - Jamaican

The theme for week 6 of the challenge was Jamaican. I actually made our Jamaican dinner prior to doing week 5 of the challenge, but it has taken me awhile to finish this post. During planning, I wasn't sure what to do for Jamaican week. We recently wrapped up our Jamaican exploration for WorldEats (although we haven't blogged about any of it) and we had some really great Jamaican food. There was no way that, in my first foray into Jamaican cooking, I could match anything we had. The jerk chicken from Freda's even made it onto my top 10 list for 2013. I was torn. Should I attempt a jerk chicken recipe, knowing it probably wouldn't come close? Should I tackle something I had a better chance of succeeding with on the first try, like a stew or curry?

Not a very attractive plate, but that was the final product

In the end, I decided to go with the iconic Jamaican jerk chicken. I pulled up a bunch of different recipes online, but ultimately I chose to create my own by adapting two recipes - this recipe from Simply Recipes and this Nigella Lawson recipe from the Food Network. The chicken was a combination of the two recipes and the rice and peas was an adaptation of Nigella's. I just couldn't find one recipe that really clicked with me from beginning to end, so I did the best I could.

JERK CHICKEN

I had high hopes for the jerk chicken recipe. I hoped that I would have something new to add to my repertoire if it came out well, even if it didn't come close to Freda's. I would have settled for a tasty, spicy chicken dish.

Ingredients:

The ingredient list for the jerk chicken was rather long, but not full of difficult to find ingredients. We had a lot of the ingredients in the pantry, but just needed to pick up some dark rum, molasses and habanero peppers. None of those are usually on our shopping list (although I suppose we won't have to buy rum or molasses for some time now).

Ingredients for the jerk chicken marinade

- 1/2 cup white vinegar ($0.15)

- 2 tbsp dark rum ($1)

- 2 habanero peppers ($0.16)

- 1 red onion ($0.80)

- 4 green onion tops ($0.32)

- 1 tbsp dried thyme ($0.10)

- 2 tbsp olive oil ($0.10)

- 2 tsp salt ($0.05)

- 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)

- 4 tsp ground allspice ($0.25)

- 4 tsp ground cinnamon ($0.25)

- 4 tsp ground nutmeg ($0.25)

- 4 tsp ground ginger ($0.25)

- 2 tsp molasses ($0.40)

- 2 large chicken breast pieces ($2.50)

- juice of 1 lime ($0.29)

The recipe comes in under $7 for the chicken portion, which is lower than I expected. The bottles of rum and molasses weren't cheap, but the recipe didn't call for that much of either.

Process:

The jerk chicken preparation started the night before, so we had to plan ahead. The recipes do say that you can marinate for less time, but I opted for overnight for maximum flavor. 

All of the steps in the photo above (#1-6 listed below) happen during the marinating process the night before.

1. Prepare vegetables - chop green onion tops, red onion and habanero peppers. [The green onions and red onions shouldn't take that long to chop, since they're just going to get blended anyway and don't have to be chopped to any specific size. But there were issues with our red onions, more specifically a brown interior, that I hadn't planned on. The habanero pepper took awhile since I was extra-cautious about the heat and preventing any burning side effects.]

2. Put all ingredients (other than chicken and lime juice) into a blender.

3. Blend until mostly smooth. [It just looked like brown paste.]

4. Cut chicken breast into pieces of desired size [I didn't want to use two whole pieces and opted for smaller pieces] and place in marinating dish. Coat chicken with lime juice.

5. Pour marinade from blender jar into marinating dish.

6. Make sure all chicken is coated with marinade. [In our case, the chicken was submerged in the marinade-lime juice combination.]

When ready to cook dinner...

7. Line rimmed baking sheet with foil. Place chicken pieces onto the baking sheet.

8. Place any remaining marinade in a saucepan. Bring to boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer for at least ten minutes. [I let it simmer for awhile. It reduced down a lot and the concentrated paste/sauce really had a nice spice.]

9. Bake chicken at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes (or until chicken is done). [The recipes had the chicken going for much longer, but I think since my pieces were so small, they were done much faster than I had planned.] Top with the extra sauce if desired.

The jerk chicken was pretty moist when I first pulled it out, but after I let it warm in the oven while the rice cooked, it dried out quite a bit. That was disappointing, especially since I had tried it when I first pulled it from the oven, and it was so much better then. Time your jerk chicken better than I did!

It was an interesting recipe. It was a little more tart and full of citrus-like flavor than we thought it would be and more than other jerk chicken dishes we've had before. We aren't sure what ingredients they use in "real" jerk chicken (other than using scotch bonnets instead of habaneros, which I couldn't find), but this tasted different from what we remembered. There might be something missing to balance the flavors here. In the end, it wasn't bad (other than the texture from ending up a little overdone), but it wasn't as good as we hoped it would be. It's no replacement for a place like Freda's and their jerk chicken.

RICE AND PEAS

To go with the jerk chicken, I decided to make the standard rice and peas side. I had tried this (a different recipe though) once before but that recipe didn't taste like any rice and peas we'd ever had before. We hoped this one would taste more like what we were expecting.

Ingredients:

- 1 can blackeye peas ($0.70)

- 1 tbsp coconut oil ($0.10)

- 1 yellow onion ($0.50)

- 1 small red chile pepper ($0.16)

- 3 cloves of garlic ($0.05)

- 1 cup basmati rice (free - won the rice at a health fair)

- 14 oz can of coconut milk ($0.99)

- 1.5 cups chicken broth ($0.15)

- 1 tsp dried thyme ($0.05)

- 1 tsp salt ($0.05)

The total for the rice was about $3 since we didn't buy the rice. If we had it would have cost a little more, but not that much more.

Process:

Unfortunately I forgot to take photos for most of the rice cooking process, but here are the steps:

1. Heat coconut oil in saucepan. Fry onion for about 5 minutes, until softened and slightly browned.

2. Add chopped chile and garlic.

3. Stir in rice and make sure it is "slicked with oil."

4. Pour in coconut milk, chicken broth and the drained blackeye peas.

5. Bring to boil, cover, turn the heat to low, and cook for 15 minutes.

6. When all liquid is absorbed into the rice, the dish is done. Sprinkle with dried thyme and salt (if desired).

We really liked the rice. It was full of coconut flavor, a little sweeter than we were expecting, but quite good. We would definitely make this again.

OVERALL REVIEW

I'm glad I took the leap and tried to make jerk chicken. It was challenging - my first time playing with habaneros, my attempt to make the recipes taste similar to what we've had before, trying to find affordable molasses - and it wasn't as good as what you can get in the restaurants. But I'm satisfied that I tried. At least now I know what I can make with the recipes I found and we can make an educated decision on whether we'd rather spend our dollars on groceries to make jerk chicken or at an authentic Jamaican restaurant.

Jerk chicken isn't one of those ridiculously expensive dishes. Usually, for $15 or less at a restaurant, you can get a giant plate of chicken with sides of rice and peas or other sides of your choosing. Of course, the price of our dinner here (about $10) made dinner for two, but it just didn't taste the same and it didn't taste as good. Since I did a significant amount of recipe research, I'm not really sure what else I can do to make it taste as wonderful as the ones we loved in the past. I won't rule out trying another recipe, but for now, I think we'll leave Jamaican food (jerk chicken, at the very least) to the experts. It's worth it for us.