Mango Muffins

So, it's not yet mango season in the Caribbean, but we found the fruit guy who sets up under a grove of mango trees on the road from Chaguaramas to Port of Spain, and he was selling two varieties - most likely from Indonesia!  They were getting very ripe, and we were still up to our ears in work after getting Raconteur back in the water, so I called on my elusive baking skills, and found a recipe for mango muffins.

 

I was just assembling the ingredients, and realized - oops - no milk.  It is impossible to buy fresh milk in the Caribbean, though the UHT stuff is widely available, and I sometimes keep powdered milk, but I had none of the above on board.  I did, however, have a can of coconut milk; I hailed our friends Ann and Steve, Steve did a quick Google, and he discovered (on Food Network, which is a reasonably reliable source, we find) the following quote: "Substitute coconut milk for the liquid and half of the fat in your favorite blueberry muffin recipe", so that is indeed what I did.  The recipe makes 18 muffins (I used the semi-disposable aluminium muffin tins), and of course sent a few to our friends for their contribution. I renamed the recipe to acknowledge the substitution; you can go back to using milk and the 1/4 cup of oil if you like, but this worked splendidly, if I do say so myself.

Recipe: Caribbean-Style Mango Muffins

First prepared: Onboard Raconteur at Crews Inn Marina, January 2013

 

2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar or 3/4 cup honey
1/4 cup of a combination of coconut milk and vegetable oil
1 cup coconut milk
1 egg
1 -1 1/2 cup mango, pulp of (2 very ripe mangoes) Note: we had one large mango and it yielded a little more than a cup and a half, thanks to our onboard Mango Wranger, Susan.  I used it all)

Cut and peel two very ripe (soft to the touch) mangoes and reduce to soft pulp and juice. Combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl. In a separate bowl combine oil, milk, and egg.  

 

Mix liquid ingredients with dry until just moist and stir in the mango pulp.
 

Fill greased muffin tins, or paper muffin cups two-thirds full.
 

Bake at 400°F for 15-18 minutes Note: In my boat oven, these took a full 20 minutes, and they were still quite tender.
 
They are done when they are brown on top and a tooth-pick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Making Roti from Scratch, Grenadian Style

Susan's Roti - beautiful, no?

On Sunday we went to the home of a Grenadian friend to learn how to make roti from scratch. With four sets of hands, it took a bit more than three and a half hours. We had a wonderful time, and the results of our first efforts, thanks to Dingis' excellent tutelage and oversight, were pretty darn good. Dingis was particularly impressed with JP's crushing of the split peas for the dal puri, one of the steps you can see in the slideshow below. 

This recipe makes 25 roti and will take 2 people 3-4 hours (not counting the overnight marinating) – don’t try this alone!  Do note the overnight marinating/seasoning; prepare that the night before your roti party.

Recipe: Chicken Roti "Dingis"
First prepared: Lower Woburn, St. George's, Grenada, West Indies

Sequence (details follow):

1. spice up chicken and marinate overnight
2. start peas boiling
3. start chicken cooking
4. peel and dice potatoes
5. start dough
6. season peas
7. add potatoes to curry
8. first kneading
9. mash or grind peas
10. second kneading
11. continue to mash or grind peas
12. form balls with dough
13. insert peas in balls
14. prepare griddle
15. roll and cook roti
16. serve with curry

Chicken Curry

4 pounds chicken legs and thighs, cut in two, washed in lime juice, “cleaned” and put in large bowl or plastic container; add the following:

1 teaspoon. cooking salt (Adobo brand or similar) and/or Baron’s complete seasoning

1 tablespoon curry powder, preferably West Indian

1 teaspoon “Grenada saffron” (ground turmeric)

1 teaspoon ground cloves

5 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced

2 large onions, coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon vinegar or lime juice

Black pepper

3 seasoning peppers chopped

3 tablespoons bottled Green Seasoning

2 stalks celery including leaves chopped

1 tablespoon garam masala (we did not have masala on June 10)

Mix, cover and let stand in fridge overnight.

1 teaspoon oil
1 teaspoon ground tumeric (known as saffron in Grenada)
Seasoned chicken (above)
2-3 pounds white potatoes, peeled and diced
2 cups water

To a large, hot, dry pot over medium heat add the oil and tumeric. Add chicken mixture, cover and “let steam” (so chicken can “take ingredients in”) about 15 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary (Dingis added at least 1 T. on June 10)

Add the potatoes and the water; cover and cook until liquid is reduced and chicken is cooked, another 25 to 30 minutes.

Dal Puri

one half pound yellow split peas
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons oil
5 or 6 cloves (about half a head) of garlic, grated or pressed
1 medium onion, grated
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon ground cloves
black pepper
"Serious Double Pinch" of Adobo or  Baron's Season Salt

Cover the split peas with water (at least 2” above level of peas) and add the salt.

Bring to boil and cook about 15 minutes until peas are cooked but still firm, then drain.

To a medium, hot, dry pot add 4 T. oil and the onion and garlic and cook over medium heat until light brown.  Add the coooked split peas, garlic, onion, curry, cloves, black pepper, and Adobo seasoning.  Cook together briefly (about 3 minutes) and remove from heat and let cool.

When cool, grind in meat grinder or mash with rolling pin on board (we did the latter on June 10) until all peas are mashed or picked out – now it’s ready to be inserted in the dough

Roti (dough)

2 pounds “counter” flour (described to us as a “heavier” flour than baking flour)

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons baking powder

240 grams shortening or margarine

~ 1 cup water and knead vigorously until mixed
2 tablespoons oil

Mix the dry ingredients well;  blend the shortening or margarine and the water with your fingers until it resembles course meal.  Add 2 T. oil and knead vigorously until smooth. Cover and let rest about 30 minutes, then knead vigorously 10-15 times.

Cover and let rest again about 20 minutes.

Form into 25 smooth balls about halfway between golf and tennis size. One ball at a time, pull ball into smooth disk a bit larger than your palm. Put a heaping tablespoon of pea mixture into center of disk; draw/pinch edges of disk together tightly over peas to form a larger, slightly flattened ball with the peas inside and the pinched-together side on the bottom.

Prepare a hot griddle over low heat. Roll out a dough ball very thinly on a floured board to about 8” diameter. Oil the griddle with the bottom of a metal cup or a pastry brush. 

Place the rolled out dough on the griddle and oil the top with the bottom of a metal cup or pastry brush. Cook until it puffs a little and light brown spots appear on the bottom

Flip and cook until light brown spots appear on the bottom. Remove roti and wipe griddle with paper towel and re-oil. Roll out next dough ball and repeat process

Stack cooked roti on top of a paper towel sprinkled with water and place a double layer of paper towels sprinkled with water on top of the stack to keep soft – re-sprinkle as necessary.

Serve as soon as possible, under, beside, or wrapped around curry mixture.

Here's the slideshow of our adventure.

Geera Pork, as promised

I promised the recipe for Geera Pork a week ago - oh, well.  Our time on the boat is growing short - we will be on our way to Trinidad in a week or so - and I will have to continue building the repertoire and posting to the blog while we are landside.

This recipe is straight from Ann VanderHoof's second book, Spice Necklace.  She got it from "Miss Pat", who had a restaurant of sorts in the back of a bar in Port of Spain; I have gathered from Ann's more recent posts that she no longer cooks for the general public.  This recipe is deceptively simple, and totally delicious and addictive.  You will not be able to believe that something that cooks so long, and is essentially "dry" at the end, can taste so marvelous.  I made white rice, and pulled the Pumpkin Lentil Stew from the freezer and every bite of that pork was gone (and yes, it was just the three of us).

Recipe: Geera Pork
First prepared: aboard Raconteur in early 2012

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons demerara or brown sugar
1 and a half pounds boneless pork (I use tenderloin), cut into cubes
1 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
4 teaspoons ground roasted cumin, aka geera
2 cups hot water
Hot pepper sauce, to taste


Heat the oil in a large pot.  Add the sugar.  Cook, stirring frequently (more like constantly), until it is bubbling and dark brown and you can smell the caramel, about 3 to 4 minutes.  


Carefully add the meat, sprinkle with salt and geera, and stir until the meat is coated in the caramelized sugar.  Cook, uncovered, until the meat has released its juices and is very brown, stirring frequently - about 15-20 minutes.


Add the two cups of hot water, pouring it into the side of the pot, NOT on top of the pork.  Once the water is sizzling, stir and continue cooking for about 1 hour, until the pork is tender and the sauce has cooked down.  The finished dish should be fairly dry, not a stew. The sauce should be very dark brown and coat the meat.


Stir in hot pepper sauce and additional geera and salt to taste; there should be sufficient geera to give the dish a slight grittiness.  Continue to cook for a few minutes to blend the flavors.


Serves 4, just.

Here's the final dish.

Pumpkin Lentil Stew

Tomorrow I will publish one of our very favorite Caribbean recipes, for Geera Pork, which I will be making for dinner tonight.  Along side it, we will have the last of the frozen Pumpkin Lentil Stew that I made a few weeks ago, and white rice.  West Indian pumpkin does not look much like the Halloween pumpkin of North America - I found this photo, and hope I'm not sued for using it instead of one of my own - and it is nearly always available in the fresh markets on all of our favorite islands.  I also make a mean Pumpkin Ginger Curry soup; that one has also made it to the repertoire, so I'll get around to posting it eventually.  This stew makes a really great vegetarian main course, too - filling and delicious.  It comes from the English cook and writer Nigel Slater - you can find more of his stuff here - and he thinks of it as a fall/winter dish, but we found it just right in the Tropics, too.

Recipe: Pumpkin Lentil Stew
First prepared: aboard Raconteur in early 2012

1 medium onion, halved from the root and thickly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil, or butter, or a combination
1 large carrot, scrubbed and diced
2 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
a bushy sprig of rosemary, leaves roughly chopped
250 grams (on the high side of 1 cup) small green lentils (like Le Puy)
1.25 litres (5.25 cups) vegetable stock
2 bay leaves
1.5 kilograms (2.8 pounds, before peeling) pumpkin or butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into large chunks
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
a handful of roughly chopped parsley
6 tablespoons crème fraîche
~1 additional tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Warm the oil or butter in a large casserole and add the onion; cook over low to moderate heat until soft and pale gold, about 15 minutes or so. Stir in the diced carrot; after about 5 minutes, add garlic and rosemary.  When all is soft, sweet and lightly colored, add the lentils and 1 litre (4+ cups) of the stock, reserving ~1 cup of stock.  Add the bay leaves, and bring the mixture to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer the lentils for about 45 minutes.


Add the pumpkin chunks to the lentils and leave to simmer until the squash is thoroughly tender - about 15 minutes.  Add salt, pepper and the red wine vinegar, and stir in the parsley.  


Remove two large ladles of the stew; add the remaining 250ml (1 cup) of stock and purée in a blender, food processor or (my new best friend) immersion blender.  Return the puréed mixture to the pan and stir gently.

To serve, pile into wide bowls or deep plates.  Drop a heaped tablespoon of  crème fraîche onto each portion, and drizzle with a little EVOO.  

Serves 4-6, and keeps a couple of days in the fridge or weeks in the freezer and reheats beautifully. 

 

Surprise Pork Chops

This is one of those recipes that I went looking for recently because we had certain ingredients on Raconteur that I wanted to use.  I was rather skeptical, because of the cooking time, but didn't have the patience or the bandwidth to look further.  It's from southernfood.about.com. and we have now made it twice and it has earned a spot in the repertoire.  
You can see a double pile of onions on the cutting board because I also made Mark Bittman's rice pilaf to go with the chops; I'll include that recipe here too.  I find that I now use Bittman's How to Cook Everything - I have it on my iPhone - for many, many basics and variations on basics.  I don't have a Joy of Cooking on board, and there is no good electronic version (yet?), and so he has become my go-to.  One nice thing about his recipes is that he gives variations - often several - for many or most of them. 

Recipe: Pork Chops with Sour Cream

First prepared: aboard Raconteur in early 2012

6 pork chops, about 1/2 inch thick
salt and pepper
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
3 tablespoons butter
1 bay leaf
3/4 cup chicken broth or bouillon
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons sweet paprika (I used 1 teaspoon of Hungarian paprika and 1 teaspoon of Piment d'Espelette, to make it a bit spicier)

Sprinkle chops with salt and pepper. Sauté onion in butter until soft and golden; add minced garlic. Transfer to a bowl; set aside. Add pork chops to skillet; brown on all sides. Pour off excess fat, lower heat, then add cooked onions and garlic, bay leaf, and chicken broth to skillet with chops. Cover and cook over low heat for about 1 hour. (This was the scary part: A whole HOUR? But they turn out tender and delicious, and even still a little pink at the bone.) Transfer chops to a hot serving platter; keep hot. Cook pan juices over high heat until reduced to about half. Lower heat and add sour cream and paprika or paprika and Piment d'Espelette. Stirring constantly, cook until heated through, but do not boil. Pour over chops. Serves 4 to 6. 

Recipe: Rice Pilaf, simple form

First prepared: too long ago to remember

2 to 4 tablespoons butter or extra virgin olive oil (I used butter because the pork chop recipe uses butter; if the rice is to accompany something cooked in olive oil, then I would use that.  I have no idea if that matters at all.)

1 cup chopped onion

1 1/2 cups rice, preferably basmati

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 1/2 cups stock

Put 2 tablespoons of the butter or oil in a large, deep skillet with a lid over medium-high heat. When the butter is melted or the oil is hot, add the onion. Cook, stirring, until the onion softens, about 5 minutes.

Add the rice all at once, turn the heat down to medium, and stir until the rice is glossy, completely coated with butter or oil, and starting to color lightly, about 5 minutes. Season well with salt and pepper, then turn the heat down to low and add the stock all at once. Stir once or twice, then cover the pan.

Cook until most of the liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Turn the heat to the absolute minimum (if you have an electric stove, turn the heat off and let the pan sit on the burner) and let rest for another 15 to 30 minutes. Add the remaining butter or oil if you like and fluff with a fork. Taste and adjust the seasoning, fluff again and serve.

Pressure Cooker Stuffed Mangoes - really Stuffed Peppers

So in my family, we have always called green peppers "mangoes" (and sometimes you will even see them called that in the supermarket, even though the fruit is sometimes also sold there).  As in "Stuffed Mangoes", a dish made by my paternal grandmother, Bernice Good Hough Newman, and then carried on by my mom, Beth Tweed Hough.
The Word Detective gives an explanation of why green peppers were referred to as mangoes, though it does not really explain why this occurred entirely in the Midwest. It has roots as far back as the colonial era when the mango fruit (“real” mangoes) were brought to this country in pickled form from Asia. Eventually, the term mango would refer to almost pickled food. Peppers were often stuffed with cabbage and pickled. Green peppers became known as mangoes or mango peppers.  The peppers in the recipe in my family (and many others) are NOT pickled.  I don't have the exact recipe of my grandmother, and I was looking for a pressure cooker version anyway, so this one is a Raconteur adaptation of the family recipe, and tastes quite similar.

Recipe: Stuffed Peppers

First prepared: In this form, on board Raconteur in late 2011


3 cups cooked white rice
8 medium green bell peppers (I use a mix of red, yellow, orange and green normally)
1 and a half pounds ground beef
1 and a half teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon or more fresh ground pepper
2 eggs
a large onion, chopped
2 (10.75 ounce) cans tomato soup (I use one each Tomato and Tomato Bisque), mixes with 1 tablespoon hot sauce
1 and a half cups water

Remove seeds and wash peppers.  Mix ground beef, rice, salt, pepper, egg, onion and 2/3 cup of the tomato soup mixture.  Stuff peppers lightly and place on rack in pressure cooker.  Top each pepper with 1 tablespoon of the soup mixture, then mix the remaining soup mixture with the water and pour into pressure cooker around the peppers.
Cover and bring the pressure cooker to pressure; lower the heat and cook for another 15 minutes.  Cool before opening.

You can adapt this for oven cooking by parboiling the peppers to soften them, and then by cooking them for at least an hour in a pre-heated 350 degree oven.

Serves 4-6 (I used 9 peppers and we had two meals from them)

Tortilla Española "Batali"

Ingredients

A few years ago, Susan's friends Mark and Lolly were coming to dinner at her house in Lincoln, and I echoed a very old tradition (dating from sometime in the late 1980's) and cooked several things from one issue of Food and Wine magazine; Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow  made a series for PBS on cooking and traveling in Spain, and the September 2008 F&W had several of the recipes they collected.
I had been in Spain in 2007 with my friends Cindy, Jackie and Joan, and with JP and Susan in January of 2008, so we had eaten quite a few "Tortillas Española"; this recipe produced one of the best, and so became a keeper.  

Today we were getting ready to leave Martinique, and Susan and JP went off to the local discount supermarket "Leader Price"; I had eggs on my list, as I was down to two.  Susan called me on the VHF to say that they only had the 20-count egg box - first I said, no, skip them, we'll get some in Saint Lucia.  Then I re-thought - Tortilla Española, egg salad - what's not to like? - so I radioed back and told her to go for it. So tonight, our first in Rodney Bay, I made the tortilla, and it made a most satisfying supper.

Recipe: Tortilla Española "Batali"

First prepared: Birchwood Lane, Lincoln, MA, September or October 2008


1/4 cup plus 2T Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 and a quarter pounds Red Bliss potatoes, peeled and slice 1" thick (a mandoline is great for this)
1 onion (JP likes a bit more), halved and sliced thin
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
8 large eggs

Heat the 1/4 cup of EVOO in a large (cast iron or other broiler-proof) skillet.  Add the potato and onion slices, season with salt and pepper, and cook over MODERATE heat, stirring frequently, until the potatoes and onion are tender but not browned, about 15-20 minutes.
In a large bowl, lightly beat the eggs and season with salt and pepper.
Slowly scrape the potato-onion mixture into the bowl, being sure not to leave any in the skillet.
Return the skillet to the heat; add the remain 2T of oil.  Add the egg-potato-onion mixture, spreading in a reasonably even layer.  Cover and cook over low heat until the tortilla is set on the bottom and edges, about 10-12 minutes.
Light the broiler and transfer the skillet to the oven, about 8" from the heat, and cook until the top is set; this will take about 1 minute or so (except on the boat!).
Set the skillet over a large plate and carefully invert the tortilla onto the plate.  Let stand for AT LEAST five minutes.  Cut into wedges; serve warm or at room temperature.

This makes 4 servings as a main and 6 as a side.

When I made this originally, we served it with a version of Poulet Basquaise that I also loved...but the recipe for that is elsewhere (not on the boat) so that will have to wait for a later post. 

One nice thing about this recipe is that you can make it hours ahead of time - in Spain, they seem to make it early in the day, and then cut from it for hours afterwards.