Week Six: Whip It Up

For week six I decided to make Jamaican rice and peas. While we were in Jamaica I bought a bottle of Jamaican jerk rub so I could make jerk chicken at home. I marinated the chicken the night before and then all day yesterday I was trying to decide what to make with it. I wanted to have a Jamaican theme night so, I looked up Jamaican recipes and I came across this one, Jamaican Rice and Peas.

Ingredients

• 8 ounces small dried red beans or red kidney beans
• 1 quart water
• 16 ounces chicken broth or chicken stock or water
• 1/2 cup coconut cream
• 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 scallions, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup white onion, chopped
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 scotch bonnet pepper (left whole)
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 2 1/4 cups uncooked long grain rice

Directions

1. 1

   Rinse and sort beans and place in a stockpot.

2. 2

   Cover with several inches of water and soak overnight,-or- bring to a boil, boil gently for 3 minutes, then remove from heat, cover, and allow to sit undisturbed for 1 hour.

3. 3

   Drain and rinse beans.

4. 4

   Bring to a boil with chicken stock, water, and coconut cream.

5. 5

   Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 1 1/2-2 hours or until beans are tender and creamy.

6. 6

   Add the thyme, allspice, scallion, onion, garlic, scotch bonnet, brown sugar, uncooked rice, salt and pepper.

7. 7

   Check the level of liquid over the rice and make sure there is at least one inch of liquid (if not, you may add water or broth to cover).

8. 8

   Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes or until rice is tender.

9. 9

   Serve hot as a side dish, with Jamaican hot sauce as a condiment, if desired.

10. 10

    For Vegetarian use water not the chicken broth or stock.

I had all of the ingredients at home except for the scotch bonnet pepper. I had never even heard of it before so I looked it up and found that it is similar to the habanero. I must have looked troubled while I was searching for it because the produce manager came to offer his help. He even got out the produce manual and looked for it; with no luck. I decided that I was going to omit the pepper from my recipe. The only other change I made was using coconut milk instead of coconut cream because it was what I had a home.

I was very tired last night and probably shouldn't have been trying a new recipe, but I did anyway. So while everything was cooking I started to smell something burning. My first thought was that it was the chicken in the oven, I pulled it out and it was fine so I thought it had to be the rice. But how could it be the rice I though, it has only been cooking 10 minutes. Thats when I looked down and realized I had forgot to turn the flame down to let it simmer. I had put the lid on and left it at a full boil. I turned it off and salvaged the rice in the middle.

Sorry there are no pictures for this recipe...like I said I was really tired last night.

Even with the little mishap the rice was ok. I don't think it was good enough to make again though. John agreed, it was was good, but not a keeper. The recipe was easy to make. Oh, yes one other change I made was to use canned beans instead of dried beans so I wouldn't have to cook then for an hour.

Comments

[RA]

Oh, man, I hate it when I miss a piece of directions like that. I hope the chicken turned out well, too.

[amanda]

That sounds really good! But I hate when I try a new recipe thinking that it will be so good and it turns out just "alright". The same thing happened to me last night. Hope you get some rest!